Calgarians’ thoughts are often with neighbours in southern Alberta
By Lethbridge Herald on March 2, 2024.
Editor:
Folks in southern Alberta are on the front lines of a drought that is looking like it will have wide impacts across sectors and swaths of our province this year. I was glad to spend an evening in the Spring Point Community Hall west of Fort Macleod one evening two weeks ago, hearing farmers and landowners talk about water. I recall Dixon Hammond saying “our floods are getting bigger, and our drys are getting drier.”
Then yesterday I read that the MD of Pincher Creek is now unable to pump water out of the very low Crowsnest River, and has resorted to digging a hole in the riverbed to access subsurface water which has to be delivered by truck.
It was a bit of a shock to learn that our UCP government has chosen to announce they are allowing applications for drilling, exploration, and a water diversion licence for the Northback coal mine – formerly known as Benga – at Grassy Mountain. It’s hard to believe that Energy Minister Brian Jean can be so tone deaf.
In my own circles of friends and neighbours here in Calgary, we often talk about our concerns about water – and we often put climate change in the same sentence, as well.
Our thoughts often turn with care to our neighbours in smaller communities in southern Alberta.
Roger Gagne
Calgary
9-8
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…not sure if the flow levels are lower in Bow and Elbow Rivers as well. They were last summer.
Again, the damage from drought, lack of water, wild fires….could reach the $billions/trillions, rendering Alberta into a deep deficit. The recent budget, in this regard, is greatly lacking. Perhaps the lack of a PST and too low corporate tax rates will have to be revisited. Maybe more than tax cuts will have to be revisited as well. More cuts elsewhere?
We were told at Christmas that you could literally walk across the Bow River anywhere in down town Calgary it was that bad. I saw a video on the internet a few days ago where they were filling their buckets from helicopters from swimming pools in California last summer in an area where there was a lack of water.
Increasing corporate taxes and royalties back up to the Lougheed levels is our only hope like Rachael Notley was trying to do, but with reformers promising to cut taxes down the road you know they don’t are.
Once again in true Reform Party fashion looking after the well-being of all Albertans is not a concern for them. Looking after themselves, their friends and the rich is what they care about. While they deliberately destroy our health care and education systems to try to force Albertans into more and more privatization the Take Back Alberta stupidity is obviously aimed at our heroes former conservative governments and destroying all their policies like trying to protect our water supply like Brian Jean is willing to do. While Jason Kenney fed us the lie that coal mining was being done safely on the B.C. side Coal Tech was being fined $60 million for the pollution it created in B.C. And Montana. While they continue to help the rich steal our oil and corporate taxes oilmen point out that there is not another oil rich area in the world that’s in the financial mess that Albertans are in and we can all thank these Reformers and their ignorant supporters for putting us in this mess, can’t we?
I think lawyers are right we should be hauling these fools into court who are hurling their sarcastic comments at us for not being as stupid as them and make them pay for the mess they have helped create with their blind support of these Reformers trying to pretend they are conservatives when there is nothing conservative about them, what do you think? From what I understand is Freedom of Speech ends when it’s hurting people like Don Cherry found out a few years ago.
I’m not interested is suing anyone I think their idiotic comments are hilarious, but I can assure more and more people are considering it, especially ones who lost loved ones from the way the COVID pandemic was handled. We saw no concern for those who lost their lives while Doctors were being ignored, did we? In fact some of the MLAs were encouraging businesses to ignore their recommendations, weren’t they?
While doctors and nurses state they are leaving we see some of our fellow seniors saying “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out” that’s how stupid they are.
What is so mind boggling to me, is why would Rural Albertans give them a majority government when they are responsible for giving them the highest power bills in Canada, highest vehicle registration fees, highest vehicle insurance, tried to destroy their water supply with coal mining, destroyed their land by allowing the oil industry to pollute it, and during the BSE crisis allowed Klein to help the Packing Plants to cheat beef producers out of millions of dollars?
As we know privatization of healthcare will destroy Medical Service in Rural Alberta. Why would you be willing to let them put yourselves in that position?
hmm, i guess we are only swimming in oil and toxicity, rather than water. any of those massive toxic tailings ponds drinkable?
My concern after watching Fort MacMurray burn was if the fire had happened on the other side could those tailing ponds burn? I wasn’t able to find an oilman who knew and I still don’t. The 338 houses that I provided the financing for all burnt up.
scary thought – already bad that those massive lakes are putting poisons into the water and land. that stuff burning into the air would lend another dynamic to our serious issues.
I was told by four couples I met in Florida from Fort MacMurray that under the Lougheed and Getty governments annual funding was being provided to maintain a fire break around the city and Klein eliminated it.
That fire should never have been allowed to destroy the city. I have no proof but knowing Klein I bet it’s true after what he did with the orphan well cleanup mess and deregulation of our power and natural gas, the former conservative and social credit MLAs I knew were furious with him. Yet ignorant seniors were calling him a hero that’s how stupid they are and they are still doing it, aren’t they?
so many fools looked up to klein as “king”. the ages old problem of stupid societies is that the masses are content with just enough bone, and seem to enjoy bowing to the selfish, serving and corrupt that get the filet mignon.
Those of us who were bankers and our police officer friends know first hand why Seniors have a horrible reputation for being easily fooled we saw it first hand. Con artists have been making a living by stealing their life savings with some of the dumbest tricks you can imagine and politicians have been treating them like morons and they aren’t smart enough to understand it.
Young Albertans have told me over the years that they don’t have time to follow politics so have relied on their parents or grandparents to tell them who to vote for and in many cases it was a huge mistake and they wished they hadn’t listened to them.
Some of our senior friends work in polling stations to make a little money and told us during the Klein years that it was definitely seniors who we’re keeping him in power because that’s all they were seeing at the polling stations
I had known Klein personally since I was 19 years old and knew what a jerk he was, he didn’t fool me or any of our family.
When he was trying to become premier his mother Flo told my mother that she didn’t think he was capable of running this province properly and she was certainly right. Mom told her no one in her family was going to support him and we didn’t and we know members of his own family didn’t either.