We need to resist the movement to privilege
By Lethbridge Herald on July 9, 2022.
Editor:
We are in eminent danger of throwing away the hard won principles that our forefathers fought so hard for. We need to remind ourselves that we chose to be separate and different from American republican and British empire ambitions.
Canadians chose to be different. We placed the values of cooperation and social inclusion above the simple ego gratification of individual dreams for gold and glory.
Our forefathers decided for plans that were to benefit us all for health and in retirement. We let go the images of streets paved with gold, realistically chose equality over competitive exclusion.
There have always been those in our midst who undermined and tried to divert efforts of cooperation for equality and fair-mindedness.
They wanted exclusive privilege and special consideration, working to increase our tolerance for privatization and corporate accumulation.
Albertans once shared the grandeur of our inheritance, we stood side by side with lucky and the steady, to insure none suffered for the benefit of the few.
Today’s wordsmiths (some lawyers and politicians) have used the privilege of education to divert the flow of our natural benefit toward privatization and corporatism, while diluting benefits to all the rest.
These are not the values of most Canadians, and would have horrified our forefathers. Most of us still believe in the importance of equality. Yet we feel the pressure from the NIMBY crowd, who want to feel special. Canadians have a right to resist the efforts to privatize the common wealth of our inheritance.
The land, our resources, water, and natural beauty were passed on to us all to share, not to be sealed up in private containers for an aristocracy that we long ago rejected.
We are all required to resist fiercely this movement to privilege, and privatization over democracy. We know the alternative.
D. Ryane
Lethbridge
14-13
So well stated. Thank you. When a Billionaire is created every 30 hours somewhere on the planet, yet one million people are thrown into severe poverty every 33 hours something is wrong.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/billionaire-wealth-covid-pandemic-oxfam_n_6283e951e4b04353eb0a526d
When companies like Blackrock can purchase all kinds of properties for investment purposes and then once owned, double the rent from say $1000 per month to $2000 per month and evict tenants and throw them out into the homeless camps in the streets of ; LA, Phoenix, Vegas (pretty much anywhere) in the name of profit and progress. You know something is wrong.
We often idealize the rich, famous, successful and beautiful people; those able to take a 12 minute flight into outer space, just because they can. Yet you wonder if these people are making any valuable contribution for others, when in fact they could.
Sadly we often find out; too late, these people lives were full of misery and torment, sometime illegal activity, sex trafficking, etc. that all the money in the world … just could not fix.
Brilliant letter. Until the Reform Party was created by Preston Manning and his pal Stephen Harper, deliberately following the likes of the American Republican Party, the conservatives treated Albertans and Canadians with dignity and respect , collected proper royalties, and corporate taxes and ran this country properly. Since then it’s been one gong show after another with Reformers telling the people how to think. Apparently a lot aren’t smart enough to do their own thinking or smart enough to look at the facts. While their new hero Pierre Poilievre continues to treat us like morons, catering to the Wild West mentality at the Calgary Stampede, praising Kenney for how he handles the Covid crisis , he doesn’t care how many it killed, praises the truckers and the horrible mess they created in Ottawa and Coutts and doesn’t care about the millions it cost taxpayers, and in true Republican Party fashion he bashes Trudeau for wanting to protect all Canadians from the type of horror we are witnessing in the U.S. with people being gunned down in grocery stores and children in their classrooms and this fool doesn’t care.
After deliberately creating a nightmare for our doctors and nurses, with many leaving the system, this fool Jason Kenney is bashing Ottawa for not providing the provinces with a lot more money to try to help us replace the ones he ran off. Where is the intelligence in that?
Just one question FC! You still have “Full Coverage” for your Meds or has Kenny taken that away from you also?