Alberta is sinking
By Letter to the Editor on March 6, 2021.
Editor:
There is a boat, The Alberta, that is way way out on the lake. It has run out of gas for its motor. The engine has stopped.
The Covid, the loss of traditional oil business and other winds are blowing hard, waves are getting higher .
The Alberta is taking on water and beginning to sink.
There are bailing containers in The Alberta but people on the boast are refusing to bail out the water.
“We have never had to bail and were not doing it now.”
The Alberta continues to sink.
There are oars in The Alberta. The people refuse to paddle,
“We have never had to paddle our own canoes ” say the people.” We were given oil by God so we don’t have to paddle.”
The Alberta continues to sink
Captain JK says he has a solution, he drills holes in the bottom of the boat to let the water out.
The Alberta continues to sink.
We may not want to pay a sales tax but it looks like the only sure method of keeping Alberta afloat.
Neil Jorgensen
Lethbridge
-1
it is hard to not condemn and lament the utter failures of our prov’l govts, post lougheed, during numerous years of oil booms here. however, what will serve us best right now is to prioritise a few things, given demand for our oil is on the wane. 1) we could press the feds to use alberta oil, and to stop importing oil (from the likes of giant human rights abuser, saudi arabia, no less), even launching a campaign that shows how repugnant it is to do so, and how it is further a great disservice to our country to do so; 2) we have long needed to diversify the economy here, and our way forward will be with ever less wealth coming from oil. what can we produce that will provide good jobs? moreover, will the wealth of whatever we produce this time be fairly returned to albertans, and the brunt of it not be stolen via sketchy “royalty” schemes that left us holding a pretty empty bag; 3) we need to go after companies and their ceos for monies owed, and for the cost to clean up the toxic messes and orphaned wells they have left to us as their legacy.
it is more than obvious that kenney has no acceptable answers that will serve the people of this province; he is another in the long line of premiers posing as a conservative – a name that albertans love, but a name that means many different things to many “conservative-married” voters – that has no new answers. in fact, what he has demonstrated is more of the same old, simply continuing the pattern of lining pockets of a good old boys group (he and his in-group of cronies will be rewarded sometime soon by them in return), whilst bleeding whatever is left of the alberta advantage to the bone.
many states the world over would have taken to the streets to rightfully protest the further theft of our dwindling monies to various big corp entities. but here in so-long-as-they-calls-themselves-conservative- they-is-conservatives alberta, the many are most comfortable to roll over in their conservative blue blanket, cover our eyes, and just know (and pray) that fossil fuels will come to our rescue once again.
The problem is the fact that the true conservatives allowed the Reformers to take over their party and they are deliberately trying to destroy very thing Lougheed created for us. Keep the people broke and you can control them better was what I was taught by Lougheeds MLAs. I doubt there is another province this stupid.
You don’t put a fox in charge of the hen house. Klein with his sweet talk started it and Don Getty knew he had made a huge mistake and it’s been one disaster after another because Albertans can’t get this voting Conservative out of their minds. The federal conservatives know Alberta will automatically support them and they can do anything they want to Alberta. Harper didn’t try to work with our oil industry at all. Like Kenney he told the world that he didn’t give a damn about global warming while the world does care.
Any fool can call himself a conservative and that’s good enough for Albertans and these fools know it, and look at what they have done to us and are still doing it. Cutting $9 billion off taxes for their rich friends and cutting teaching and health care jobs and trying to privatize the RCMP and we still hear seniors saying they need to do it.
I haven’t forgotten the words of a female senior who told me about 20 years ago that she didn’t like what Ralph Klein was doing to us but she had to support him because she was a conservative. You can’t be any dumber than that.
And what is Eastern Canada offering us as we sink Neil? Free anvils in the form of regulation after regulation! No point in paddling as we seem to be dragging on the bottom.
So why don’t you be a hero and give us a list of all these regulations so you can show us how smart you are? While you are at it give a list of all the wonderful things these Reformers have done to Albertans over the years and what your hero Jason Kenney has been doing to us?
Or haven’t you noticed all the anger Albertans have hurled at him?