It is a love-hate situation. Alberta is six months away from a provincial general election and you would swear from the noise level that it is happening next week. And you wish it would. From the time in 2015 that Jason Kenney got his pick-up truck painted blue, packed his fat-boy jeans and headed west, it has not been the Alberta that I know and love.
I am sure many wondered how long the affair with Kenney would last? You had to know that combining the sedentary conservatives of Alberta with the crazy libertarians of the Wildrose would never work. I almost felt sorry for Brian Jean when his old buddy Jason Kenney was through with him.
But there are certainly some what-ifs? If that damn pandemic hadn’t come along, would Jason still be sitting pretty as premier? He didn’t know what to do when he lost millions on failed pipelines except blame Ottawa. (They blame Ottawa if it rains too much in Alberta.)
And who asked for the resurrection of that crazy libertarian-leaning Danielle Smith? You have to admit, the lady has her own extremes she wants to go to. She is busy reworking her health spending savings accounts idea to something the average voter can understand.
All that I have understood so far is that she wants to spend less on health care so she wants the province to give everybody the average amount. What is not clear is the question of what people do if they use up their average. It sounds like American style medicine to me.
It is unlikely that her Alberta sovereignty bill will be much more than a promise to enact it, if Ottawa passes any laws she dislikes—which is probably most of them.
When you think of the wonderful hospitality of people in Edmonton and the sense of humour of Calgarians and the overall congeniality of people across the province, you wonder how things can go so wrong.
It might be that damn bitumen. All my experience in Alberta was before they monetized that gunk from the tar sands and started calling it oil. It is not oil, it is a serious green-house gas pollutant and should be left in the ground.
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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry
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