Category Archives: Bureaucracy

Some recommended reading.

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There are many factors that went towards creating the charming, modest and somewhat opinionated person that I am today. Growing up and observing the fallout of the National Energy Program gave me a healthy dose of regionalism and watching Thatcher and Reagan work to try and save us from the consequences of policy based on the drug-addled attitudes of the  sixties certainly helped shape my opinions on the political world.

There was one outright turning point in my thought and growth that stands out though. While in junior high we were required to read the short story Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut.  The story is a futuristic portrayal of what may happen should we continue the pursuit of equality where it simply does not exist. It excellently displayed the futility of such pursuits and the damage to free society that will result. It began my course down political philosophy which is still of course evolving.

Kurt Vonnegut was not a right winger by any stretch of the imagination. He was an admirer of early socialist labor leaders and was always critical of Republican governments . Vonnegut did recognize one of the critical flaws in socialism though and wrote on it.

In the pursuit of equality, one finds that they can’t pull the non-productive up to the level of the productive thus socialists tend to turn to pulling down the productive to the lowest common denominator instead. This is referred to as “Crab mentality”  and it is one of the most destructive trends we have.

The politics of envy run strong particularly when times are tough. We saw that in the vapid yelping of the “occupy” movement as they tried to separate and demonize a mythical 1% who they felt controlled the world. We see this as teacher’s unions fight every manner of testing of children and fight all forms of competition in schools. The every child gets a ribbon sentiment is nice but it damages children terribly when they encounter the real world and find out that we can’t always win.

Raj Sherman released his desperate provincial Liberal platform recently. In sprinting for low hanging fruit he has taken up the usual shallow stance of taxing the perceived rich. Despite numbers showing that people of higher income are already paying the vast majority of taxes in Canada, the lazy and envious want to drag these hard workers down even further.

The real outcome is secondary to the perception of equality.

Some years ago I was debating with a fellow on an internet forum about European health provision models. The discussion came to a point where it was proven that in some models by allowing people to pay out of pocket to jump the queue; the entire lineup gets shortened for all in the universal system. This fellow still was opposed to the possibility of utilizing these provision models. I doggedly kept on him and asked if he preferred that everybody waited and suffered longer as long as the suffering was equal. He floored me in his honestly when he said yes. This man’s envy could not let him abide by somebody getting faster treatment even if it meant faster treatment for everybody in the end. His attitude is shared by way too many people though many may not realize it or be as honest as this guy was about it.

The twisted ideals of equality and fairness when taken to extremes are incredibly destructive. The simplistic can be easily called out and led when a seductive case for dragging down the successful is made for the sake of political expediency.

It is a short story yet makes the point excellently. Again, I strongly suggest that folks take a moment to read Harrison Bergeron and more importantly think about the point it makes.

Remember Greece.

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Well the inevitable has happened. Many countries in the European Union are going broke due to decades of trying to tax, borrow and spend their way into prosperity. Sadly socialism does not die quietly and currently union led riots are tearing Greece apart as delusional citizens feel that protests and a deep sense of entitlement will somehow bring them resources that simply do not exist.

 What part of broke do they not understand? The cupboard is bare and is becoming so in Ireland, Portugal, Italy and many other European states.

We can’t get on too high a horse here in Canada. As we encourage an ever-growing governments on all levels we on a collision course with the same situation as Europe. We just have not progressed deeply enough into the hole of entitlement and debt yet.

As rioters who depended on cradle to grave socialism take to the streets in Athens, please look at the pictures and remember them at the appropriate times.

 When somebody tries to convince you that government debt is not a bad thing, remember Greece!

When government tries to convince you that a company is too big to fail,

Remember Greece!

If your government buys off public sector unions with unreasonable pension and wage concessions, before you go out to vote in the next election,

Remember Greece!

Before considering supporting a government promising massive spending increases

Remember Greece!

When people try to stunt economic development in the name of fanatical environmentalism and anti-capitalist ideology

 Remember Greece!

Greece has kindly though unintentionally  learned a lesson on our behalf and we would be pretty foolish not to heed it.

Will we look at hard realities now and bring our size and expectations of the state under control or will be go down the inevitable road to bankruptcy?

 It is pretty depressing to see how many Greeks still don’t get it. Tearing your cities to the ground will not make resources appear where they simply don’t exist.

City council is considering wasting your tax dollars in order to stunt business development.

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It is hard to tell which does more damage to Calgary’s business environment; city council’s indecision when it comes to zoning decisions or when city council actually makes a decision on something and intervenes in projects. They both are damaging in general.

There clearly is a great deal of money to be made in generating studies and reports while our cowardly city council tries their hardest to avoid making a simple decision on anything. Despite pretty clear evidence that a bike share program in Calgary is totally unviable and likely would turn into a terribly expensive taxpayer boondoggle, our council of cowards has turned away from completely shelving the program. $24,000 has been wasted on one biased bike-share study and our council has decided to throw more good money after bad in order to study the issue further.

Last year I went to a meeting at my community association where an exasperated lawyer was trying to build his case to get the city to give him the green light to build a small office complex on Center street near 41 ave. He had bought some houses there under the assurances that he would have no trouble in getting his offices approved and he would be able to construct and move into his new facility. This was not to be so and the poor man was jerked around by the city system for a couple years. He has since put all those houses up for sale and one can see the line of realtor signs on Center north of the Tim Hortons there.

You see, there is an element of the hard left who have this long-term utopia in mind where Calgary would have LRT access to all portions of the city and that includes a proposal to run a train right up Center street.  While there is no official plan on the books for this extension and certainly there is no money to build it, there are some members of city council who want to see this happen. What is happening now is that they are stalling all development on Centre Street North as they know that new development on Centre would hinder plans and expropriation of property should the city decide in a decade or so to put a line there. This is similar to the provincial legislation that essentially seizes and devalues private property in anticipation of expropriation rather than just buying it.

The outcome of this unofficial policy on Centre Street North is stark, ugly and obvious. Houses are run down and worthless as owners will not put in any dollars to maintain a place that they expect to be expropriated. Crack houses, massage parlours and general slums are blossoming along this stretch of zoning uncertainty and things will only get worse. Who in their right mind would buy property on Centre right now?

I can’t imagine how much that poor lawyer lost in his attempt to develop something nice and new in good faith. He still hasnt managed to sell those dumps that he purchased.

The impact spreads beyond Centre as well. We have seen a marked increase in general crime and vandalism in our neighborhood as the unsavory element drawn to the run-down houses walks to neighboring communities in hopes of stealing something for their next fix. This devalues houses for blocks around Centre and it is soley due to instability and indecision on the part of our ineffective city council.

Not simply content to meddle with development through their inaction though, our city council is now looking to stop development through direct action. Council decided yesterday to study (surprise surprise) an idea to purchase 19 hectares of land along Highway 1 in order to stop potential development of retail business.  This is getting outright insane people. This is not some rare natural area and it is not an area lacking in open space. Have a look at the picture below to see the massive volume of undeveloped and protected space already set aside in that area.

What we have in city hall these days is an almost religious-like fervour against the concept of what some pejoratively call “sprawl”. This anti-business gang will stop at nothing to try and hinder city growth and this idiotic notion of buying land to stop retail development is a clear indicator of it.

Lets assume that the city wastes millions and millions of our dollars to buy this land in a gross dispay of market intervention. What will the consequences be? Well, our reputation as a good place to do business will sink further as instability in zoning is assured and the anti-development attitude of our council is more clearly exposed. The retail businesses that were considering that site will not simply vanish. What will be more likely to happen is that a larger new retail center will simply be developed farther West this causing people to commute even farther for their purchases. How green. Residential development will push even farther as it chases retail services and the dreaded “sprawl” will have expanded more.

Get real you fools! Calgary is a thriving and growing city. We are blessed with the open space surrounding us that allows us to grow and build good neighborhoods for our families. To those who really want to see the outcome of high density planning may I suggest a trip to Manhattan. There you will see obscenely expensive real-estate values due to lack of supply. That leads in turn of course to neighboring slums and ghettos that are totally unimaginable in cities like Calgary. Homeless and crime levels in densely packed cities are worlds worse than ours and much of the reason is density.

People are welcome to pursue whatever unrealistic utopia they like I guess. What is concerning though is that these blinded idealists have found their way onto city council.

Airdrie, Okotoks, Cochrane and Strathmore will continue to thrive and people will continue to develop outwards to avoid the congestion and discomfort that anti-“sprawl” measures will bring about. We will continue to grow as a city but our development will be an odd hybrid of sattelite cities and a dysfunctional downtown crowded with discarded rental bikes and empty busses.

Please Calgary can we elect a city council with a grain of common sense in 2013? We really need to break the trend.

A couple places to cut spending.

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Whenever it comes to spending cuts, supporters of big government like to try and act as if spending on core services will have to be decimated. Nenshi loves doing that in Calgary when people complain of tax hikes. He likes to ask if people don’t want their streets plowed or if people want policing cuts.  There are hundreds of other areas of spending that we could reduce or simply do without altogether. Some of these are some pretty big ticket items on the national and provincial fronts.  

 In the 21st century, we have utterly no need whatsoever for a State Broadcaster. The CBC was initially formed to help bring information and communication across a very vast country. Broadcasting infrastructure such as local studios and towers did not yet exist and the CBC indeed helped unify the nation in bringing all of that together. Those days however are long gone. Satellite technology ensures that people have access to information whether through radio, television or internet in every corner of the country. While working in the arctic, I never saw a house without a satellite dish. Cellular coverage is available on the ice-roads on the Beafort Sea. 
 

 Our State Broadcaster is completely obsolete yet it is costing Canadians $1.2 billion per year. If privatized, I am sure that the infrastructure of the CBC  would be worth at least a few billion when sold as well. That money could be dedicated to the national debt thus reducing interest charges thus allowing for more spending on core services. I am sure that most provinces would be happy to dedicate another $100+ million per year to their health expenditures even if indeed it does mean that we will see fewer reruns of Anne of Green Gables and Little Mosque on the Prairie.

 Another behemoth of spending that we really don’t require is bilingualism. Let’s face it, aside from Quebec, New Brunswick and to a much lesser degree Ontario, French speakers are in such a tiny minority that it is a joke to really consider the rest of the provinces to be bilingual. Unilingual French speakers are an even smaller minority within a minority. The amount we are spending on this microscopic segment of the population however is not small at all.

 A recent study has found bilingualism to be costing $2.4 billion per year in Canada.

Now perhaps a case can be made for enforced bilingual services in some of our Eastern provinces but lets look here in Alberta (the other Western provinces are similar).

 In Alberta, 1.9% of our province consider French to be their mother tongue. Only .05% are considered to be unilingual French speakers. Think about that folks because it really is only the unilingual ones we need to be concerned with here when it comes to providing French services. In provincial bilingual spending alone, we spend $2027 per year per unilingual French speaker. With federal spending on top of that the cost becomes much higher.

 That sure is a lot of money to spend to ensure that a tiny minority can read the back of a cereal box in their preferred language.

 What is the long-term goal for this spending anyway? Is it expected that we will have a large population fluent in both official languages in Alberta? If that is the case, it has been a terrible failure. French is not growing in popular use in Alberta no matter how much we spend on it.

 Is it really that impossible to model spending based on actual need?

 When will we allow common sense to creep into spending decisions? We are seeing countries all around the world going broke because they thought that they could tax, borrow and spend themselves into prosperity. Those countries are now being forced into considering some almost crippling austerity measures to make up for their past overspending. We are in an envious position in that we have not hit that debt/spending wall yet. We need to get rational about what we spend on and how much.

 Where are our priorities? In virtually every poll health and education are the top two concerns voiced by Albertans. Why then are we running short on the aforementioned items while spending billions on luxury programs such as the CBC and bilingualism that only service tiny minorities?

 Think to yourself, will your life change radically for the worse if the CBC were privatized? Would Alberta suffer a crippling cultural blow if we no longer spent millions upon millions to accommodate a convenience for .05% of our population?

 With more time and research people can find all sorts of areas where spending can be cut without any measurable effect on our core services. We need to remember that when elected officials try to play that bait and switch method in defending the hyper-expenditure increases being made by big government.

 We can still maintain a high standard of health and education provision while not raising taxes or overall government expenditures. We have a great deal of spending cuts to make on items that we don’t need however.

What is with the prohibitionists these days?

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What we have been seeing is a trend of incremental prohibitionism. The Progressive Conservative government has been constantly bringing in intrusive business legislation and taxing the hell out of anything they see as sinful. It is clear who the social conservatives are in Alberta and anybody pointing fingers at the Wildrose Party is way off base.

I wrote on Redford’s prohibitionism here.

I covered Redford’s nanny state social engineering here.

Redford has shown that she has embraced a mandate to engineer our actions in what she has determined to be “for our own good”, and she will not hesitate to step on some rights to do it. This has now had the consequence of emboldening others who would like to see big government legislate our personal actions even further.

Police Chief Rick Hanson is speaking out hoping that government raises the drinking age.

5 young Calgarians have died in the last year from illegal ecstasy overdoses and Chief Hanson wants police to chase first year university students who may dare have a beer!

 Get your head out of your ass Hanson. You complain about lack of police resources every budget year yet you want to have officers running around charging 18 year olds for drinking? Your police can’t be that strapped if these are your priorities. Take care of the youth dying from illegal drug use before you come back to us to try and broaden the age of prohibition.

 As I saw pointed out in other comments, 18 year olds can enlist in the army and die for our country. 18 year olds can vote in elections and 18 year olds can work and pay full taxes. 18 year olds can marry. The age of majority is 18. Get over it and let them drink.

Guilty until proven innocent.

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One would think that our elected officials would understand the profound importance of the process of legal defense when it comes to application of the laws. In a mad rush of misguided nanny state prohibitionism, provincial legislatures have illegalized what is technically legal through lowering alcohol limits below the .08 standard that is set in criminal law. Not only does this move target a category of drivers that statistically do not cause many accidents, this move deprives people of the legal rights of defense that are provided in other criminal matters.

 Due to driving and apparently the possession of money not being entrenched rights within Canada, provincial legislation allows people to be punished through the removal of their drivers licenses and through fines without any form of defence in a proper court. If a person relies on their vehicle for work they may find themselves unemployed. If a person relies on a vehicle to visit family they may find themselves isolated. If a person relies on money to pay the bills, they may face collectors if they can’t afford the fines levied without any means of defence before a judge.

 The simplistic may say: “So what? If it saves one life…….”. Well that is nothing short of idiotic. Following that logic we have to ban motor vehicles altogether as it can be proven that it would save thousands of lives. Again as well, statistics show that the number of accidents caused by people with .05-.079 blood alcohol in their system are virtually insignificant. The vast majority of drunk driving accidents are caused by people who are well over the .08% limit. There really is a good reason why the law sets the limit there.

 Other fools may say, well if we simply don’t drink at all we have nothing to fear. Well for one, drinking is legal and why should we not allow ourselves to responsibly indulge in it simply because our provincial politicians want to bypass legal defence procedures? 

 For another thing, as has been proven a person who is totally sober can have their personal rights completely violated and their lives turned upside down though this method of “trial by roadside”.

 Abused at the side of the road and punished without trial, Margaret MacDonald had to get her blood tested on her own at a local hospital where it was proven that she was not drunk. This did not stop the punishment of course. Ms. MacDonald still had a three month driving suspension and $500 fine with no means to defend herself in court. Even if some time down the road it is determined that MacDonald was innocent, it is not like a driving suspension can be taken back.

 How many other innocent people have been charged and punished but may not have had the foresight to go to a hospital to have an immediate blood test to try and prove their innocence? How many others have been convicted at the roadside but perhaps were given a faulty test or had other circumstances that showed they were indeed sober? Having no legal means to investigate or defend as we do in criminal law it is impossible to tell now.

 Lets not beat around the bush people. These laws are being put into place by neo-prohibitionists who simply do not want to see people drinking in any circumstance and they are not afraid to violate individual rights in their means to end drinking. Stats show there was no need for these laws and common sense says that we need proper means of defense.

Think of it this way, you may be better off being totally plastered and blowing .12% rather than blowing .06% which is legal but punishable. At least the plastered drunkard has a means of defense in court.

The encroachment of personal rights and the bypassing of common sense systems of legal defense is not a small thing. We need to stand up for ourselves and toss out these nanny-staters. If we continue to tolerate their abuse of our rights, there is no end to what they will come up with.

 You could be next.

Using the process to kill progress.

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During the Joint Review Panel hearings for the Mackenzie pipeline environmental activists learned that they could delay and bind up the process through taking advantage of the open hearings process. Time was dedicated at the hearings for people concerned with the pipeline to speak and ask questions and the registration process was simple to encourage locals to come to the hearings. Unfortunately, few locals managed to get those spots as they were crowded out by activists from all over the nation who flooded the applications and bogged the entire progress.

 The environmentalists did not care about local input from people who actually could have been impacted by the project. The activists cared only about shutting down all development at any cost and through any means. The Joint Review Panel went years over their allotted time in the hearings. By the time the findings for the seemingly endless hearings were released (the pipeline was approved), costs had escalated so much and the economy had dropped by so much that it simply was no longer feasible to break ground on the pipeline. Poverty and unemployment are rampant in the Mackenzie Delta region as many Inuvialuit people had trained to work in what was supposed to be a growing energy sector that the environmentalists had essentially shut down. The eco-radicals really don’t care about the human fallout in their cult-like opposition to all forms of progress.

 Credit has to be given to the environmentalist radicals, they learned from the experience. Now anti-progress groups have expanded outside of Canada’s borders and have flooded the entire process with 4,500 applications from people from all over the world to speak against the project.

 Again, clearly the environmentalists do not care whatsoever if local people who truly may be impacted by this project get to speak and be heard. The eco-crowd is pushing all rational discussion to the side as they abuse the entire process at the cost of it’s very legitimacy.

 It has now been found that environmentalist groups had been signing up people as interveners without their consent or knowledge.

 In a religious sort of fervor, the opponents of the project set aside all ethics and honesty as they will utilize any means to try and halt the entire process. These people are not rational nor are they principled. These people have no interest in discussion or study of the issues nor are they interested in any form of compromise. The opponents of the Northern Gateway pipeline are primarily extremists who want nothing less than a complete shutdown of Alberta’s oilsands. They have failed to stop the oilsands directly so now they are trying to block all means to sell the product. I wish the environmentalist set would one day realize that their welfare cheques are heavily funded through taxes paid by oilfield workers.

 Yesterday I saw an interview with a crackpot representing the Sierra Club who took offense to having been called a radical. He then went on a rant directly comparing those who use fossil fuels to people addicted to heroin. Sorry pal, you are the complete and perfect picture of a radical. Get over it.

 While the anti-progress groups have learned from past hearings, it appears that the regulatory bodies have not. There has only been one day of hearings so far and it is clear that the process will be a long and expensive waste of time if we have to give 10 minutes of speaking time to 4500 extremists who have filled out an online form. The process needs to be completely revamped so that the foreign extremists are filtered out while people with legitimate concerns are still able to address the panel.

 From the statements coming from the Prime Minister and our Environment Minister it is pretty clear that the government sees how a well meaning process has been hijacked by the extreme and they are not impressed. It is too bad that Sheila Leggett (panel chair) could not see this obvious flaw in the process. I expect and hope that the federal government intervenes and gets this project back on the rails as clearly the panel is not capable of it.

 The extreme will always be with us and they have a right to speak. We need to stop catering to them every time they begin wailing however. These groups oppose every possible form of energy generation on simple principle. They are not rational and will never add anything of worth to realistic processes.

 We have a growing population and a global market. Until a perpetual motion machine or something is invented, conventional energy development is nothing less than a necessity and we have to stop letting radical extremists hinder reasonable developments.

Realities of reserve housing.

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Every new year we see a pile of retrospective “stories of the year” being reprinted and broadcast. The reality is that much of the press is enjoying their holiday season and those “year that was” sort of things make for good filler. One story that is in every compilation of issues this year has been the housing crisis on the Attawapiskat reserve. We can pretty much see that story every year in January, the only thing that really changes is the name of the reserve that has hit crisis levels.

The optics from Attawapiskat were striking. People were living in terrible conditions on a Northern reserve with a long cold winter looming before them. A person would have to be totally heartless to not feel terribly for the conditions that these people are living in and enduring.

When most people see scenes like that, they want to see the situation changed and as soon as possible. Unfortunately people often gravitate towards the the most simplistic of solutions to troubles and assume that government has somehow been shorting our aboriginal communities in support for housing. Our State Broadcaster (the CBC) is always overjoyed to perpetuate that myth.

The reality is that we have been massively increasing support for housing on aboriginal communities through funding and education in management. The harder reality is that little will change on reserves in Canada no matter how much we increase resources directed towards them because the entire concept of the reserve system and the Indian Act is a catastrophic and unworkable failure.

I suspect that many people don’t understand the damage that has been done due to generations of utter dependency and a lack of property ownership in our system of racial segregation through reserves. I took a drive to a nearby reserve the other day to take some pictures and demonstrate the futility of trying to build new housing in perpetuity.

The reserve I toured was a Dene one in Northern Alberta. This reserve is actually in much better shape than many that I have worked on in the North. Much of that is due to relatively easy access, a nearby flourishing energy industry and an large band based oilfield services company. Despite all that though, 70% of the adult population of this reserve is unemployed (the service company primarily employs off-reserve people) and only 18% of adult members possess a high school equivalent diploma despite constantly rebuilt educational facilities. This is no fault of the residents. Nobody can easily be functional in the workforce or educational system when raised in these messed up enclaves of dependency and misery that we call reserves. Simply  working one’s way out of a rut is not really an option for most though the means appear to be right there.

Despite being better than your typical reserve, this one demonstrates the many traits that are common to all isolated reserves. One can see trends of housing types as different contracts are awarded and designs utilized year by year to try and keep up with the insatiable demand. The condition of the houses varies widely depending on the condition of the occupants. There are very very few housed to be found that are more than 20 years old as they simply do not last that long on reserves.

Below are some typical houses on the reserve. Most are of modest size, simple and functional.

 

Now the above pictures are of standard houses on the reserve. Below is the exception that is invariably found on a reserve. The house below is likely that of the Chief or at least one of the Chief’s close friends or relatives. On almost every reserve one can find this disparity in housing provision as like it or not, corruption is rampant and the designation of housing falls directly to the Chief and council. A small group of large and often opulent houses can be found on almost every reserve. This one was not the most striking that I have seen in that regard but the house and yard below clearly surpass that being given to the typical band member.

One can see some of the frustration of band members when they are living with a large family crammed into a modest 700 square foot house while the Chief and friends enjoy large modern homes with nicely landscaped yards. This is one of the things that helps lead to the complete disregard for the condition of their own homes.

As band members do not actually own their own homes and their disposition is at the whim of the Chief and council, there is pretty much little to no incentive to perform any maintenance upon their houses. Why replace a window when you can’t own or sell the place? Why reshingle? Why maintain sewage piping or drainage?

Below it can be seen what happens when windows get broken on reserve housing.

Poly can be used.

 Tuck tape can be used.

  Most commonly boards are used.

 With no work being done to maintain them, houses deteriorate very quickly. With a very harsh Northern climate, this problem is even more acute.

One can always find houses in their final state of disrepair  yet still occupied to demonstrate the housing problems on reserves. The only real variable is where the finger of blame gets pointed.

A very common sight on all reserves are seeing relatively new houses boarded up and abandoned as they have become uninhabitable. Mold and fire are the most common causes. These houses are essentially destroyed from the inside out due to lack of maintenance and respect for the house itself. These are everywhere.

The anger, disrespect and social challenges lead to having to turn all band services buildings into small fortresses to protect them from vandalism and break ins. This too is common of pretty much all reserves.

All of the buildings have barred windows or heavy rolling shutters along with heavy iron doors. At the least this must be psychologically disturbing to residents.

Getting back to my initial point, the problem on these reserves is not for lack of funding. New houses are being constructed (at great expense in isolated communities) all the time. It is nearly impossible to keep up with the destruction however.

 

We see a great deal of hysteria finger pointing when Canadian reserve conditions come to light. Most Canadians are urban living and have never had opportunity or need to actually spend time on reserves in person. This leaves many people vulnerable to such myths as that of Canada not directing enough resources towards reserve housing. That is why I hope that providing a pictoral posting helps people see a little more and understand just how it is on these reserves.

It is without doubt that there is housing crisis on Canadian reserves. There is no denying that there are countless other social and economic challenges being endured by reserve natives. The question is not whether or not current conditions are acceptable. The question is how to change this.

My conclusion is to work towards a complete end to the reserve system and rescinding the Indian Act. Decades have pretty much proven that this current path is an utter failure that is only causing human suffering at great expense to the rest of the nation.

Some people indeed may have a case to make on fixing the system as it is. I look forward to seeing some more creative solutions.

To claim that not enough resources have been directed to Canadian reserves however is shallow and simply wrong. These are a deeply troubled people and the capacity for them to consume resources is infinite with no visible sign of progress. The entire system must change.

We need to stop looking at the past and trying to somehow use it as an excuse to justify the mess we are enduring presently. The status-quo is serving nobody aside from some chiefs and many overpaid, parasitic bureaucrats and lawyers who make their living in the “Indian industry”. We need to recognize that the status-quo is not sustainable and we need to honestly look at how to work towards a better future.

I hope that more people begin to look more deeply at these issues so that we may begin to make real progress on this. It truly is a shame that we have so many people living like this in a land so blessed with resources.

It’s for the children!!!

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Well, Redford has only been in power for a scant few months but it is very clear that she intends to continue and even increase the intrusive nature of our provincial government. Not satisfied with Stelmach’s intrusions on private business through minimum product pricing and strict regulation of sales, Redford went further through utilizing loopholes in our laws so that legal drivers may be punished for having a drink or two despite being well under the legal limit. That pesky legal process and defense thing was neatly sidestepped as Alison’s temperance bill was rammed through the legislature.

Next Allison began the process of increasing taxation on products that she considers to be sinful. It is of course for our own good. We cannot be trusted to make decisions for ourselves so Alison has kindly taken it upon herself to guide our actions and punish us should we stray from the moral course that she has determined for us.

Now Redford has moved into considering intrusive legislation telling us how we may behave around our children while on what we consider to be our own property. I say consider as we really don’t have legislated property rights and the Progressive Conservatives have never failed to take advantage of that Charter shortcoming. Mom Redford want’s to ban smoking in vehicles with children. Once that law is in place it only makes sense to ban smoking in households with children in them. Perhaps monitors will be placed in our homes or a special force will perform snap inspections upon us. As long as that rallying cry of it being for our own good and it being “for the children!!!” is used it is beyond question no?

Now it is indeed beyond question that smoking in enclosed spaces with kids can’t be good for them. The question though is how far should government go in directing our actions? How intrusive will government get? How many more decisions will be taken from parents as Redford determines that it may be bad for kids?

Second hand smoke is far from the leading cause of health issues for children. If government is really serious about coming into our households and raising our kids, they had better look at some of the real issues.

Overweight children leading sedentary lives have a great assortment of health challenges. Type II diabetes is getting diagnosed at earlier and earlier ages due to childhood obesity. Further issues of heart problems and injuries often come with very overweight kids.

Now having proven that obesity causes harm to children, Alison may feel fully justified in interfering with our lives and decisions for the sake of the children. Where shall she begin? The Progressive Conservatives love finding new ways to tax people and business. A “fat tax” has been proposed many times before by nanny statists. I am sure Redford would love to tax us all for daring to eat what she considers to be unhealthy foods.

Perhaps a minimum age can be applied for fast food establishments. Maybe we can ban pizza delivery from households with children in them. Perhaps Alison’s personal cigarette inspection force can check refrigerators while they storm our houses in case we have fattening food hidden within them. We can fine people who dare keep a wayward chocolate bar or can of ravioli instead of broccoli and carrots.

Of course, healthy eating is only half of the equation. Kids need excersise as well. Now here we hit a conundrum. You see, play and sports are leading causes of injury among kids. Redford can’t simply allow kids to run amok skinning knees and breaking bones. While helmet wearing is enforced, bikes still cause thousands of injuries to children every year. Bike riding must simply be banned until adulthood when Nenshi can take over and force these healthy new adults to bike to work in winter in his new green utopia.

Baseball, football, hockey, skiing, horseback riding, tennis, track and field, basketball, soccer, ringette, lacrosse, roller blading, tobogganing, tag, duck duck duck goose and countless other childhood activities cause inevitable injury. These activities must be halted.

Nerf balls will be issued to all households as the sole sporting good.

 

Physical education in schools will consist of closely monitored yoga. Schools will provide great opportunity for further monitoring of children though lunchbag inspections and weight monitoring. Alison’s recent purchase of the Alberta Teachers union will greatly facilitate these changes.

 

Household accidents are a leading cause of childhood death/injuries. Houses with children will need to be inspected to ensure all electrical outlets are blocked. All cars will be equipped with backup alarms and cameras (at owner expense of course). Dangerous cleaning items can’t simply be regulated, they must be banned!! People can clean with water and sand. We can’t risk bleach! Remember, it’s for the children!!!

Safety tips will be mandated and worn on shirts by parents (at owner expense of course).  Those darned kids won’t be running with scissors again any time soon if Mom Redford has her way!

 

Why stop at childhood though? Injuries among adults are costing health dollars too. Mandated padded safety suits shall be worn at all times!

 

While all of the above sounds unrealistic, it is a reflection of the trend that the Redford government is following. Personal rights are being violated in the name of the patronizing attitude of government regulating our behavior “for our own good”. These trends do not stop nor do they become more rational as time passes. Regulations continue to grow (as well as punishments) as nanny statists find more and more ways to try and control all of our actions. Anybody who has worked on an oil project where the safety guys have run amok can understand this. The controllers can cripple all activity with no regard for outcomes.

I am not saying that it is good to smoke around kids nor is it good to let them lay around eating cheeseburgers until they bloat. What I am saying though is that it is not the governments job to determine these things for us nor is it government’s role to regulate and guide of our personal choices through means of punishment and force. It is clear that Redford does not trust us to make our own choices in life and she is more than willing to take on the role of nanny for us all.

If we allow the simplistic justification of child protection with every new intrusion in our lives and choices by government, then all of the above examples I set are not beyond reality whatsoever. Government control is an incremental thing and the frog in water analogy works very well when it comes to the controlling actions of nanny statists.

Alberta has long been a province known for compassionate individualism and laissez faire practices. We have allowed government to erode those principles and Redford is proving herself to be the greatest threat to our personal freedoms of them all.

Soon (we don’t know for sure when due to Redford lying about electoral reform) we will have a provincial election. This will be an important one as if we give Redford a strong mandate we will be assuring ourselves of rampant and intrusive government growth for at least four years. We need to work hard to ensure she does not get that chance.

Get used to seeing it.

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This happens every few years. A native reserve hit’s bottom due to a myriad of reasons and a news story comes out showing people living in deplorable conditions. The flavor this year is the Attawapiskat. A while back it was Kashechewan with their water troubles. Even earlier than that was the mess in Davis Inlet. We have seen other random images of reserves all over Canada in between and the pictures are almost uniformly ugly.

Fingers are being pointed in all directions. Government is pointing out how 10s of millions of dollars had been directed at the reserve from the government. The Chief is pointing wildly in every direction while trying very hard to avoid any form of audit or outside management. Advocacy groups are worked into a lather and blaming everybody they can see for the problems.

People are calling for more money to be spent. Some are calling for more or less self-government on reserves. Some are even calling for UN intervention.

What we are not hearing enough is people calling for an end to the entire reserve system!

Lets face it people. This entire concept of separating groups of people from society based on their race is utterly wrong and has been a colossal failure. By every measure reserve life falls short of off-reserve standards of living. With a few notable exceptions, pretty much every native reserve in Canada is a socio-economic mess rife with crime, poverty, domestic abuse, substance abuse and simply general misery (particularly on the more isolated reserves).

What did anybody really expect? Imagine anybody being born and raised on one of our isolated reserves and try to imagine how this hypothetical person would not be dysfunctional. Being born into a modern reserve now is to be immediately brought into a mess of dependency with a hybrid clashing of cultures. You are exposed to modern comforts and through television and the internet you can see what the world has to offer. You are raised with a sense of entitlement as you are told that anything and everything that ever goes wrong in your life is somebody else’s fault. Even should you have ambitions for more, there is little work to be found aside from working for the band itself. If you are not in the Chief’s inner circle of friends and family, you will likely not find band employment. You are in a massive cycle of utter dependency with no sense of purpose and no sign of a light at the end of the tunnel. Is it all that surprising that suicide and substance abuse run rampant?

People keep pointing to injustices of the past as if that somehow justifies our contemporary injustices. I will say it outright, yes the residential school policy and the attempted assimilation of natives was a horrific chapter in Canadian history. Those policies are directly responsible in many ways for the social dysfunction in native communities as entire generations lost touch with how to cope individually and as families. The damage is now being passed on to future generations despite the policy ending decades ago.

Stand back a bit and look at this folks. Try to set aside what you would like to see and see what simply is. Can you honestly look at an isolated native reserve and see a good future for people there? What do you envision in a generation from now? Two generations? Most of these reserves do not have the local resources to sustain their populations no matter how some may try to develop them. Do you think it is right that we keep a growing population in a location where complete dependency  on government is assured? Is that really a decent goal?

I have worked most of my life in the oilfield and have spent time on reserves throughout Canada’s North and West. Every year I see conditions becoming worse despite new programs and new spending constantly being applied. People may think that some form of cultural preservation is happening from this. What has formed is a unique but awful hybrid culture of people who no longer find themselves fitting in anywhere. Past cultural practices are being lost and a potato chip and television culture is replacing it. Is that a noble goal?

People do not need to live in their original nation in order to retain elements of their culture. Check out a Chinatown in any major city. Look to any Indian or even Eastern European communities and see how they still retain and celebrate their cultures despite being a  half a planet away from their places of origin. Sure these people have embraced and taken on aspects of Western culture. That is natural and it is a good thing.

Cultural evolution is not assimilation! No culture now is as it was 100 years ago and 100 years from now no culture will look quite like it does today. Cultures are not static things. They change and evolve with changing times and circumstances. Despite this, some feel that reserves will keep some sort of retroactive enclaves of noble indians who will resist change and stay as they were centuries ago.

Leave culture alone. Trying to artificially retain a culture is as abhorrent and wrong as it was trying to eliminate them.

The entire native issue has always frustrated me to no end as I work and see the misery first-hand every year and I see it getting worse. I am long on pointing out problems and unfortunately short on solutions with this one. Take a drive some time East or West and have a close look at our neighboring reservations. Look at the abandoned houses or even worse the occupied ones. Look at the wild dog populations and look at the garbage. Most importantly, look at how the people carry themselves. That is the most disturbing aspect of them all.

Race based policy is always wrong. It is race based policy that created the aboriginal mess that we have today and further race based policy is not going to fix it.

There are many ideas out there on how to reach an end to the reserve system. The most promising involve property rights. I understand that we can’t simply end the system and toss a dysfunctional population into mainstream society. We need to start looking to an end to this however.

We can talk about all sorts of spot fixes. Until one concludes that the reserve system must end however, they will not be looking at a sustainable long-term solution to anything. It is a sick system of racial segregation and everybody is losing native and non-native alike.