Message-ID: <31985686.1075844229760.JavaMail.evans@thyme>
Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 01:48:00 -0800 (PST)
From: robert.hemstock@enron.com
To: aleck.dadson@enron.com, richard.shapiro@enron.com, james.steffes@enron.com
Subject: Alberta Election Results
Cc: rob.milnthorp@enron.com
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As you are aware a provincial general election was held yesterday in 
Alberta.   When the election was called the governing Progressive 
Conservative Party led by Ralph Klein held a strong majority of 63 of the 83 
seats in our Provincial Legislature.   The Liberals had 18 seats and the New 
Democrats (socialist) had 2 seats.

The two issues that dominated the election campaign were: #1 health care, and 
#2 electricity restructuring.   The PC's faced considerable criticism 
regarding their handling of restructuring.   The Liberals came out with a 
policy platform on electricity restructuring that envisioned the government 
taking back the PPAs "by negotiation or legislation, if necessary" at a price 
below market and using this supply to provide cost-based power to residential 
and commercial customers.  Only customers with load greater than 5 MW would 
be exposed to market prices.  The ND's policy platform was to scrap 
electricity deregulation entirely.  

Throughout the campaign the PC's defended their electricity restructuring 
policy and pledged to continue to protect Alberta consumers from the effects 
of rising natural gas and electricity prices.  To date, this protection has 
taken the form of natural gas and electricity rebate payments funded from the 
sale of the PPA's and from the provincial treasury.

I'm pleased to report the PC's enjoyed a landslide victory last night that 
appeared to even surprise them.  They increased their number of seats to 74 
of the 83 seats in our Legislature while the Liberals were reduced to 7 seats 
and the ND's retained the 2 seats they had.   With this new and significant 5 
year mandate, I am optimistic the PC Government will now be less focused on 
depressing short-term wholesale power prices and will be more prepared to 
focus on longer-term policy decisions and initiatives that will: i) attract 
new generation, iii) attract new retailers, and iii) give electricity 
restructuring a chance to actually deliver on the benefits it promised.    

We are well positioned to influence the Alberta Government going forward and 
I will be requesting further internal and external resources to help me 
develop and communicate our market design proposals further.   If Enron can 
help Alberta overcome the serious supply and retail market problems it 
presently faces, I can see a day when Alberta is held out as an electricity 
restructuring success story.     

Regards,

Rob