|
Making a fortune in B.C., spending the money in Alberta British Columbia Energy Minister Richard Neufeld estimates province has lost 45,000 petroleum jobs in past decade; Alberta offers lowest income taxes and no sales tax Gary Park PNA Canadian Correspondent
The rich get richer and British Columbia is trying to figure out why. Once Canada’s wealthiest province, British Columbia is now left with the oil and gas industry as its main hope to reverse an economic tailspin that threatens to leave it with a record C$4.4 billion budget deficit in 2002-03.
But as fast as the petroleum sector expands, the benefits are washing over the border into Alberta, Canada’s economic stronghold.
British Columbia Energy Minister Richard Neufeld estimates his province’s flourishing northeastern gas region has in fact generated 45,000 jobs in the past decade for Alberta residents.
Exploration and production workers choose to live in Grande Prairie and Peace River, in northwestern Alberta, and merely commute across the border to jobs in places such as Fort St. John and Fort Nelson. Low income tax The reasons are simple: Alberta has Canada’s lowest provincial income tax and is the only one of 10 provinces that has no sales tax, while British Columbia is about to raise its provincial sales tax to 7.5 percent as it scrambles for new sources of revenue.
Speaking to a conference in Fort St. John on Feb. 24, Neufeld said British Columbia has yet to see any measurable benefits from a 600 percent increase in gas drilling over the past 10 years to a record 493 wells in 2001.
“It’s interesting to know that although activity has increased dramatically in the northeast, employment has gone down,” he said.
“And it’s a very good example of people leaving B.C. o go to other jurisdictions to call that home, but wanting to work in B.C. because there’s work here.”
While ruling out any legislative measures to keep workers in British Columbia, he said the problems reinforces his government’s commitment to reduce bureaucratic delays in approving exploration and development and to deliver on aggressive tax-cutting initiatives. Call for infrastructure Hank Swartout, president and chief executive officer of Precision Drilling Corp., Canada’s largest driller with 37 percent of the fleet, urged the British Columbia government to accelerate its plans for building infrastructure to allow year-round work in the northeast.
He told the conference that until that happens, Precision will continue to pull rigs out of British Columbia and ship them to fields in Alberta during the summer.
An oil and gas initiative launched by the predecessor to Neufeld’s government committed more than C$100 million to all-weather northeastern roads and an injection of a further C$113 million of oil and gas revenues over 10 years into northeastern communities.
The spending is all part of a program to double the province’s oil and gas output by 2008 and attract C$25 billion of new investment over the next decade.
| 