Alberta Report Card
Published: December 6, 2009Posted in: Report Card
About the Conference on Alberta’s Future
The Conference on Alberta's Future was held on February 5-6, 2010 in Edmonton. About 150 Albertans from across the province gathered to generate ideas, proposals, and plans for shaping a more positive and inspiring economic and political future for Alberta.
The Manning Centre for Building Democracy provided support for the conference along with other organizations and individuals.
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- Conference Report
11 February 2010 10:30 AM | 117No Commentshttp://albertasfuture.ca/2010/02/conference-report/Conference+Report2010-02-11+17%3A30%3A46admin - The Next Chapter in the Alberta Story
02 December 2009 10:10 PM | 106 Commentshttp://albertasfuture.ca/2009/12/the-next-chapter-in-the-alberta-story/The+Next+Chapter+in+the+Alberta+Story2009-12-03+05%3A10%3A52admin - Alberta Report Card
06 December 2009 10:51 PM | 198 Commentshttp://albertasfuture.ca/2009/12/alberta-report-card/Alberta+Report+Card2009-12-07+05%3A51%3A56admin - Leadership on the National Stage
11 February 2010 9:30 AM | 1152 Commentshttp://albertasfuture.ca/2010/02/leadership-on-the-national-stage/Leadership+on+the+National+Stage2010-02-11+16%3A30%3A24admin - Health & Education
11 February 2010 9:19 AM | 113No Commentshttp://albertasfuture.ca/2010/02/health-education/Health+%26+Education2010-02-11+16%3A19%3A56admin - Environmental Conservation
11 February 2010 9:11 AM | 1112 Commentshttp://albertasfuture.ca/2010/02/environmental-conservation/Environmental+Conservation2010-02-11+16%3A11%3A39admin - Democratic Participation
11 February 2010 9:07 AM | 106No Commentshttp://albertasfuture.ca/2010/02/democratic-participation/Democratic+Participation2010-02-11+16%3A07%3A57admin
- Neil Little on Leadership on the National Stage
- Neil Little on Environmental Conservation
- Link Byfield on Democratic seeds sprouting in Alberta
- Joe Anglin on Environmental Conservation
- Conference Report on Fiscal Responsibility
- Conference Report on Leadership on the National Stage
- Conference Report on Vision for the Next Chapter of Alberta’s Story
- Gladys Teske on The Next Chapter in the Alberta Story
Calgary Herald Conference on Alberta's Future Danielle Smith Democratic Participation Economic Growth Education Environmental Conservation Fiscal Responsibility Globe & Mail Health Kyle Kyle Fawcett Leadership Mark Milke Marlo Raynolds Michael Percy Monte Solberg Nadeem Esmail Nicholas Gafuik Peter Cowley Peter McCormick Preston Manning Register Report Card vision - Conference Report
Conservative politicians have forgotten the word conserve. We need to conserve our environment and not waste our resources. We need to live within our means and budgets.
Conservativism 2010 is catering to special interest lobby groups like the coal, oil, tobacco, military and nuclear lobby groups. They have totally forgotten how to represent the goodwill of the population.
It is disappointing how they manipulate the parliamentary system for their own partisan gain. They are thinking of a political party and not the Canadian people. We deserve better but who?
The problem with our current provincial government is that they have not been interested in what Albertan’s really want and need. Instead, they hire consulting firms to give them the answers they are looking for, make decisions based on what business and corporations want, and then tells us (the people) that what they (the government) wants is what we (the people) need. With such a vast majority, minimum opposition, an arrogant cabinet, an unengaged electoriate, and a weak leader, who can blame them? But really, who is really to blame?
I am deeply concerned about two issues ~ first, the reliance on shoddy, dishonest and politically motivated science to formulate energy and environmental policy. Secondly, I am concerned to see the loss of liberty of conscience, freedom of expression and the right to worship God as one sees fit due to the unwarranted and intrusive power of the so-called Alberta Human Rights Commission.
Also concerns are the extensive influence of leftist ideology in the public school system, the near universal opposition to bearing arms among our political and police leadership, and the growing ignorance of the importance of free markets and minimal governance to the prosperity and strength of our province (and nation).
Cut government. Cut spending. Cut taxes. Drop Socialism and move to Freedom and Free Enterprise and honor property rights.
Deregulate almost everything.
Get rid of that Jackass of a Premier and his buddies.
Do everything possible to allow private health care to flourish in Alberta. I know the province has to follow what the Feds laws are but follow the laws as little as possible and allow private health care as much as possible.
In short get government to hell out of the way in almost every area of the economy.
To me, the real problem is, kids in the school system are taught that Communism and Socialism (which is a type of Communism) are great systems, moral systems. They are taught that Freedom and Free Enterprise is evil. The result is, over the years, these kids will become voting adults and vote politicians into office who will pass anti-freedom laws in every area of life (like Stelmach has done) thus reducing our standard of living and enslaving us.
Old people, who were brought up in a far more Free Enterprise Canada will vote for Free Enterprise governments but as they die from old age, communist thinking adults (trained by our universities and other schools) will vote in Communist\Socialist governments and as time goes on, support for parties like the Wildrose Alliance Party will dwindle. In other words I think that the voting base for the WAP comes from old people and as they die, the WAP will lose votes as the years go by.
For me, the big question is, why do our universities and schools teach that Freedom and Free Enterprise is bad, and Communism\Socialism is good? How does anyone correct this problem? It is at the root of every Stelmach-type government.
POLITICS and MATH
In mathematics, there are divisions like calculus, algebra, trigonometry.etc. So when someone mentions something about trigonometry you automatically know they are talking about mathematics. If they make a mistake in calculating trigonometry you to refer to the principles of mathematics to correct the mistake, because trigonometry is part of mathematics.
Which discipline is politics a part of? Very few people know that politics is part of philosophy. The 5 categories of philosophy are, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, and aesthetics. This means, that if mistakes are made in politics, a person must examine philosophy to find the error. In other words philosophy molds politics.
50 MILLION DEATHS
Another way to say this, is, there is a philosophy that supports a political system like Hitlers, where 50 million people died as a result.
PERPETUAL STARVATION
There is another philosophy that supports the old Russia, where people lived lives of suffering and poverty their entire life, always in a state of near starvation.
FREEDOM AND FREE ENTERPRISE
And, there is yet another philosophy that supports Freedom and Free Enterprise where people are free to pursue their goals and be wealthy with only objective government involvement in their lives. This philosophy has raised the standard of living of the entire world.
So, in order to correct political problems, people must turn to the right reason orientated philosophy. This will lead to reason orientated politics. When you get your philosophy right, you get your politics right. You must first get the philosophy right, in a basic way.
The philosophy that supports Communism and Socialism chokes the life out of every country and province that tries it. Higher taxes, poor service, more poverty and a lower standard of living are the result. In short Socialism brings about more suffering for more people.
So, from my point of view, my answer to the question, “What can be done to improve the grade?”, is, teach our children the philosophy of Freedom and Free Enterprise, then they will vote in Free Enterprise governments and we will live in a free country once again and prosper. With this philosophy, everyone will see through the stupidity of Socialism and Ed Stelmach every time a Socialism idea is put forward.
I believe that the foundation of many of our problems is the entitlement mentality that is prevalent in our society. We have socialized the concept of risk. We insure people and, as we have seen in recent months, businesses against poor decisions. This universal risk insurance is expensive – it requires a heavy bureaucratic burden on society which weighs us all down, as the bureaucracy is a consumer of wealth (or at the most innocuous, a re-distributor) and not a producer of it. The bureaucratic machine has become so large and cumbersome that it is nearly impossible for our elected representatives to truly monitor where everything is going. The provincial budget is somewhere near $40 billion dollars. How can there ever be enough people to properly monitor those funds to make sure they are being employed efficiently?
There’s too much fat built in to the way that the governments of the western world do business. Even the media doesn’t properly do their traditional job or monitoring and reporting. They simply sensationalize every piece of remotely bad news that will help increase their readership/viewership.
We need a wholesale teardown and rebuild of the system starting with the bureaucracy and the unions.
Dare I also suggest that, in the interests of a truer democracy, we go with proportional representation? As a conservative, I like that our party has been in power in Alberta for longer than my life, but I am also aware that in the process a great many number of people are effectively disenfranchised in the first-past-the-post system. Remember how that worked out for conservatives in the 1990’s federally?
Governments rise and fall depending mostly on economic cycles. When times are good – incumbents are relatively safe, and vice-versa. Many blame the Stelmach government for the current fiscal situation. All of the opposition parties would have us believe that Mr. Stelmach single-handedly caused the worldwide price of oil to fall from $140 because of the changes to the royalty structure. Forget about the fact that the industry is now paying $500 Million less in royalties under the new structure vs. the old with prices being where they currently are. When they can afford less, they pay less, when they can afford more, they pay more.
Before I ramble on further, let me come back to my point about entitlements. Whether it’s oil companies feeling they are entitled to a free ride because they “pay the freight” in Alberta, seniors feeling they are entitled to free (fill in the blank), or all of us feeling we are entitled to free health care, free use of the QE2, free this, or low cost that – it all costs something and has to be paid for somehow. We all need to adjust our expectations of what government provides and take the responsibility to monitor how they perform.
I’ll end my rant for now.
Clay
The problem with Alberta is that there are too many conservatives who did nothing while Ralph Klein sold off the provinces most valuable assets. I left Alberta and voted with my feet. Alberta thinks it’s better than other provinces and thinks it’s been harder working than other provinces but the truth is that Alberta got fat on conventional oil that is now over 90% depleted. The political will in Alberta is soured by the so-called grassroots movement that is really just a puppet to big-oil and who’s vision is no further than the end of their nose.
Well guess what Alberta, there’s only 10% of the conventional Oil reserves left and you’re now depending on the dirty tarsands to pull you through to the next half of this century.
The government lacked proper vision for the past 40 years to diversify alberta’s economy (not one car manufacturing plant in Alberta), yet Albertans complain when things go wrong in the rest of the country yet they’re loading up on imported goods.
What happens when you have no more oil to dope your bottom line? I guess Alberta will have to raise taxes and do what other provinces do. Taxes are good people, they can pave the way to a non-tar-sands future. Too bad that the elite in Alberta have already taken the money and run away. The rich do their best to evade taxes, but Alberta forgot to diversify during the good times.
Now Alberta can pin it’s hopes on cheap Chinese imports for selling what’s left of the oil. There’s virtually nil for manufacturing in Alberta except for the oilfield machining and service industry (that does not lend it’self to producing other items of value).
If Alberta could somehow reverse it’s worst mistakes (selling AGT, deregulating and selling off the utilities, diversify now to save pain later) then maybe Alberta can have a bright future.
It would involve attracting investment in manufacturing of new electric automobiles, wind mill generator factories and geo-thermal heat subsidies for residents so that Alberta can export more gas instead of waste it.
The Alberta disadvantage is very much more than just over-priced real-estate, it is in the high price of telephone and communications, over-priced utilities to pay for fat cat CEO bonuses of private and unaccountable companies. There is little democracy in oligopolized utilities. Alberta would have been better off keeping these monopolies/oligopolies as democratic residual revenue for the government rather than what it now has become (a printing press of cash for former friends of Ralph Klein).
The problem with the Conservative Reformed Alliance Party movement is that they do not believe that democracy can bring residual revenue in the form of monopolies. this same movement applauded the privatization of these monopolies yet the average Albertan never got any benefit and the average Albertan pays more for these services and relies more on low taxes from oil revenues than ever before.
How much crow does this movement have to eat before they change? I asked myself this question and it led to the answer:
Vote with your feet, leave Alberta and move somewhere else in Canada, you’ll probably find a more interesting job than purifying oil from sand, and you’ll get to write off your moving expenses provided that you work in your destination of choice gainfully. (this isn’t too hard, as yes Albertans, there are jobs in other provinces)
Check the MLS.ca for cheaper housing, and look up stats canada for employement statistics, choose the best destination, the risk is all private enterprise, but it’s the kind that goes in your pocket rather than in Calgary’s head office pockets.
BTW, if this doesn’t pass blog screening like my other highly accurate posts, you’re worse than the Chinese anti-free-speech officials.
Say hello to Preston Manning for me, his father oversaw the phenomenal growth of EdTel and AGT while premier and made sure Albertans paid low prices for their natural gas. Can’t say much for the conservatives though, they don’t even have socials to credit.
Dear Johnny Rocket,
They say “Love it or leave it”. You left. Goodbye, and thank you for doing so.
Enviro-Communists love to point out problems, but are lean on solutions.
State owned entities, like AGT and ED-Tel are good while they are good, however, unless they are run like a business where profits are re-invested back into the business to keep up with technology, they will die a slow death where costs for the consumer increase (either directly or by subsidy) and service degrades. Some may argue that this happened with Telus anyway. At least with the sale of Ed-Tel, the City of Edmonton kept an endowment fund that still produces revenue for the city.
You speak about the dwindling of conventional oil – you are correct, however the numbers may be up for debate. The fact of the matter is that no matter what you think of the resource, there is a demand for it. Are we involved in a middle eastern war right now over the Athabaska Oil sands? I think you’ll see that our ’sands are cost effective when put into those terms.
As far as selling off the utilities, the biggest one I can remember was the sale of the remaining shares of Alberta Energy Company back in the early 90’s. Alberta was not the majority shareholder at the time anyhow. As far as other utilities ATCO (Northwestern Utilities and Canadian Western Natural Gas) as well as AltaGas (Centra Gas) were always private utilities. They are regulated, but were never owned by the province.
In fact, I don’t believe that the government should be in business – especially when they are in competition with private industry. Government’s job is to create the environment where commerce can flourish. When that happens, companies pay their taxes, employ people who also pay their taxes, contribute to charities, etc.
As far as manufacturing goes, the reality is that manufacturing has been leaving the western world for more cost-effective labour in other countries. This is not an Alberta phenomenon. Some would argue that the unions have priced their members out of work.
Again, goodbye Johnny Rocket. And thanks for freeing up space for someone who wants to be here.