Energy Policy

“Never again. The Wildrose Party pledges it will never change the fiscal regime for Alberta’s oil and gas industry without exhaustive research and extensive consultation with all stakeholders. Any policy changes will include an analysis of the impact on all the oil workers of Alberta – including the drilling and service sector – and the myriad of companies and employees that support Alberta’s most important industry all across the province.”

Danielle Smith, Leader, Wildrose Party

Wildrose Energy Policy
Through consultations with grassroots members, Albertans and after ratification by the Wildrose Party members at the 2011 Annual General Meeting in Calgary in June, Wildrose developed its policy “Green Book” that contains all of the major Wildrose policy initiatives. This can be accessed at http://www.wildrose.ca/media/2011/10/Wildrose-Policy-Book.pdf .

In November of 2009 an Energy Policy Task Force was struck co-chaired by David Yager who led the oil and gas side. He held extensive discussions with industry leaders and industry trade associations (he was Chairman of the Petroleum Services Association of Canada during this period). His efforts resulted in recommendations to the party at the 2010 Wildrose Annual General Meeting in Red Deer. These became the foundation of the Energy Policy Section of the Wildrose Green Book.

Wildrose Energy Policy as it relates to oil and gas is summarized as follows:

Create and maintain royalty and tax regimes that attract and sustain investment in our energy industries from research and development right through to bitumen upgrading, value-added production and spin-off industries.
Commit to consulting extensively with industry and other affected stakeholders to ensure new policies do not harm Alberta’s investment climate.
Create a formula to remit provincial energy revenues fairly to the municipalities that need help coping with the impacts of energy development in their regions.
Cut red tape to streamline our energy application, permitting and regulatory regimes without compromising the safety of Albertans or the health of our environment.
Lead by example and demonstrate a plan to achieve sustainable long-term environmental improvements in the years ahead instead of being reactive to the “flavor of the day” criticism and special interest groups, sectors or industries.
Develop an aggressive, thought-provoking and articulate communications strategy that promotes our energy resources and environmental stewardship to the world – starting in alberta then expanding across Canada, the United States and Europe.
Facilitate increased partnerships between Alberta’s post-secondary institutions and the private sector with the intention of making Alberta a recognized global centre of energy excellence.
Encourage local understanding and support for our most economically important industry by supporting energy literacy initiatives in Alberta.
Diversify Alberta’s energy export markets, particularly in Asia, by promoting investment and trade opportunities with interesting governments, while working with the same to reduce import and export barriers. We will work with the federal, provincial and U.S. governments to facilitate the building of pipelines to new markets.
Develop a natural gas strategy to create and expand domestic markets for natural gas in electricity generation, co-gen, transportation and value added industry inputs.
Appreciate that the energy industries in Alberta are greater than the energy resources themselves. This includes dynamic and vibrant technology-based energy services and equipment manufacturing for domestic and export markets. This gives Alberta a value-added, vertically-integrated energy industry that can export knowledge and import wealth from other energy-producing regions.