Devastating Southern Alberta Floods
• Salute the Workers and People of Southern Alberta

Health Care Is a Right!
• Home Care Recipients Force Redford Government to Take a Step Back
- Rita Soto

Education Is a Right! Increase Investments in Education!
• Post-Secondary Maintenance Budget Cuts Threaten Layoffs, Privatization and Contracting Out - Dougal MacDonald 
• Provincial Underfunding Sabotages Edmonton Public School Board Budget
- George Allen 

Discussion
• Alternatives to the Austerity Agenda, Part Two - Peggy Morton and K.C. Adams

Defend Cuba's Right to Independence and Sovereignty!
• Successful First Visit of Cuban Consul-General to Alberta

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Devastating Southern Alberta Floods

Salute the Workers and People of Southern Alberta

More than 175,000 people across southern Alberta were forced to evacuate their homes due to massive flooding caused by heavy rains that began late last week. On Monday, June 24, 27 communities were under a state of emergency, although several were rescinded later in the day. Three people lost their lives, drowning in the raging Highwood river which runs through the town of High River, 37 kilometres south of Calgary. In particular, the towns of High River, Canmore, Bragg Creek and the City of Calgary have been severely impacted. Siksika, Tsuu Tina and Stoney First Nations have also been hard hit by the floods. Over 75,000 people in 25 Calgary neighbourhoods were under a mandatory evacuation order over the weekend and the entire communities of High River and Bragg Creek were evacuated. By Monday afternoon, most Calgarians had been allowed to return to their homes. They have been asked to stay home on Monday and Tuesday while recovery efforts continue in the downtown core.

TML expresses sincere condolences to the families and friends of those who tragically perished in the floods.  TML expresses solidarity with the first responders and emergency personnel who have worked tirelessly to rescue those stranded by flood waters, using helicopters, trucks, combines, tractors and whatever means possible to move people to safety and shelter. TML salutes the tireless efforts of public sector and utility workers and others making enormous efforts to safeguard the water and power supply, maintain telecommunications networks, keep hospitals open, look after the sick and vulnerable, and keep people safe despite their own personal situations. TML also salutes the efforts of fellow citizens at emergency shelters who are providing for those who have been relocated.

Homes, businesses, bridges, roadways, sports complexes and government buildings have all suffered major damage. The Trans-Canada highway was blocked in several places for over 24 hours and many bridges, highways and roads are closed in Southern Alberta due to structural damage.

Those who have been evacuated from flooded communities and towns have been forced to find refuge with family, friends and in overnight shelters and residences set up by the government and the Red Cross. As well, electrical power was cut off for several days in 25 neighbourhoods in Calgary, including the downtown core. Power is slowly being restored in some areas, while in others, there is no estimate as to when power can be restored. These are the worst floods in the history of Southern Alberta. Military forces and helicopters have been called in and emergency forces from across the country are assisting.

Media reports indicate that in the City of Calgary, most of the 75,000 affected residents found shelter with friends and family, with several thousand taking refuge in emergency shelters. Calgarians are assisting in many ways, opening their doors, offering spare rooms, water, food and other items, showing the spirit and sense of responsibility people have to assist each other. People have donated large amounts of food and clothing to the temporary facilities where homeless Calgarians were re-located. The Calgary Drop-In and Rehab Centre which offers shelter, meals and assistance in finding employment to Calgary's homeless was forced to evacuate from its downtown location, and its basement stores of clothing and other necessities have been lost to the floods. At its new location, long lines of cars formed as people dropped off donations of food, clothing, toiletries and blankets.

A TML correspondent visited some of the evacuation centres and spoke with residents who had made their own way to these centres. Initially, evacuation and overnight centres were set up in the southern end of the city. Within hours of the first emergency evacuation notification, several communities in the northwest sector of the city were given evacuation notices.Road closures due to the flooding posed a problem, particularly for vulnerable low income people heading to shelters. Several people TML spoke with spent the first night in their vehicles and then made their way to the centre. Others who had no transportation were driven by neighbours to the evacuation centres. Many people arrived with not much more than a change of clothes. Some of the initial evacuation centres were closed and everyone relocated to residences at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, Mount Royal University and other overnight shelters set up in recreation centres around the city. Although there is an emergency preparedness plan, providing assistance to those in low cost housing and without transportation was not well planned and many people had to fend for themselves in the pouring rain and flood conditions. Most of those affected have no idea when they will be able to return to their homes or what condition they will find them in.

At this time people in Southern Alberta are mainly concerned with the immediate situation they face and helping those most affected. But it is crucial that the people be involved in summing up the lessons of the flood. These floods and the devastation and damage they leave in their wake pose some serious issues for the people. One is the fact that even though these floods caused by overflowing rivers are termed "natural disasters" beyond the control of human beings, why is more not done to deal with the capacity of dams and water diversion to deal with the water flow? It is the social responsibility of governments to take more preventative measures. This emergency also shows the importance of people becoming organized in their communities and neighbourhoods to prepare themselves in a very practical way, so that the human factor, the people themselves, are the decisive organized factor in these situations.

(Photos: TML, Twitter)

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Health Care Is a Right!

Home Care Recipients Force Redford Government to Take a Step Back

- Rita Soto -

Residents of Abby Road Housing Co-operative, Artspace Housing Co-operative and Creekside Support Services launched an effective campaign to stop Alberta Health Services (AHS) from depriving them of their right to a say in their home care. People with disabilities in the three housing co-ops have been managing their own home care for as long as 26 years. Suddenly they were informed that home care services would be taken over by the monopoly Revera. The residents fought back and received immediate and overwhelming public support. Following a meeting of members of the Abby Road Co-op with Premier Alison Redford, the AHS backed down and said current arrangements would continue.

At the same time, the AHS announced that it was cancelling its new "one hundred kilometre rule" that forced seniors to accept the first continuing-care space that came open within 100 kilometres of their current home. The policy resulted in people being unable to see family and spouses, so that it came to be referred to as "divorce by nursing home policy." This policy has been widely condemned by the people of Alberta.

Home care services are now delivered in Calgary and Edmonton through 72 different agencies, and AHS has announced their consolidation into 13 companies. Not all the successful bidders have been revealed, but all indications suggest they will be large private monopolies whose reason for existence is to enrich private interests.

By speaking of how it is learning from its mistakes, in particular the need to listen to those affected by changes, AHS is trying to stifle the larger questions raised by the co-op residents who have organized their own home care to exercise some control over their lives. The government is well aware that its secret agenda of privatization and dismantling the health care system piece by piece does not reflect the popular will, and it must continue to use stealth and subterfuge to implement it. By claiming that it will do a better job of individual consultations, the government and AHS want to submerge the issue of why delivery of any home care services should be handed over to these monopolies. This is what AHS does not want to discuss. These private monopolies contribute nothing at all to home care service delivery; they in fact siphon value out of the system to pay their investors. These pay-the-rich schemes cannot stand up to public scrutiny.

The Redford government is declaring that it will do a better job of consulting individuals not for the purpose of strengthening  public control and government accountability but to undermine public right and completely cave in to monopoly right. Having ceded sovereignty and the right to decide to private interests, particularly the oil, gas and other energy monopolies, there is to be no discussion of the direction of the society. In this instance, no discussion is to take place over the total lack of democratic legitimacy of AHS or the government's secret plans to privatize more and more of the health care system and in other ways destroy public health care through death by a thousand cuts.

AHS operates without regard to any norms by which health care systems have functioned in the past. For example, it has eliminated the objective funding formula previously used to allocate resources to communities and provides no public account of how decisions about resource allocation are made. Whole sectors such as home care are handed over to private interests without a single word being spoken about why this decision was taken. Each AHS decision removes more public control and accountability, as information is declared confidential property of private businesses.

Albertans want their right to health care to be provided with a government and even a constitutional guarantee. Developing a broad public discussion about what is required to do so is important work at this time. A broad program has emerged from all the battles to stop the death of public health care by a thousand cuts. Not only must the cuts be stopped and reversed, the government must increase funding for social programs and stop paying the rich. Developing a broad public discussion about a pro-social alternative program is important work at this time. Uniting their ranks behind their own independent politics and agenda in defence of the rights of all, workers, youth, seniors and First Nations are putting forward their own pro-social agenda and discussing how to bring it into reality through actions with analysis. Politicians are emerging from their own ranks who will faithfully represent and implement the people's pro-social agenda and program. It can be done!

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Education Is a Right! Increase Investments in Education!

Post-Secondary Maintenance Budget Cuts Threaten Layoffs, Privatization and Contracting Out

- Dougal MacDonald -

The Redford regime's savage March 7 cuts to the operating budgets of Alberta's post-secondary education institutions (PSEs) are creating serious problems for students, staff and the wide range of people who work for or engage with Alberta's universities, colleges and technical institutes. Less publicized is the fact that the provincial government also made drastic cuts to the PSEs' infrastructure maintenance grants, which fund basic maintenance of roofs, heating systems, electrical systems, plumbing and so on, even though ongoing upkeep and renovation of infrastructure is essential to quality teaching and learning. The cuts to maintenance grants mean that planned projects at all the PSEs will be delayed or set aside, priorities will have to be re-evaluated and the backlog of deferred projects will continue to grow. The downward spiral of funding could also eventually cause certain buildings to be permanently closed.

Students and staff from Edmonton post-secondary institutions protest the cuts, March 15, 2013.

The provincial cuts to the maintenance grants were deep and system-wide, and totalled tens of millions of dollars. Here are some examples.

The University of Alberta's maintenance grant was cut by over 20 per cent from $22 million to $17.4 million, even as it is dealing with a $685 million backlog of already-deferred maintenance projects. Almost 50 per cent of the 500 buildings at U of A are over forty years old and in need of upgrading and renovation.

The Northern Alberta Institute of Technology grant was cut by over 40 per cent from $4.8 million to $2.8 million, with a backlog of $60 million in deferred projects.

The University of Calgary grant was cut almost 40 per cent from $16.1 million to $9.9 million, with a backlog of $400 million in deferred projects.

The maintenance grant for Mount Royal University was cut by 67 per cent from $3.3 million to $1.1 million with a backlog of tens of millions of dollars.

The Southern Alberta Institute of Technology grant was cut almost 40 per cent from $4.3 million to $2.7 million.

The cuts to the maintenance grants will also have a seriously negative effect on the lives and livelihood of thousands of workers who do maintenance work at the different PSEs across the province. Decreased funding will mean fewer projects will be undertaken, which in turn will mean less available work. This is an attack on the livelihood of the workers because it raises the threats of layoffs and possible rollbacks of wages and benefits. The Minister of Enterprise and Advanced Education, Thomas Lukaszuk, is already interfering in the collective bargaining process that normally takes place between Boards of Governors and employee organizations by arrogantly calling on PSEs to adopt a wage freeze for all staff for the next three years, even suggesting that existing collective agreements should be reopened. Lukaszuk also threatened that he would review the level of wage settlements when he approves each institution's budget.

The other very real threat raised by the cuts to the maintenance budgets of the PSEs is that of privatization and contracting out. In fact, the budget-cutting may be deliberate in order to prepare conditions for contracting out. Currently, almost all maintenance work at the PSEs is performed by experienced in-house workers who work directly for the various universities, colleges and technical institutes and who are very familiar with their institutions and the work required to keep them running smoothly. History shows that once budgets are cut, pressure mounts to hire private contractors to do the in-house work based on the long-discredited pretext that the private sector is "cheaper" and "more efficient." The reality is that once the work is privatized and previous collective agreements are torn up, workers' wages are lowered, benefits are reduced or eliminated, and all kinds of corners are cut such as using cheaper materials. In addition, once private companies take over the in-house maintenance work there is a definite loss of transparency and accountability to the institution and to the public.

Timely, high quality maintenance which serves the public good is essential to the smooth running of the province's universities, colleges and technical institutes because it affects both teaching conditions and learning conditions. This requires adequate funding, which the province refused to provide in its March budget. In addition, the existence of millions of dollars in backlogs of deferred projects at all the PSEs shows that even past provincial funding was far less than required. The provincial government's phony excuse for underfunding of post-secondary education continues to be that no more revenue could be demanded from the immensely profitable energy companies to invest in education and other social programs but this has been repeatedly exposed both as a fraud and as further proof that the government is nothing more than the agent of the monopolies.

Redford's underfunding of post-secondary education is an attack on the right to education. A modern society must be organized so that the right to education is guaranteed under any and all circumstances. This guarantee includes always providing adequate funding and constantly increasing investments in public education to meet the growing technical, scientific and cultural needs of a modern society. Students, faculty, support staff and their allies have been vigorously expressing their opposition to the government attacks on the PSEs through a number of effective actions across the province. The maintenance workers and their organizations have no illusions about the damaging effects of cuts to the maintenance grants and are preparing themselves accordingly. All the PSEs and their allies must join the opposition and demand that the provincial government increase investments in all aspects of post-secondary education and guarantee the right to education for everyone.

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Provincial Underfunding Sabotages
Edmonton Public School Board Budget

- George Allen -

The Edmonton Public School Board (EPSB), which oversees Alberta's second largest school district, released its 2013-14 budget on June 18. As predicted, due to the provincial government's continuing refusal to adequately fund education, the budget contained a great deal of bad news for students, teachers, support staff and parents. Following the March 7 provincial budget, the 2013-14 EPSB budget had to be slashed by $46.9 million, even though district enrolment is expected to increase by about 1,220 students to a total of 84,661.

An EPSB document highlighting the budget decisions reads: "The implication of the shortfall in provincial grant funding has resulted in a loss of funds to the district of about $30.5 million or 3.8 per cent of our total provincial revenue funding based on the 2012-2013 Revised Budget." The EPSB, like all school districts, was forced by the provincial government to pass a "balanced budget" even though it is greatly underfunded. The Redford regime also forced the EPSB and all other school districts to cut administrative spending by 10 per cent.

High School students walk out of classes in protest against the cuts , June 11, 2013.

The June EPSB budget, which the trustees passed with "great regret," will see 339 full-time jobs lost, including about 180 teaching positions across the district's 199 schools. About 30 per cent of the teaching positions would be contract teachers on probation, which will mainly affect new teachers. Ed Butler, president of the Edmonton local of the Alberta Teachers' Association, stated: "This budget represents broken promises by the Redford government, the lack of funding to public education. We were promised a sustainable budget with a two per cent increase, and in actual fact, the total budget is about a four per cent rollback, which is six per cent less than what people intended."

The 157 non-teaching positions lost include education assistants, custodians and maintenance and support staff, all of whom are integral to the quality of education in the district. Maintenance funding was cut by $8.4 million. As a result, maintenance staff could be cut by 24 per cent with 51 of 216 full-time jobs gone in the fall, which also raises the spectre of contracting out to private business. Carol Chapman, President of CUPE Local 3550, which organizes district support staff, stated: "We've had considerable amounts of reductions in hours and staff cuts. Many of our staff that were full-time staff have had hours reduced. So when you're hearing 'staff cuts,' often times, '150 FTE' [full-time employees] may be representing considerably more staff than 150."

Education Minister Jeff Johnson cried crocodile tears over the budget and tried feebly to turn his government's latest attack on education into a good news scenario. However, more and more people are recognizing that it is the Redford regime's refusal to invest in education that has created the whole problem. The provincial government blames its budget cuts on a shortage of revenue due to "falling oil company profits" but that has repeatedly been exposed as a fraud. Resistance to the government's anti-education agenda continues to grow, as was shown by the June 11 rally by about 700 Edmonton high school students at the Legislature under the theme, "Taking Back Our Education." The students' recent action confirms once again that it is the people of Alberta who must decide the direction of education in Alberta, not the private energy monopolies and their champion, the Redford regime.

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Discussion

Alternatives to the Austerity Agenda

- Peggy Morton and K.C. Adams -

Part Two of the series, "Discussion on Alternatives to the Austerity Agenda" follows. For Part One, see TML Daily, May 28, 2013 - No. 67.

Part Two
Who Has Claims on the Value from Workers Transforming
Natural Resources into Use-Value?

The Workers' Opposition demands that governments fulfill their social responsibility to ensure a broad benefit to Canadians and First Nations when workers transform the country's natural resources into use-value. The issue has assumed great importance, as governments across Canada have shifted their claims on added-value from large corporations onto individuals and small business. In doing so, they have concocted a contradiction between the people, as taxpayers, with the necessity to increase public investments in social programs, services and infrastructure.

The claims of government on the economy should not come in an indirect way from the people's claims on the economy arising from their work. The individual money of the working class, mostly based on claims on the economy from work or from social entitlements when not working, should not be touched by governments. The claims of government should come directly from the economy and from individual income that is not derived from work or social entitlements. Government claims should be made directly on the economy and its parts; those claims should be distinct from those of the working class and owners of capital. In the natural resource sectors in particular, government claims should come directly from the value generated when the working class transforms natural resources into use-value.

Royalty payments are in contradiction with a modern method of government claims. Instead of the Alberta government making a direct claim on the value arising from workers transforming natural resources into use-value, the PC government and others across Canada have concocted a system of royalty payments. This system, in conjunction with decreased corporate taxation, is designed to deprive the people of Alberta, including First Nations and the rest of Canada, of their claim on the value generated from transforming natural resources into use-value.

In 2007, the PC government of Ed Stelmach carried out a royalty review called "Our Fair Share." Part One of this series discussed the concept of a "fair share."

The Stelmach royalty review states that the claim of government, which aims to be "fair," is calculated after guaranteeing an "adequate, market determined return" on the invested capital of the global energy monopolies. An "adequate, market determined return" on capital is the deciding factor regarding the royalty claims of the Alberta government and that of First Nations. The claims of natural resource workers also come under pressure if the "market determined return" on capital is not "adequate."

As well, around half of the claims of Alberta natural resource workers on the value they create (their wages, benefits and pensions) is subsequently taken from them as claims by governments using outmoded taxation methods such as income taxes, goods and services taxes, home and small business property taxes, levies on gas, liquor etc, tolls and continuously expanding user fees for public services.

The claims of the owners of the resources, the people of Alberta represented by their government and First Nations are directly affected by and come after the claims of the investors and their "adequate" return on capital within an accounting process controlled by the energy monopolies. Within this scenario, the people are told an adequate return for owners of capital is mostly determined by a global market and prices over which nobody has any control, including even the energy monopolies, but which many describe as under the direct control of those in power within the monopolies who manipulate the market and prices to serve their narrow private interests.

The entire process reflects the anti-human factor/anti-social consciousness of a system controlled through class privilege where wealth and might make right. The working people and First Nations, and their human factor/social consciousness are sidelined and deprived of their right to decide and control development, the direction of the economy, the estimation of value, market prices, claims and who benefits, which are all matters that affect the lives of the people and Mother Earth directly.

The royalty review states, "Economic rent constitutes the maximum price that the owner of the resource -- the citizens of Alberta -- can charge companies for the right to produce the undeveloped resource. In principle, and in the absence of various constraints, the owner of the resource should be able to charge this maximum price and receive all of the economic rent accruing to the resource. And indeed, this price might reasonably be viewed as 'fair' in the sense that it reflects the provision of an adequate, market determined return on the capital employed by the companies engaged in the production of the resource."[1]

The royalty or "economic rent" as the government likes to say, takes on similar aspects to corporate taxation. It is subject to company manipulation of all the factors that make up a declared net taxable profit and subsequent "return on the capital employed." The monopolies employ hundreds of accountants in their tax departments to ensure little or no corporate taxes are ever paid.

The royalty claim of the government is subject to "various constraints," which history has shown can reduce it well below the "maximum price." Besides, the "economic rent," i.e., "the maximum price that the owner of the resource -- the citizens of Alberta -- can charge companies" is nowhere defined objectively using economic science. No objective criteria are spelled out to determine the maximum economic rent. The main determinant, the people are told, is the market price for bitumen, a fluctuating price secretly determined by the monopolies and speculators, which has little connection with bitumen's exchange-value (price) of production.

The royalty figures arise from the capital-centred economic accounts of the energy monopolies themselves, which are highly subjective and suspect. For example, none of the subsidies, grants, free infrastructure or other pay-the-rich schemes the governments may provide for the benefit of the monopolies is ever reflected as income in their accounts.

In addition, the energy monopolies readily employ "various constraints" to ensure that the arbitrary economic rent or royalty is lowered even more because their guaranteed "adequate, market determined return on the capital employed" in Alberta never quite meets the mark and in fact has steadily decreased.

One of the big constraints is a fabrication of the energy monopolies themselves. Most monopolies sell bitumen to themselves, and oil sands royalties are based in large part on the price of bitumen. The Alberta hand of the energy monopoly transfers the bitumen to its U.S. hand at a price set deliberately low. The Alberta hand declares that it has been constrained from receiving an adequate return because of this "bitumen bubble" of low prices, which triggers a lowering of royalty payments. How convenient, for meanwhile the U.S. hand of the same monopoly declares record profits year after year from its refining and other operations downstream partly due to the gracious receipt of low priced bitumen from its Alberta hand.

This farce persists with the constant refrain of the energy monopolies that it cannot refine much if any of their bitumen in Alberta, as that would be unprofitable. How convenient again. Deny refining in Alberta; deny the growth of a vibrant petrochemical sector so that the potential value from the natural resource is captured not in Canada but in Texas and elsewhere, and Alberta is left with a narrow stunted economy, diminishing and uncertain prospects for the future and with lower royalty payments and corporate taxation in the present that do not meet the needs of the people, their socialized economy and society.

An alternative to the present arrangements could see the Alberta government and First Nations take firm control of the situation and deprive the energy monopolies of their monopoly right to decide the direction of the economy and to engage in such anti-social practices as selling bitumen to themselves and cooking their books to serve their narrow private interests and deprive Albertans and First Nations of what is theirs by right.

A first step in a new direction would be to reassert public control and public right over the natural resource sector and the use-value workers produce by depriving the energy monopolies of their right of control. The energy monopolies would be welcomed only as paid contractors to do specific work at a carefully monitored price but without any ownership rights or control over the land, natural resource, the direction of the Alberta economy, the use-value workers produce, its price of production and accounts, or how, when and where that use-value is further transformed and directed towards building a diversified dynamic Alberta economy based on manufacturing, social programs and public services.

In this way, royalty payments would no longer exist, as governments and First Nations would have a direct claim on the value workers produce from transforming natural resources into use-value, and the people would have a transparent objective understanding of the amount of that value and how it could be used to benefit the people, their economy and nation-building.

(To be continued: Other "constraints" on royalty payments.)

Note

1. "Our Fair Share" -- Methodology Appendix, Final Report of the Royalty Review Panel
http://www.albertaroyaltyreview.ca/panel/final_report_methodology_appendix.pdf

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Defend Cuba's Right to Independence and Sovereignty!

Successful First Visit of Cuban Consul-General
to Alberta