For van Dijken, 2016 was a 'year of struggle '

For Barrhead-Morinville-Westlock MLA Glenn van Dijken, 2016 was a bittersweet year with several ups and downs.

Not surprisingly, for him the year’s low point was the passing of the upcoming carbon tax.

“The way the carbon tax is structured, the money is only eligible to be used in rebates and green initiatives,” said van Dijken. “The carbon tax on individuals use of carbon fuels is geared in such a way that it doesn’t help us with our deficit financing. It’s a shell game. The local school board is quite concerned in regards to the carbon tax they will be paying for in their busing. They get funded out of general revenue, then they pay the carbon tax on heating their building and running their buses, and that goes into another fund.”

He also noted he was irritated with Bill 34, which enables the Minister of Energy to borrow money to soften impacts of the government’s planned phase-out of coal on the balancing pool.

“The whole electricity file is very concerning,” he commented. “It’s just unlimited borrowing. The balancing pool is set up where we’re getting paid out if there was a surplus. Now, based on the decision to increase the carbon levy on the large emitters — that decision a year ago, where the Power Purchase Agreements (PPA)s came back into the hands of government — we should have a limit on how much can be borrowed.”

van Dijken questioned the need to allow the Ministry of Energy to take out money when a report by prominent economists, Trevor Tombe and Andrew Leach, who are often cited by supporters of green initiatives, predicted that the cost of fixing the balancing pool would cost $2-3 per month, per household if power prices remain low, which is not significant enough to require the minister to take out loans.

The Energy Minister Margaret McCuaig-Boyd as of yet has not borrowed money.

It wasn’t all bad for van Dijken, however. He was very pleased with how the new election financing rules worked out, although he admitted that getting to that point took a lot of work.

“We ran into a roadblock when the NDP was proposing that the government should pay half the expenses for political parties,” said van Dijken. “We felt it was unfair to the small parties, because only parties that received 10 per cent of the vote were eligible to receive the funding, which would have excluded the smaller parties like the Alberta Party and the Liberal Party. The positive that came out of it was that when Bill 35 was introduced, it did not contain that subsidy for campaign expenses.”

However, there was plenty that all parties in the legislature were able to work together on.

“There’s times when all parties are more or less working together on the same page, recognizing that there’s a need for improvement on certain files. I spent the summer on the Special Committee on Ethics and Accountability. We were able to review the Whistleblower Act, we also had some improvements done on the adoption process,” said van Dijken. “There was Ukrainian Heritage Day proclaimed, it was very good to hear the stories of Ukrainian heritage in the province and recognize the contributions that they have made.”

He also looked back fondly on the Town of Westlock’s centennial celebrations and other festivities.

“I enjoyed my time with the 100 year celebration in Westlock,” he said. “The homecoming weekend, going to the different functions and trying to help individuals with things they have going on, to get their needs addressed.”