Helping the wealthy is all the ‘conservatives’ care about
By Lethbridge Herald on December 2, 2022.
Editor:
Once again we see fellow seniors and rural Albertans blindly supporting the word conservative and ignoring what these Reformers, pretending they are conservatives, are doing to us. Those of us from the world of finance estimate that they have helped the rich steal about $800 billion of our oil and tax wealth since the Ralph Klein days and lawyers, accountants, economists, bankers, oilmen, and former MLAs agree with us.
It hasn’t happened in Norway and Alaska as they continue to reap the benefits of their oil wealth and build their massive savings accounts for their children’s future.
I helped nine doctors and at least two dozen nurses relocate out of this province when Ralph Klein was kicking them around, just like Kenney and Smith are doing. One doctor said, “Why should I stay in Alberta and support my patients, when my patients refuse to support me against this tyrant Ralph Klein”. I wonder how many more doctors and nurses will be leaving because of how they are being treated? Some of our senior friends have already lost theirs.
While the citizens of Medicine Hat didn’t support Smith the ones in the Brooks area did and have shown no respect for our doctors, nurses, teachers, and RCMP officers who are having their careers threatened by these fake conservatives, Reformers.
What is so disgusting is the fact that they have shown no concern for their fellow man, farmers and ranchers who have had their land polluted by the oil industry. Under the Lougheed government the oil corporations were forced to pay for the clean up of these abandoned wells. I know because I was involved. But that all changed under Ralph Klein, using Reform Party policies when they were allowed to dump the costs onto the backs of Albertans, just like Klein did with the power industry.
Now farmers and ranchers wanting to retire and sell their land aren’t able to do so thanks to this pollution problem that we are told could cost our children and grandchildren $260 billion to fix. If that isn’t bad enough, the oil industry has been allowed to ignore paying taxes to these farm towns who desperately need it, yet these Smith supporters don’t care.
In 2003, a beef producer said it best: “It doesn’t matter what Ralph Klein does to us, many of my friends and relatives continue to support him. I’ve got fence posts who are smarter than them.” I haven’t forgotten what the MLAs from the Lougheed era taught me when Lougheed’s energy minister Bill Dickie was a brother-in-law of one of my uncles. Don’t ever trust a Reformer, they destroy jobs, not create them, and they help the rich steal our oil and tax wealth in an effort to buy votes. While they have deliberately destroyed what Lougheed created for us, never once has Kenney or Smith mentioned that they should be following in Peter Lougheed’s footstep by collecting proper royalties and taxes and running the province properly. Yet that’s what Rachel Notley was trying to do.
There is certainly nothing conservative about these Reformers – helping the rich is all they care about.
Alan K. Spiller
Edmonton
12-11
Do we really need another socialist (living in the past) view of the world. Perhaps someone should point out real world changes that have transpired in the interim. For example oilsands producers , who represent the bulk of oil production in the province now pay 20 to 25 % royalties , as they have fully recovered their capital cost. Time to get into the real world.
Where is your proof of that? Oilmen state that these Reformers are still not collecting anywhere near the royalties that Peter Lougheed was collecting. It’s about a third from what I hear.