Farm Insurance

At Smith Insurance our farm team prides itself in providing a relationship driven service to assist with your insurance needs. Whether it’s being available promptly via phone and email or attending your farm to review your policies, we will go the extra mile to ensure your insurance needs are met. Also with 3 convenient office locations the doors are always open for a face to face policy review.

If you are insured with another insurer and would like to have your existing farm policy reviewed and quoted with all of our competitive farm markets please don’t hesitate to contact Jason Fournier at 780-998-2501 or via email jason@smithinsuranceservice.com. We can assure our experienced farm team will meet your service expectations while providing tailored coverages for your farm’s needs.

CONTACTUSFORACOMPETITIVEQUOTETODAY.

NDP press release writers bend the facts to try and blame Premier Smith

BY JOHN MATHER

It has to come under the title of fake news.

An NDP press release last week begins with “$4-billion petrochemical project estimated to create thousands of jobs has come to nothing under the UCP government.”

“Nauticol Energy’s proposed plant near Grande Prairie would have produced 3.4 million metric tonnes of netzero blue methanol annually, according to the Government of Alberta,” the release continued.

“Nauticol announced the project would move forward in 2019, with support from the Alberta NDP government’s Petrochemical Diversification Program. The plant would have created 5,000 construction jobs and 1,260 permanent direct and indirect jobs.

Kathleen Ganley, Alberta NDP Critic for Energy, is calling on the Danielle Smith UCP government to explain why they let this massive project slip away.

“This facility would have created thousands of goodpaying industrial jobs for Albertans, and created an excellent low-carbon value-added product from natural gas in the Peace region,” Ganley said. “Danielle Smith let a major job creation project fail while she’s busy pandering to the extremist fringe of the UCP.

“Smith needs to explain to Albertans what efforts she made to keep this project on track, and why she failed to protect these Alberta jobs.”

Now it’s sad this project isn’t moving ahead.

The fact is it would have provided jobs and assisted Alberta in developing its hydrogen markets.

But really, it not moving ahead has nothing to do with the UCP.

The NDP are falsely promoting this.

The fact is the plant planned by Nauticol Energy Ltd. began to falter because of the pandemic.

Nauticol president and CEO Mark Tonner said the pandemic created headwinds for the project.

“Some of the headwinds that we encountered were just costing us too much time and money to overcome," Tonner said in an interview with CBC the day after the NDP were jumping all over Danielle Smith.

“So these obviously include enduring two years of a global pandemic and the upheaval in the capital markets. There's significantly less appetite for risk and uncertainty compared to when we launched the project.

In other words the funding that had been obtained privately for the project to move ahead failed to materialize.

Continued

Continued

To the best of my knowledge no one, even the provincial NDP should be blaming the UCP or Danielle Smith for the pandemic or a publicly traded company not being able to source private placement funding.

The provincial government no matter what stripe has no involvement in either of these predicaments.

“What we would like to know is whether the government did everything it could,” continued Ganley. “The government owes an explanation to Albertans, to tell them they didn’t just let this investment go away, that they didn’t just let these jobs disappear.”

This statement she added in a column in the Calgary Herald following the Nauticol announcement.

In the same column

Nauticol Chairman Leo de Bever said, “We had to stop the project because we had to bring together a number of parties (including investors and the provincial government). And it turns out, one of the parties didn’t fulfill their commitment – let’s put it that way – and we ran out of time.

“It’s done. We basically had to shut the project down because even to keep negotiating, to keep it going, you need money.”

Again, the project planners couldn’t arrive at sufficient funding.

Tonner told CBC no final decision has been made on the future of the site.

“It is entirely possible that a scaled-down net-zero methanol plant may very well be proceeding on the site," he said.

The project promised up to 5,000 jobs during construction and another 200 highly skilled permanent positions, according to an archived version of Nauticol's website, which has been taken down.

No public funds have been provided to the methanol project, according to a statement from Alberta Energy.

Tonner added the original projected cost of the plant was $2-billion but that cost had doubled.

The plant could also qualify for the Alberta

Petrochemicals Incentive Program (APIP) which could have provided hundreds of millions of dollars in grant funding after the plant was operational.

“Nauticol Energy had applied through APIP and received advance notification approval, noting their project had been evaluated and met all the eligibility requirements set out by the guidelines,” a statement from Alberta Energy said.

Since the 2014 peak, GDP per capita has fallen precipitously. While Canada saw an increase of about 0.6 per cent each year, Alberta saw, on average, a 3.6 per cent decrease. Relative to its population size, the Alberta economy was 17 per cent smaller in 2019 than it was five years prior.

So those NDP press release writers should try to stick to the facts, rather than try and spin the story to blame Danielle Smith, when the NDP doesn’t really have much of a track record to stand on when it comes to business creation.

BY HAZEL ANAKA

This week’s column is not the report of a scientific study or even a critique (though there is implied criticism). It is simply an observation that I’m sure you’ve noticed too. It concerns the deterioration of or maybe the changing definition of customer service.

I’ve written about this before and how that may be just one lingering effect of Covid on the world. It seems that the number of people who were actually sick, those who feared getting sick, and those malingerers who seized an acceptable excuse for slacking off seriously impacted the economy. It’s a complex matter and I don’t want to make out otherwise.

One of the criticisms of the government’s relief programs (like CERB) was that some people were better off financially cashing those cheques than actually working for minimum wage. Not

FROM WHERE I SIT: Worse Before It Gets Better

to mention complicating factors like the need to home school the kids or having one’s job in the service and hospitality industries disappear overnight. The whole Covid thing even adversely affected volunteerism…. just ask anyone trying to recruit warm and willing bodies.

But back closer to home. This past week I went to an unnamed business in an unnamed community. The sign on the door outlines the three days of the week they’re open and the hours of operation. On my third drive by and a good hour after they should have opened, they were finally open. A couple with a toddler and a tiny baby onsite are the employees. I know this because she referenced her boss. More importantly, I know bone-deep, that no owner of a small business would be so lazy, cavalier, distracted, unprofessional when a potential customer was present. Most owners I know would be filling holes in the displays and inventory on the shelves with the items piled haphazardly on the floor. They’d be trying to help the customer, close a sale, and make the cash register ring. My mom and I ran a business with a baby onsite so I understand the challenges and know that working around or through them is possible. With two adults present, surely one could help a buyer. It didn’t help that more people descended to shoot the breeze with them. They had a grand old time. If rumours I’ve heard about the mental competency of the owner are true, this seems like tragic abuse of the owner’s trust and salary. It shouldn’t surprise anyone to hear I left emptyhanded.

Scheduling employees is, by all accounts, a miserable job. Between the no shows, the always lates, and the ones who want every extra shift, it’s a thankless and impossible task. Sometimes, because of safety, common sense, and labour laws, two employees must always be on site together. Double the challenge. How often have you walked into a store to find yourself the lone customer? To me, that says this a business that is struggling and may not be long for this world. Hard-working, conscientious employees will be staying busy by cleaning, restocking, or doing other maintenance-type duties. Others will be on their phones doing who knows what. I know we’ve all felt like an unwanted interruption cramping an employee’s style.

Other times, I’m floored by how good some people are at their jobs. A few weeks ago, I priced out an expensive massager at a department store. I asked if it ever goes on sale. She said yes, not that often, and no she didn’t know when the next sale was. She took my name and phone number and said she’d call when it was 25% off. She then spoke to her supervisor to see if there was another more immediate option. There was. It involved applying for a store credit card and getting 25% off all purchases that day. As it was, I walked away. I don’t know if she’ll ever call but I do know a typical disinterested employee couldn’t care less if I bought or not because payday comes like clockwork either way.

We’re being forced to accept self-checkouts everywhere either because there aren’t enough bodies to work as cashiers or because it saves a pile of dough for the store owner or some combination of both. We pump our own gas, scan and bag our own groceries, wander the aisles when an employee waves in that general direction as we search for an item.

With people complaining about unemployment, bosses decrying the difficulty hiring competent employees, Joe Public unhappy with the customer experience, you’d think there’d be a win-win-win solution. I fear it’ll only get worse before it gets better, from where I sit.

C h u r c h

C a l e n d a r

LAMONT UNITED CHURCH 5306 - 51 Ave., Lamont, AB 780-895-2145

Rev. Deborah Brill

T UESDAY F EB 21

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Bethany

Lutheran Church

20577 TWP 550 Fort. Sask. (7km East of Josephburg) 780-998-1874

Pastor Rev. Jeff Dul

Worship Service 9:30 am

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Josephburg

Community Church 21380 Township Road 550 Josephburg, Alberta 780-998-9331 josephburgchurch@albertacom.com

Sunday Worship 10:30am

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Pastor Brad Diprose

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Lamont Alliance Church 5007 44 st., Lamont 780-895-2879

Sunday Service 10 am J OINUSFOR SERVICES

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ROMANCATHOLICCHURCH SERVICES

Our Lady of Good Counsel, Skaro 1st, 3rd, 5th Sundays @ 9:00 am St. Michael the Archangel, St. Michael 2nd, and 4th Sundays @ 9:00 am

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Our Lady of the Angels Parish 10004 ~ 101 St., Fort Sask. 780.998.3288

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Bruderheim

Community Church

4904 Queen Street 780-796-3775

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