There are many popular myths out there about fat-cat Alberta.They are all true.We do pay less income and consumption taxes than any other large Canadian province.Our government does spend more (per-capita) than any other large province, besides debt-riddled Quebec.Our doctors, nurses and teachers are the best paid in the country, especially considering taxes, expenses and living costs.We are hopelessly addicted to non-renewable royalties, so addicted that it wouldn’t matter how damning the environmental consequences, oilsands expansion must continue.The consequences: We are living in a fool’s paradise. We have squandered our oil/gas/coal royalty wealth by living for today, not saving for tomorrow. Despite an income gusher that no other province has, our provincial government is still about to plunge into debt.Increased provincial income or consumption taxes, along with reining in public sector, health care and education labour costs, is the only prudent, fiscally sound path to a solid future for our kids.But ...
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In the Saturday January 12 (online late Friday evening, Jan. 11) edition of the Edmonton Sun, my Hicks on Biz column tried to look at over-all, generally accepted statistics that clearly prove the government of Alberta does spend more per capita than any other big province besides Quebec with its staggering debt load. And that our nurses, doctors, teachers and civil servants, thanks to association and union agreements that go back to the flush years between 2004 and 2008, are the best-paid of the Big Four provinces.Here's some of the references I used to arrive at this conclusion.The Canadian Institute for Health Information's National Physician Database for 2009/10 is a good snapshot of the Alberta docs' income compared to other provinces, especially the eye-opening Table A.5.1 Average Gross Fees for Physicians earning $60,000 or more, broken out by province. Sorry, I'm not sure if this document can be tracked down online, or if it's one of those things that has to be purchased from the website.RBC ...
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Rice Paper Vietnamese Fine Cuisine10080 178 St. (780) 483 8198 ——Food: 4 of 5 starsAmbience: 3.5 of 5 starsService: 3.5 of 5 stars——The first impression is how clean the restaurant is.Rice Paper, out in the west end among the cluster of hotels supplying West Edmonton Mall with tourists, is spotless.It helps that Van Phan’s eatery is in a stand-alone building that’s only a few years old. Still, somebody is shining the door knobs every day.If Van Phan’s name looks familiar, it is. With his sister’s family, he opened and ran the city’s best known Vietnamese restaurant, Thanh Thanh on 101 Street, for some 16 years. Tiring of the trade, he sold his share to his sister, and took a well-earned sabbatical.But when son Christopher’s interest in the restaurant business wouldn’t go away, Van plunged back in.Already it’s been two years since Van, Christopher and the rest of the immediate family opened Rice Bowl.I’m not going to say it’s better than Thanh Thanh — I have no interest in provoking family disp ...
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The crystal ball doesn’t really need any polishing, because rarely have the opportunities/challenges for Edmonton’s and northern Alberta’s economy been so clear.It’s about extracting and shipping hydrocarbons (oil, natural gas and coal) in a way that keeps the forests green, the water pure, the air pristine, the pipelines and transmission lines as unobtrusive as possible.It’s about compromise, because millions of barrels of oil a day squeezed out of vast sand deposits to our north can’t be done without some disruption to Mother Earth. It’s a question of how much, and how the land is left once the mining is done.It’s about a Goldilocks economy. Not too hot, not too cold, trusting that a combination of market forces and government regulation keeps the energy juggernaut at just the right temperature.Pipelines are on the top of every agenda: Before, building pipelines to get our oil and gas out to the teeming masses of Asia or the thirsty refineries of Louisiana was rather abstract, an issue years away as the oil ...
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Chop Steakhouse (Downtown)10235 101 St. (780) 441-3075 www.chop.ca Food: 3.5 of 5 starsAmbience: 4 of 5 starsService: 3.5 of 5 starsDinner for two (without beverages): Basic, $70; fully loaded, $140 It’s long been a mystery why, in the heart of cattle country, there have been just two steakhouses in downtown Edmonton since Hy’s closed … and one of them specializes in American corn-fed beef!Steaks are popular – there’s always going to be a steady steak ‘n’ potato crowd, and just about everybody gets a hankering at one time or another for a juicy T-bone that can be cut with a fork.Steak is easy enough to cook, it’s the cut and the aging that matters. There ought to be good money in a well-managed steakhouse, given steak entrees run from $25 to $60. And you don’t need an artist in the kitchen to prepare your basic steak, baked potato and tomato gratin.So it wasn’t surprising when the new owner of the Sutton Place Hotel announced the hotel restaurant would become a Chop Steakhouse. Northlands ...
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Swagger is the wrong word.Edmontonians don’t swagger. That’s Calgary.But as we walk into 2013, there’s a spring in our step that’s truly remarkable.Brad Ferguson, the new, youthful boss of the Edmonton Economic Development Corporation, feels it everywhere he goes.Call it a coming of age, call it a declaration of confidence - based on reality, not hype.Call it what you like, but it’s tangible and has resulted in the most positive business outlook in decades.Ferguson may be in his early 40s, but he’s been an Edmonton-based management/business consultant for some 20 years. He’s been through the lean times.“Confidence has returned,” says Ferguson. “You can feel the excitement. Business people are realizing our economy is resilient.“The world economy stopped in 2008, but we kept ticking along. We’re realizing oilsands investment can’t be turned on and off.”With confidence in the sustainability of the oil sands, Edmonton businesses are investing in the future, “far more so than in the boom/bust cycles of the past.” ...
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Do you think the nay-sayers will finally back off, in light of the overwhelming evidence of Edmonton’s culinary coming of age?I cannot remember a year of so much choice and quality in Edmonton restaurants, from the cilantro, cold-cuts and slivered carrots in a $3.50 Van Loc Vietnamese sub to the best the Hardware Grill has to offer.After two years of reviewing, The Weekly Dish still has a list of some 40 must-get-to restaurants … and at least four more top-quality eateries are opening up.My standard response to anybody dissing Edmonton’s food selection is to rhyme off 20 excellent restaurants — ethnic, gourmet, vegetarian, classic, fusion, Italian and so on — and ask just how many have these pretentious types been to? Usually the response is a blank stare. They know not what is before their noses.Trends: Food trucks are coming into their own, and by this summer, every prime food truck spot will be taken. Thanks to Drift, Nomad and Little Village for setting the standard.Critical mass is happening in the heart ...
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Last week, the Katz Group reviewed its downtown development vision around the new, still-stalled, downtown arena proposal for city council.To recap: Two office towers, two condo towers, a new hotel and up so six "low-rise" residential and commercial development surrounding the arena in a well-planned urban precinct.But the same darned question ran through everybody's mind, at least anybody with any long-term connection to Edmonton's downtown.Sounds great, but what about demand?Since the great downtown office building boom of 1976 to 1983 (TD Tower, Oxford Tower, Manulife Place, Bell Tower, Canadian Western Bank Place, Scotia Place, Sun Life and the Enbridge Tower), Edmonton had/has been awash in office space.Only three office towers have been built since 1983. Two of them - Canada Place and Commerce Place - were more about government stimulus than supply and demand.The EPCOR "Tower of Power" opened in 2011. It's the first "free-market" new office tower in almost 30 years.There hasn't been a major new hotel bu ...
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Café de Ville10137-124 St.780 488 9188 www.cafedeville.comFood: 3.5 of 5 starsAmbience: 4 of 5 starsService: 3 of 5 starsDinner for two (without beverages): Basic, $65; fully loaded, $110Something magical is in the air.Café de Ville, on a snowy evening as Christmas approaches, is cozy and snug.The room emanates warmth and charm. It hearkens back to the origins of the historic Glenora Bed & Breakfast Inn in which it’s housed, built as the Buena Vista Apartments in 1912.The chairs are soft and upholstered, the cute little bar most inviting. An old radiator is on hand for decoration and there’s a Christmas tree in a nook.Café de Ville has a reputation for good, if pricey, food.There was, however, something impersonal. Despite a friendly waitress, Café de Ville was not particularly welcoming, even a tad indifferent, to its customers.Not that it mattered. The restaurant was full by 6:30 p.m. on a Friday.The food was perplexing. Of our four dishes, two were sublime, one was marred by too much salt, and one was ...
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“Are there no prisons? Are there no poor houses?”So were uttered some of the most prophetic words ever written in English.The great Charles Dickens put them into the mouth of his merciless capitalist character Ebenezer Scrooge in a story that, 170 years later, still rings as true as the day Dickens put pen to paper.I’m thinking about Scrooge now, as Christmas approaches.Not only because of the Citadel Theatre’s stellar 13th annual production of A Christmas Carol, but because Scrooge’s attitude to charity (before being put to rights by the ghostly good guys) has become subtly ingrained in 21st century business ethics.For all its talk, big business in Canada doesn’t seem that committed to giving back to the communities from whence their profits flow.Imagine Canada is a credible non-profit organization that reports on, and advocates for, increased corporate philanthropy.Imagine Canada suggests Canada’s companies should give 1% of their pre-tax profits to charity … a penny deducted from every dividend dollar.And ...
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