Topics were flying fast and furious last week as Luigi’s played host to a question-and-answer period during a cabinet minister stop in Taber.
Minister of Finance Ron Liepert, and Minister of Culture and Community Services Heather Klimchuk were on hand as a sounding board for the concerns voiced over the many local issues affecting the area.
On the verge of delivering the provincial budget in a little over a week, Liepert gave some veiled reference to its contents as a preamble.
“It is a pre-election budget, but how I would like to describe it is being responsible. It’s responsible because there are those who are calling for severe cuts into government spending. Yes, we should all be looking at how we are spending dollars and making sure we are getting good value for those dollars,” said Liepert. “But when we traveled the province in November, the one thing that came through by Albertans whether they were rural, urban, north or south....it was health and education that needed to be priorities for this government and we are going to continue to do that.”
Among the 30-plus people on hand for the round-table discussion was M.D. Reeve Brian Brewin who thanked the ministers for the disaster recovery funding the M.D. received of $3 million the last two wet springs, but added more funding will be requested for water issues plaguing southern Alberta.
“We need a proactive approach. We need to develop a regional water plan. We have set up a committee with various irrigation groups, we will be requesting some funding for our regional approach and also an emergency spillway off our main canal,” said Brewin. “We had lakes, we had canals at capacity and no way to accept the water.”
M.D. Division 5 councillor Bob Wallace, representing the Hays area, also called for support in delivering potable water to the M.D.’s outlying rural areas to aid future development.
Because of the new leadership shift from Stelmach to Premier Alison Redford and the influx of new ministers, Liepert added the new budget that is about to be released evolved quickly, alluding water funding may have not be a priority for this area in the new budget.
“This budget was a bit of a hurry-up offence. And if there are certain parts of a department that may not be reflected in the budget, but need to have a higher priority, that is something you get to working with immediately with that particular minister after the budget so the planning can start in the next budget process,” said Liepert.
Gordon ZoBell, district general manager of Raymond Irrigation District voiced the concerns of some farmers over the cost of energy.
“We have significant concern with the distribution cost. The power can pass a little bit, but the distribution is way up there in the last couple of years. Even when you look at the bill in your home, it seems to be such an expensive part of the system and needs to be explained to us better and these power companies need to be called to task somewhat more,” said ZoBell.
Liepert noted costs are factored into the province’s energy crunch which is seeing the province try and steer away from coal, all the while facing a surge in energy demand at the same time.
“There are all the environmental concerns around coal and still 50 to 60 per cent of our base load is coal in this province. You are going off of coal at the same time our demand is increasing,” said Liepert.
“I know there is some potential with wind, but at the end of the day I don’t think renewables are ever going to do any more than at most meet the increase in demand. We need a substantive upgrade to our transmission system and that is going to cost money. This is going to be a discussion item for quite some time in this province and we have actually been somewhat spoiled because over the last 10 or 20 years our electricity rates compared to some other pay-as-you-go jurisdictions, we’ve actually been getting a bargain.”

























The Vauxhall/Hays/Enchant area are policed by the RCMPLocal policing costs made its way into the minister round table with Taber mayor Ray Bryant asking for fair and equitable funding across the province for the service.
“We are one of seven municipal police services in the province and we do receive some funding. But when you compare that with those urban municipalities who are under 5,000 who do not pay for policing, certainly that does become quite stressful for our small municipality,” said Bryant. “Since 2004, we’ve had at least four different ministers and we’ve reached the point where we can honestly say there hasn’t bee a fair formula across the province. We are fast approaching about a $2-million-dollar deficit in policing and we go to the taxpayer for about $7 million (total). About a quarter of our tax base is going towards policing.”