Conservative leader Erin O’Toole is playing second banana to liberal Justin Trudeau. The day after the prime minister was spreading pre-election loonies for votes in Calgary, ‘Oh Shucks’ O’Toole showed up with a whole new offer.
Trudeau offered a specific $1.5 billion contribution to Calgary’s Green Line transit plan. O’Toole, in turn, told his Calgary audience how Trudeau was mistreating them. He told them that the conservatives would change the stabilization program developed by the liberal government to give four of the five billion dollars earmarked for provincial stabilization to Alberta. That would leave just one billion for the rest of the country.
And this offer is only contingent on the conservatives winning the rest of the country, as well as the one non-conservative seat in Alberta.
Frankly that was probably the stupidest thing that O’Toole could do to lose votes across Canada. This is in a province that has never had a provincial sales tax and sports an ultra-conservative provincial government that constantly insults the federal government. Those are the same feds who bought Alberta a pipeline for $4.5 billion.
The Trudeau government is currently twinning the contentious pipeline and adding high-pressure so it can pump diluted bitumen from Edmonton to Burrard Inlet at Vancouver. That will cost another $12.6 billion.
If Canadian voters ever stop to add up all the billions Justin Trudeau has committed to spend to appease the ingrates in Alberta, they are really going to question his judgement.
But, at the same time, you have to question the political sense of conservative Erin O’Toole to be concentrating funds and promises in a province where his party already holds all but one electoral district. He is setting out to antagonize voters across the country with this brazen attempt at pleasing Alberta.
And why would he do it? While urban voters in Calgary and Edmonton might think more favourably of Justin Trudeau and his liberal candidates, Alberta’s rural voters are mainly hard right Tories. Any change in the boonies of Alberta would be glacial.
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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry
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