Thursday, October 25, 2007

Oh Dear...

Ed Stelmach, despite the gift of the royalty review, was especially weak last evening in his televised address to the people of Alberta. It was pleasant, innocuous and largely rhetorical. It was not exciting or challenging and it dropped hints about a royalty for energy announcement due at 3pm on 25th October. But it was poor (and very low cost) TV and did not fire the imagination.

I was with Ed at a function as the broadcast took place. He spoke to some 300 people. He comes across as a decent, intelligent man who has no communication skills. He comes across as someone who is determined to do his best, but will never meet the standards set by others.

He is also incredibly naive about his own environmental policy, which most see as very weak but he sees as strong. Alberta has set intensity targets for carbon reduction, which in essence permits CO2 to grow by 37% between now and 2015 - less than would have been the case without these targets, but not as much as Kyoto requires.

So we wait till 3pm today to see what Honest Ed will do. Hopefully (again I use this word) he will get it right today. Fingers crossed.

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