Pocket bikes like the one pictured above may not be operated on Alberta roadways.

Just because they’re small doesn’t mean there aren’t laws regulating the use of miniature vehicles, which include personal transporters, pocket bikes, go carts, electric scooters and golf carts.

RCMP are warning riders, especially youth, to be aware of the laws before operating their miniature vehicles, which are governed by Provincial Traffic Safety regulations.

For instance, miniature vehicles are not permitted on roadways in Alberta, including sidewalks along the roadway.

Miniature vehicles may only be operated on private property. The only exception to this prohibition is a special permit granting authority to operate on a highway.

While many of these vehicles will be used in a pedestrian-like manner, the operators of these vehicles do not meet the legal definition of pedestrian, say police.

Seniors taking their scooter to the grocery store for a litre of milk she are treated differently. A mobility aid user is considered a pedestrian. All rules that apply to pedestrians also apply to individuals operating a mobility aid. It is recommended that a mobility aid be operated on sidewalks or  pathways, not a roadway.

Wood Buffalo RCMP have noticed a significant increase in the number of youth operating miniature motorized vehicles on the roadways within the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, which they say is a high-risk activity.

New riders are at a greater risk of being involved in a collision because they are unfamiliar with the controls and handling characteristics of these vehicles, and young riders are not familiar with the rules and regulations of the road. Any person operating a power bicycle, moped, or motorcycle must wear an approved motorcycle safety helmet.

For more information on safety guidelines and laws on the use of small or miniature vehicles operators can refer to the Alberta Traffic Safety Act, and visit “Owning and Operating a Small Vehicle in Alberta” on the Alberta Transportation website.

Bill Tufts is the founder of Fair Pensions for All and co-author of Pension Ponzi: How Public Sector Unions are Bankrupting Canada’s Health Care, Education and Your Pension.

By Bill Tufts       

Much is being said about Canada’s crushing public sector pension debt, now estimated to be more than $300 billion, but few Canadians realize the potential additional cost to taxpayers of the collapse of the remaining private sector defined (as in guaranteed) – benefit (DB) plans.

Union leaders and left-leaning politicians and media constantly suggest higher corporate taxes to address government debt and deficits, most of which has been brought about by excessive compensation and pension packages. Some larger companies are already treading water and shifting profits to fund their own broken pension promises. These massive transfers of assets are limiting investment in research and development, growth and new asset purchases and will limit the competitiveness of Canadian industry for a generation to come.

Currently there are several disputes across the country regarding pensions for workers in defined benefit pension plans. Labour unions have dug in their heels saying that the will not stand for changes to their pensions. Fortunately for some of them – but not for taxpayers – governments have been willing to spend tax dollars to preserve these benefits for the fortunate few. In 2009 for example General Motors, facing bankruptcy partly because of a $6-billion pension deficit, was bailed out by taxpayers to the tune of $474,000 for each job saved.

At Canadian Pacific (CP) there is a current labour dispute based on company changes to the pension plan and Air Canada seems to be in continuous multi-year negotiation over theirs. Canada Post is in intensive care and if it was a private sector corporation it would be bankrupt because of its pension shortfall.

Canadian taxpayers should be infuriated that these issues are allowed to fester without politicians initiating the reform that is desperately needed. The only steps they seem to be prepared to take is to give an infusion of more taxpayer money when things become desperate and pensions need a bailout.

In the CP dispute the company has imposed two options on the union. The first is the elimination of the defined benefit pension going forward, with new employees enrolled on a defined contribution plan; the second is a cap on yearly benefits in the current defined benefit plan of $60,000. How many employees are earning pensions in excess of $60,000 that this is considered a problem?

It seems to be a little bit over the top for most Canadians especially the 60% over age 65 who have no pension and disposable income of less than $21,500 a year.

Closing DB plans to new employees is a dilemma

Pension plans that can’t achieve the required investment returns (which is pretty much every DB plan in the country over the past 5 years) rely on the increased contributions from new hires to cover shortfalls. New hires typically pay a far greater percentage of income than employees have in the past. In essence current employees have to fund shortfalls for retired employees and wonder if the money will be there when they retire.

This as stated by California Governor Jerry Brown, makes it a ponzi plan. When the new employees are diverted into a DC plan the contributions to the DB pension are cut off and the ponzi accelerates in speed.

The stock markets have not been kind to pensions in the past few years as the current S&P/TSX return is now down 5% in 2012, down 15% over one year and 19% over 5 years. On the other hand most pensions are based on estimated salary increases of 4.5% per year and counting on the markets providing 6% to 7% return. Now not only does the plan have to make up the 5 year 19% loss but another estimated 35% to 40% return on the markets.

When the market returns are not sufficient and the employee contributions are not enough the plan plunges into deficit. Over the past three years the CP has pumped $1.9 billion into the pension plan to provide those workers with pensions in excess of $60,000 a year at retirement. There is a huge cost to society of this money funneling into the pension savings account of employees. It is money that is diverted away from investors of the company. Reducing profits to pay pensions impacts anyone who hold CP shares in their RRSP, either directly or though mutual funds and is counting on returns for their own retirement.

Another similar pension basket case is Air Canada, now really a pension fund operating an airline for the benefit of its retirees and employees. Consider that the market value of Air Canada is a little over $225 million, that it has a $10 billion pension plan, and this year saw its pension shortfall rise to over $4 billion. In 2011 it had an operating profit of $179 million. The company would need to invest all its profits for the next 22 years just to fund the pension shortfall. Certainly no new planes or other capital investments can be expected for many years. Not good for Canada in a competitive and globalized marketplace.

Canada Post is in crisis with a pension shortfall of $4.8 billion up by $1.5 billion from the year before. You should be expecting a bill in the mail shortly to bail out their pension plan. With 59,810 active employees in the plan this works out to a future bailout of $80,000 per employee. Canada Post is now like a house with a mortgage bigger than its value, with negative equity of $1.7 billion.

Unfortunately no national initiatives on the private sector pension crisis can be expected anytime soon. Elected officials hate to upset the largest political group in the country, unions. Unions fund hundreds of millions of dollars into the political system and politicians don’t like to mess with them. An example is the recent federal budget when the Prime Minister, leading up the budget promised “Canada’s retirement income system will see some ‘necessary’ changes in the coming months.”

What did we get? An increase on the Old Age Security to age 67 for those Canadians who will not have gold-plated pensions. The much needed reform of MP pensions – expected to lead the way for others to follow – was put off until after the next election in four years.

It appears many for these plans are terminally ill.

Bill Tufts is the founder of Fair Pensions for All and co-author of Pension Ponzi: How Public Sector Unions are Bankrupting Canada’s Health Care, Education and Your Pension.

Example of an illegally tinted window.

Vegreville RCMP are giving local motorists until June 15 to remove non-factory window tint from their vehicles or face tickets or impounding until the tint it removed.

Police say they have noticed an “alarming amount” of motor vehicles in the Vegreville area with dark window tint installed on the windshield or side windows that are beside or forward of the front seats of automobiles.

Window tint not only decreases the occupants’ vision, especially at night, according to RCMP, but it prevents safety glass from operating properly. This is particularly dangerous during a collision as the safety glass is designed to break away into small pieces in a manner less harmful to the vehicle occupants as well as emergency personnel.

There have been instances where efforts in extracting people from their vehicles have been hampered because the tint that has been applied as an extra film binds the safety glass together. This results in extra care and extra time needing to be taken by emergency crews where time may be the difference between survival and death.

Dark tint also makes it difficult for pedestrians and other road users to make eye contact with the driver. This eye contact aides to ensure the driver knows that you are there, which is a common and important safety practice.

Police say that operating a motor vehicle with window tint other than what is factory installed is an offence under the Vehicle Equipment Regulations of the Alberta Traffic Safety Act. Violators could receive a $57 fine and/or a court appearance for driving a vehicle with non-factory tinted windows.

Vegreville RCMP are giving motor vehicle owners the opportunity to remove non-compliant tint from their motor vehicles by June 15. After that date and until the end of July officers will be focusing their enforcement on motor vehicles that have the illegal tint installed.

Officers will also be issuing a violation notice to have the tint removed to ensure their motor vehicle is safe. If motorists fail to comply they may be issued an additional violation ticket for $172 and another warning to have the tint removed.

If the motorist continues to fail to remove the tint within the time allotted , officers will have the motor vehicle towed and impounded until the tint is removed and the vehicle is deemed safe to operate. The owner of the motor vehicle will then have to pay the costs incurred for the tow and impound.

RCMP suggest vehicle owners contact their vehicle’s manufacturer local dealer if they have questions about what constitutes factory-installed window tint or local police for questions regarding vehicle compliance with the Alberta Traffic Safety Act.

Man may have information on TD Square break in

The Calgary Police are hoping the public will assist them in locating a man who they believe may have information on a break-in that occurred at the TD Square in December of 2011.

Police believe that sometime between Wednesday, December 21 and Thursday, December 22, a robber was able to get into the Calendar Club store in the downtown mall.

When staff arrived in the morning, they discovered that someone had entered one of the adjoining businesses, then kicked or punched through the drywall to gain access.  Once inside the store, the culprit took two cash registers to a back storage area where the machines were disassembled and the money removed.

The suspect then left the way he came in.

The suspect is described as a Caucasian man, 5’11″ tall, weighing 200 pounds.  He was clean-shaven with short, blonde, thinning hair that was balding in the back.

Police investigators are working to determine if the same suspect is responsible for a series of similar break ins in the downtown area between September 2010 and December 2011.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Constable Matt Baker or Constable Julian Kerr District 1 Break and Enter Team at (403) 567-6100 or Crime Stoppers anonymously using any of the following methods:  TALK: 1-800-222-8477  TYPE: tttTIPS.com  TEXT: tttTIPS to 274637

Letter to the editor

Dear Editor;

Between 2002 and 2011, the Canadian dollar’s average exchange rate skyrocketed to 101 American cents from 64 cents. The loonie gained value largely because of an enhanced foreign appetite for Canadian assets, profitable due to the high price of oil and a boost from corporate tax cuts.

Canada is unique among major oil-exporting countries in having virtually no limitations on foreign ownership of the non-renewable resource itself. Oil prices are correlated to 86% of the variation in the dollar.

Today manufacturing represents just 10 per cent of all employment in Canada down from a peak of 16 per cent in 2000. Economic analyses from universities, banks and international organizations indicate that non-competitiveness as a result of higher exchange rates, also known as “Dutch disease”, caused much of the sharp decline in Canadian manufacturing employment over the past decade. From 2004 to 2008, more than one in seven Canadian manufacturing jobs, nearly 322,000, disappeared.

Christy Clark and Stephen Harper purport to be good economic managers, but their rash promotion of unsustainable raw exports has greatly damaged our economy at the expense of Canadian workers across the country.

Larry Kazdan,
Vancouver, B.C.

Northeast house fire extinguishes itself

Calgary Fire Department crews were called to a house fire in the 100 block of Saddleback Road N.E., during the early morning hours of Thursday, May 17.

At about 2:30 a.m., crews arrived at the home and found that the resident had returned home to a house damaged by fire.  Crews believe that the northeast house fire self extinguished.

Sadly, CFD crews found two deceased dogs in the home.

The second floor of the home was damaged by fire and the entire house received extensive smoke damage.

No other injuries were reported and the cause of the fire is under investigation.

Man dies in ATV collision, police believe alcohol factor in crash

A 71-year old Edmonton man is dead after an ATV collision west of the town of Smith on Wednesday, May 16.  Smith is 230 Kilometres northwest of Edmonton.

Slave Lake RCMP were called to the scene of the collision on West Fawcett Lake Road at about 6:30 a.m.  When they arrived, they discovered the 71-year old Edmonton man, deceased.

Police believe that sometime during the night, the victim rolled his quad and sustained fatal injuries in the collision.  He was not wearing a helmet and police believe that alcohol was a factor in the fatal crash.

The victim was found in the morning by an area resident.  The name of the victim is not being released, pending notification of next of kin.

Slave Lake RCMP are reminding motorists and outdoor enthusiasts that this is the fourth fatality in the Slave Lake area in the last month.  Staff Sergeant Roberta McKale of the Slave Lake RCMP says “RCMP are requesting safe driving on all roads and operators of off highway vehicles leading into the long weekend.  It is difficult on first responders, care workers, along with family members to deal with lives being lost in driving incidents”.

Powerful winds cause broken windows

Calgary streets closed due to broken windows in Wednesday night wind storm

On Wednesday night, high winds broke several windows in a downtown apartment building, causing the closure of 5 Ave S.W., between 6 and 7 St.  On Thursday morning, the area is still closed to vehicles and pedestrians.

The Calgary Fire Department was called to the apartment building in downtown Calgary on Wednesday night to deal with the hazardous situation.  Crews were able to secure the broken windows, but because of the high winds, were unable to remove the hazards.

The windows were damaged when cords and ropes that are attached to the building smashed into the building during the strong wind.

On Thursday morning, 5 Ave S.W., between 6 and 7 St S.W., is still closed to vehicles and pedestrians.  The Calgary Fire Department expects the road to be closed for several more hours to allow CFD crews to remove hazards from the building.

David Climenhaga, Beacon News columnist

By David Climenhaga        

Alberta Health Minister Fred Horne’s musings he just might join Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty in declaring war on physicians’ fees is proof the chickens continue to come home to roost for those foolish enough to assume the polls were right and the Wildrose Party would win the April 23 Alberta election.

It was journalists, bloggers, pollsters and certain far-right politicians who had to eat crow instead of chicken after last month’s epic polling fail, but it may turn out as the henhouse dust settles it was another class of customer entirely who really has to pay for this historic miscalculation.

At any rate, in the lead-up to the 2012 provincial election, the province’s most powerful labour union – the Alberta Medical Association, whose 7,200 members are budgeted to collect nearly $3.5 billion in “compensation and development” in Alberta’s 2012-13 budget – did no favours for the then-still-shaky Progressive Conservative government led by Premier Alison Redford.

Who can forget the docs’ repeated calls for a judge-led inquiry into physician intimidation in Alberta’s health care system even as it became excruciatingly uncomfortable for the Redford Government when the far-right Wildrose Party seemed to be rolling into power?

The physicians’ union – once virtually an official branch of the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta, as Ms. Redford’s party is officially known – jumped onto that bandwagon with enthusiasm.

There was that expensive – and possibly illegal – AMA newspaper advertising campaign, designed to embarrass Ms. Redford’s Tories in the weeks leading up to voting day, no doubt dreaming of a profitable new world of privatized medical services.

Then came AMA President Dr. Linda Slocombe’s drop-dead letter to Elections Alberta, telling the agency the union’s Board of Directors would be proceeding with the campaign to hold the government to account for such things as intimidation in the heath care system, availability of family physicians and access to health care information.

There are times when this kind of thing looks courageous, but one of them is not when everyone assumes the party you’re attacking is going to lose office anyway and its leader may not even hang onto her own Legislative seat.

Like lots of well-paced groups in Alberta who thought it wouldn’t hurt to be on the right side of a new Wildrose government, this must have seemed to the AMA like a good idea at the time. “We view it as a legitimate expression of free speech,” Dr. Slocombe told a Calgary Herald reporter at the time. “The AMA is a non-partisan organization and we’re trying to put health care first.”

Well, you know what, that’s not likely the way they’re going to remember those ads nowadays in the office of the premier – who happens to still be Alison Redford, Progressive Conservative MLA for Calgary-Elbow.

So along comes Mr. McGuinty, Ms. Redford’s counterpart in the cash-strapped province of Ontario who has also recently come through a stressful election campaign, with a call to other provinces to form a united front on how much Canadians’ provincial public health care systems are prepared to pay their docs. (Which right now is about 20 per cent of the total health budget, in Alberta’s case.) He’s thinking, presumably, that they can’t all pack up and move to the United States.

And, guess what, Mr. Horne was right in there – if not quite “ready, aye, ready,” at least prepared to talk about it.

Now, as the Herald reported yesterday, Alberta’s signed a two-year deal with the docs, retroactive to last year, to raise their fees by 2.5 per cent a year. After that, though, it sounds like all bets are off. Or, as Mr. Horne put it: “That said, it’s a short-term agreement. We have to be discussing these things.” (Emphasis added.)

Mr. Horne’s comments were nuanced, naturally, as befits the man’s style. But between the lines it’s pretty clear Alberta will be coming after the docs both for a slowdown in fee increases and increases in their productivity – or what more conventional, and weaker, trade unions might call a “speed-up.”

The health critic for the Wildrose Party – which normally calls for less spending cuts on everything except tax breaks for billionaires and oil companies – was quick to defend physicians’ high salaries. But the degree of sympathy from Calgary-Fish Creek MLA Heather Forsyth (margin of victory: 38 votes) is probably a lot less valuable to the AMA than it might have seemed before it turned out the main Opposition party would only have 17 MLAs.

Physicians’ organizations were quick to squawk too, with the Canadian Medical Association protesting that thoughts of adopting “a broken model that excludes true collaboration are wrong-headed.” True enough, but where are these guys when a regular trade union is getting its chops busted?

Don’t expect Mr. Horne to go after Alberta’s doctors quite as aggressively as Mr. McGuinty might like. The AMA is still the most effective union in the province – right up there with the Alberta Bar Association and the NHL Players Association – and physicians and Progressive Conservatives continue to have class interest and economic worldview in common.

Still, given what happened not so long ago, Mr. Horne and Ms. Redford may well conclude that a nice sharp crack across the doctors’ knuckles early in the government’s mandate might have a salutary effect the next time there’s a tightly contested provincial election on the horizon.

The AMA might also want to consider just quietly settling their dispute with Elections Alberta when it comes up, rather than fighting it all the way to the Supreme Court or whatever it was they had in mind back in those heady days of April.

Photo: Bruce A. Stewart

By Bruce A Stewart    

I want to conduct a thought experiment.

Rather than take sides — do you support Mulcair (and May, McGuinty and many more), or do you support Clark, Harper, Redford and Wall on Western energy policy — what if, for a moment, we explored the possibility that both are wrong?

Our love of a two-sided battle, the press gallery’s love of a horse race (“who’s ahead? who’s behind?”), and bruises still felt from ham-handed policies in the past make it easy to fall into an us-versus-them position and overlook other possibilities.

Maybe the problem with our energy industries isn’t how we produce it, but rather that we export that production.

Christy Clark, for instance, may very much like the economic prospects of liquifying BC natural gas for export to Asia.

Gas liquification is energy intensive — and one description of an LNG operation is “a bomb”. Maybe we’d be better off using the natural gas in Canada?

After all, that’s still a sale — and goodness knows our original gas fields are mostly played out these days. We drill new wells in gas country to get ever-decreasing returns.

Maybe BC’s pipelines should point east, not west?

Albertans, of course, are justifiably proud of their oil sands, and their ability to wrest bounty from the north.

Of course, that’s very energy-intensive production, too, just like processing LNG. It’s also capital intensive, which holds the whole thing hostage to global financial crises.

Then, of course, we rush to export the product as soon as it’s liquified enough to transport. We don’t turn it into anything else. We sell it as a feedstock and buy back the finished products.

A disruption in getting the finished product as in “you have to ship us your inputs because of NAFTA, but we’re restricting export of gasolines, fertilizers, plastics, etc. because we need them here” would be just as deadly to Canadians as not having had the oil sands in the first place.

I’d love to see Alberta manufacturing lots of end products from its bounty. But of course we close the discussion down by saying “we can’t tell companies what to do”.

Saskatchewan is enjoying great bounty these days, too. But their energy resources are also capital intensive — and water intensive in a dry land, one that’s too easily forced to decide on uses for that water between agriculture and people’s needs, or industry’s needs.

Look: Ontario, Québec, the Atlantic provinces have made a host of bad decisions — and have a business class that’s too ready to ask for a 70¢ dollar rather than become world class at what they do. A big part of that was in selling off so much — branch plants don’t decide their futures.

But that doesn’t excuse the West. Deep policy questions about the West’s future are being ignored.

It’s easy to point the finger. But it shouldn’t end there.

Or sooner than we think, the West will be as bankrupt as the East is.

That’s “national unity” none of us need.

Bruce Stewart is a consultant, educator and philosopher with a passion for public affairs currently located in Toronto. He is well known across the Internet for his blogs on management (Getting Value from IT) and social affairs (Just a Jump to the Left, then a Step to the Right) and for his daily stream of commentary on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. You can reach him at bastewart.toronto@gmail.com.