Showdown Looms As Ed Doubles Back
March 11th, 2010
It has been called the worst decision in the economic history of the province of Alberta.
The historical record will feature another glaring truth about Premier Ed Stelmach’s flawed scheme to boost oil and gas royalties: this policy disaster was totally avoidable.
Any objective review of the market and industry indicators in the months preceding the 2008 provincial election gave ample cause to rethink and revise the across-the-board, one-size-fits-all royalty framework unveiled by the premier in October 2007.
Clearly, the plan’s complex schedules would claw most greedily at Alberta’s natural gas explorers and producers, who were already coping with a low commodity price as they struggled to attract investors lured by better deals in Saskatchewan and B.C.
Read More...Brokeback Government Goes Unforgiven
March 4th, 2010
Alberta’s award-winning film and television professionals claim that Premier Ed Stelmach’s Progressive Conservative government is driving production out of the province with policies that force big Hollywood films, as well as home-grown projects, to shoot in competing jurisdictions like B.C., New Mexico, Ontario and Manitoba.
It’s a bitter blow for an industry that has earned 46 Academy Award nominations since 1948. Alberta’s majestic scenery and first-class filmmakers have contributed to four Oscar wins: Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain” in 2005, 1994’s “Legends of the Fall,” Clint Eastwood’s 1992 classic “Unforgiven” and Terrence Malick’s 1978 masterpiece, “Days of Heaven.”
“One after the other, we’ve lost five big Westerns in just the past few months,” says John Scott, known from Hollywood to Bollywood and beyond as one of the cinema’s foremost wranglers and stunt coordinators. “Some of those pictures have budgets of $100 million or more. Just one or two of ‘em would have brought our industry back to life.”
Read More...