Royalty review chair tasked with channelling strong emotions into policy

The man at the head of the provincial royalty review panel is hearing a lot of strong emotions regarding the process.

Dave Mowat, the panel’s chair and CEO of ATB Financial, held a community engagement session Monday night at the Telus Convention Centre.

Along with getting input from business owners, stakeholders, investors and regular Albertans, he also gave a presentation on the technical aspects of the process.

Those attending made their voices heard even before the event began, writing their feedback on posters on the wall.

One of the messaged read ‘Billions of dollars not being invested due to NDP government decision. Stop screwing Alberta over.’ Another message read ‘Don’t screw up my job and my livelihood and my major investment!!’

Mowat said he doesn’t blame them for being passionate.

“There’s people that have lost their jobs, it’s a difficult time for the province for sure, so I think you can pass that emotion and what we’re trying to do is make this better for Alberta,” he said, outlining the four objectives of optimizing returns, attracting investment, diversification and responsible environmental policy.

“There’s tension to those objectives, but what we end up with is something that’s better and more strategic for Alberta, so I know there’s emotion in the subject right now and I don’t blame anybody for that at all, we think we can find something that’s good for Alberta’s future.”

Another message read, ‘Please connect, economically, and from a policy perspective, the climate change review & royalty review…Clean technology, and technology & innovation as a whole needs to be considered in any policy framework.”

Mowat said there isn’t a one-size fits all solution.

“A question I often get, what’s the royalty rate in Alberta, and there is no answer to that question because we have thousands of them, because we have three different criteria,” he said, noting they also have to consider how the industry has recently changed.”

“The United States will become self-sufficient, they’ve been our biggest customer forever, so what happens when the U.S. is exporting oil, they’ll lift their exports ban, so it really behoves us as Alberta to have a strategic look at this,” he said.

Mowat announced, when it comes to compiling data, they have hired the Wood Mackenzie Consulting Group, local firm GLJ Petroleum Consultants, as well a university PhD student.