Is it ever thus? Premier Danielle Smith is off on her tangent to save Alberta from the rapacious government in Ottawa. It must be that they cannot teach Canadian history or mathematics in that province. It is also very important in mathematics that you count the oranges as oranges and the apples as apples.
Can you imagine an insurance program that allows you to take back everything you put in—without deducting what has been taken out? Maybe Smith has the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) confused with a tontine, that is paid out to the last person alive.
The beauty of the CPP is that the pay-out is guaranteed by the federal government. It might not please some actuaries or politicians (for different reasons). It does meet a need among the Canadian public. And it is easily taxed back if you do not need it.
But the simplest question is what the heck does Danielle Smith want with a pension plan? Is she going to decide where the money goes? Does she know anything about investing long-term? Would she put the money into funding the tar sands exploiters? And then what happens when the tar sands run out? The simple facts are that the tar sands become more and more expensive as the low-hung fruit of that resource become more and more expensive to access? And in a world converting to renewable sources of energy, what is Alberta doing, trying to stave off the inevitable? Is she some kind of King Canute, trying to hold back the tides?
And don’t give us that guff about carbon capture. Carbon capture is not 100 per cent. That is the first given. The second problem is that carbon capture relies on underground caverns as a place to capture the carbon. That means longer and longer pipelines from where the carbon is produced to where it will be tucked out of sight.
It would be mean of me to suggest that Danielle Smith must be the dumbest politician this country has ever seen. I just don’t like the impression it leaves with the rest of the country. Just how dumb are the people who elected her? I have worked with some of the people at the University of Alberta in Edmonton and I must admit they earned my respect. I could understand the Alberta voters’ dissatisfaction with Jason Kenney as premier, but Danielle Smith can only be described as Looney Tunes.
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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry
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