“The past is a bucket of ashes,” wrote American poet and radical Carl Sandburg in his great poem Chicago.
Early in his career, Sandburg was a member, organizer and journalist for the Wisconsin Social Democratic party. He kept his political sensibilities later in his life after his partisan affiliations lapsed.
His words came to mind when Alberta's social democratic government launched a lawsuit attacking a clause in electricity power purchase agreements (PPAs) that allows the province's private utilities to abandon the marketing agreements.
The power companies are using the newly legislated carbon levy on large carbon emitters to trigger a “change in law” clause in the power purchase agreements that permits them to get out of the agreements on a technicality.
The government is asking the court to stop the utilities from, in effect, transferring the now unprofitable PPAs to consumers via the Balancing Pool, an entity created by the government when it deregulated the electricity market.
The utilities and their shareholders did not assume the risk created by electrical deregulation. That was given to consumers, and socialists are keen students of capitalism and know a one-sided marketplace deal when they see it.
The government is asking the courts to undo the Progressive Conservative past, a partisan request that some legal experts think the courts will find legal.
Conservative partisanship favouring the corporations versus socialist partisanship favouring the consumers.
And then there is Sandberg's advice to “keep moving, forget the post mortems and remember no one can get the jump on the future.”
Sandberg minted the phrase “the past is a bucket of ashes” in a poem that contains a solemn warning for both parties.
He describes singers singing: “We are the greatest city, the greatest nation. Nothing like us ever was.”
Then he writes: “The only singers now are the crows crying ‘Caw, Caw'. And sheets of rain whine on the wind and the doorways and the only listeners now are the rats and lizards.”
Political power is up for grabs in Alberta.
And both sides need to be careful of what they wish for.
- Frank Dabbs is a veteran political and business journalist, author and book editor.
"Political power is up for grabs in Alberta."
