麻豆视频

It appears, at least on the surface, that Saskatchewan鈥檚 premier is gaining a little traction in terms of ironing out agreements, or at least making some well-considered points with his counterparts in Alberta, Ontario and Quebec.

Following recent visits to those provinces, Brad Wall could return home to at least a quiet approving chorus of those believing he had done a pretty good job of putting his province back into the mix on economic and environmental fronts.

While making his annual plea at an Alberta fundraiser, Wall made the points about Saskatchewan鈥檚 place in the new resource-world order since the oil price crash. Making a plea for understanding in Calgary is not out of place, contrary to what some critics would suggest, since a good number of the companies drilling for oil or servicing the oil industry in Saskatchewan, are headquartered there. We would prefer to see more oilpatch head offices in this province, but that ship sailed long ago and we must accept reality.

Wall is probably watching very carefully as Alberta鈥檚 new Climate Leadership Plan, that calls for the early closure of their coal-fired electrical power generating plants, rolls out over the next few years. That province has a convoluted, deregulated energy market with a pooling system that was re-jigged so that the once very efficient approved coal-fired plants were suddenly found to be wanting under two sets of changed regulatory requirements. This race to make change by Premier Rachel Notley and her team could easily backfire and Alberta doesn鈥檛 have that much wiggle room.

In Ontario, Premier Kathleen Wynne has no wiggle room at all on the electrical production file. In fact, it鈥檚 choking her government but they are intent on being the field leaders on energy conservation, no matter what the cost. The fact that the conservation tactics that have been rolled out, are costing Ontario ratepayers two dollars for every conservation dollar saved, are being ignored. But it can鈥檛 be ignored much longer since their unpaid bill, to date, surpasses $1.7 billion, just on that singular file.

In Quebec, Wall found a surprising ally in the form of Premier Philippe Couillard, who shook hands on a carbon capture and storage program that includes a $20 million participation role for BHP Billiton in Saskatchewan, and a $15 million investment in Quebec.

It鈥檚 also well documented that Quebec is currently swimming in debt and was making little progress on the environmental front, until now.聽

Wall has a balancing act to perform there, since he is advocating very hard, for the Energy East pipeline that must travel through Quebec and, so far, it hasn鈥檛 received a blessing from Couillard鈥檚 team.

We鈥檙e not sure as to why Wall has taken up the task of leading the charge for Energy East acceptance, but we鈥檙e sure that Notley, et al.,聽 are thanking him for saying what needs to be said to those who need to be spoken to and negotiated with over the next few months.

So having gone on the road trip and having seen what is being done, and what isn鈥檛 being accomplished in other jurisdictions, our premier returned to home base and maybe breathed a sigh of relief that, while things may not be exactly wonderful in this province, we are certainly much better off on these matters, than those other provinces. When it comes to oil, power, debt and environmental issues it seems taking the lighter, more careful steps, seems to have been the correct course, at least for now.聽