Albertans are disappointed. They cannot blame Ottawa for this one. They cannot win an oil price war with Saudi Arabia. Alberta tar sands bitumen is not even in the running. Alberta has to get off oil fast.
How many times has Alberta heard the clarion call of diversification and ignored it? Now the province has to replace 28 per cent of its gross domestic product. That is a lot of jobs. It is time to become creative.
It is hell to be older. I can remember the time there was a line drawn down the Ottawa River. People west of the river had to buy Alberta gasoline at higher prices. You remember those people, don’t you? Those were the ones that some Alberta wags later suggested should be left to freeze in the dark. Oh, how times change!
I remember when prime minister John Diefenbaker sent 50,000 Canadians searching for a new job in one day. And a lot of those people did really technical work on the Avro Arrow. I bet Bill Morneau will be able to fund job retraining for Alberta oil workers. Just be nice to him for once.
Heh, if the big resource companies are looking for opportunity, Ontario is stepping up to build a road into the Ring of Fire in Northern Ontario. Would chromite mining be much different from mining bitumen? Chromite sure is more valuable.
Of course, that leaves Albertans with the one serious problem. What to do with that Neanderthal premier Jason Kenney. He enjoys his ‘Wicked Witch of the West’ role too much. I expect he is too far gone and is beyond being retrainable. He had the opportunity to return to federal politics and take the conservative federal leadership and he blew it away. And, for the life of me, I cannot think of a suitable job for which we might retrain him.
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Copyright 2020 © Peter Lowry
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