The Léger poll that came out about two years ago in Alberta specifically asked Albertans, “Would you have the government invest in this project?” More than 65% said yes, they should.
What's holding it back in Alberta is a fascinating question, but in the ten years I've been doing this, we have had three premiers and one leadership race. As you know, Mr. Stelmach is having his annual conference this weekend, and there's a vote coming up, and I would like to hope that in the interest of keeping continuity they will support him, because we don't need to go into a leadership race again.
What's holding this up? There's an awful lot going on in Alberta all the time, but in the big booms, prices were going up all the time and everybody was getting very rich. Then all of a sudden it came to screeching halt, and being in the banking business, I was out there trying to find all this money I'd given out. We went from feast to famine. The transition in Alberta is very severe between feast and famine. We've gone from having about 3% unemployment, 18 months ago, to having 10,000 fully qualified engineers in Calgary out of work. It's a dramatic change. All this change, of course, suddenly going from a projected $8 billion profit to a $4 billion deficit, causes a legislator's comfort zone to change dramatically.