Tag Archives: ed stelmach

Something is very wrong.

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 Last week while at a local convenience store, I observed a young man demonstrating the telltale signs of being homeless. His hair and beard were overgrown and unkempt and his clothing was filthy. He appeared to be in his 20s and he got in line behind me. The young man was very polite at the counter as he deposited a handful of mixed change in order to purchase a cigar. What was most striking though was that when this man spoke it became quite obvious that this man was suffering from a developmental disability.

 About a month ago I had the opportunity to be taken on a tour of  The Vocational and Rehabilitation Research Institute by a friend. This is a non-profit institute that works in affiliation with the University of Calgary and has been doing so since 1969. This institute works with people with disabilities and helps them in a community support sort of role. The facility boasts a bottle depot and a contract with the Calgary Airport that employs people with disabilities. There are also some great recreational and rehabilitation facilities provided as well as their research facilities.

 I am sure that my description of the facility is doing it terrible justice so I do suggest that people click on the link to it in order to learn more about it. What I was most impressed with was that the people there are dedicated to trying to find rational and successful approaches to helping people with disabilities in our community.

 What I was not impressed with was the condition of the facility itself. While the functional areas were as well maintained as possible by staff with limited resources, entire sections were completely shut down. The building is getting old and they simply can’t afford the maintenance on sections of it. Old dorm rooms are now being used as offices and I saw three desks jammed into what obviously served as an individual dorm rooms for patients. The floors above that level were completely closed as was what used to be a cafeteria.

 Right-of-center people are often referred to as uncaring ogres and individualists to the point of not caring for anybody aside from themselves. In reality, most conservative-minded people live by the principle that we should take care of those who can’t take care of themselves as opposed to those who won’t take care of themselves.

 It should go without question that many people with mental disabilities and disorders fall into that category of not being able to take care of themselves. The degree of need varies from some limited community support to full institutional care.

 So why the hell is this realm of government programming so chronically underfunded?

 Crime and homelessness are constantly issues that people are concerned about. Unfortunately the solution always appears to be blind spending. For a person with a mental disability, affordable housing is not going to be of aid. New expensive downtown public washrooms will not help these people nor will expansion of homeless shelters. What is required are programs suited to helping these people based on the unique challenges that they face.

 Sadly, facilities such as the The Vocational and Rehabilitation Research Institute do not provide for the photo-op ribbon cutting ceremonies that new public toilets and expansions of homeless shelters provide. Such help for people is complicated and not romantic thus gets ignored by politicians.

 Decades ago a misguided initiative of deinstitutionalization took off in general public policy. It was considered inhumane that some people be kept in institutions for life and many people have been tossed in the streets due to this. Many of those people never should have been discharged and many of these people are the ones we see covered in rags under our bridges. The number of beds in mental health facilities in Canada are now a fraction of what they used to be. That statistic is not a victory, it means that thousands of people were put out on the streets that never had the life-skills required in order to make it on their own.

 I am not fond of the NDP. They are far to the other side of the ideological spectrum from myself. Credit must be given to the Alberta NDP today though for their persistence in obtaining and exposing a damning report of the Progressive Conservative’s treatment of mental health needs in Alberta.

 As is all too common with our provincial government, they have acted very strongly to suppress information that they determine to be detrimental to the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta. A report entitled “Beyond Beds…to Balanced Care Mental Health” was commissioned and presented to Alberta Health and Wellness and the Alberta Mental Health Board in 2007 and was approved by the Steering Committee on Mental Health.

 The report then disappeared.

 Alberta Health and Wellness refused an access to information request by the NDP to see the report. Albertans paid for this report, why the hell can’t we see it? It took a leak (somebody, somewhere has a conscience) for the NDP to obtain the report.

 It is easy to see why the Progressive Conservatives wanted to hide that report. The report is very damning of the government and their complete inaction on mental health issues. It shows that Alberta has four times fewer mental health beds than the national average. The national average is too damn low as it is.

 Rather than act on shortcomings, our government works to hide them. The Stelmach government does not care about our most vulnerable in society, they simply want to remain in power.

 While on their decade long spending spree, the PC government has more than doubled provincial spending. While pissing away our tax-dollars to who knows where, the PC government was also starving our mental health programs to the point where Alberta is the shame of the country. How do we spend far more per-capita in Alberta than any other province yet have the least amount of mental health beds? What are the priorities of our government?

 It is past time to do more than pay lip-service to crime and homelessness in Alberta. How much improvement would we see in these areas if we invested in helping people with mental challenges instead of working to hide them? We will never know the answer to that as long as Ed Stelmach remains in power.

 Keep these thoughts in mind every time you see some poor soul dressed in rags while pushing a shopping cart and talking to themselves.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation are “Goofballs”

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 At least according to the President of Alberta’s Treasury Board; Lloyd Snelgrove.

 Today I engaged in one of my more masochistic activities and watched question period in the Alberta Legislature. I was watching in vain hope of seeing some critical discussion of the record deficit budget that Special Ed Stelmach has dumped on Albertans. Sadly I was in for the usual disappointment. All I heard was repeated yelping from both the Liberals and the NDP using the words “Americanized” and howling about the deregistration of some health services.

 None of these fools seem to realize that it is prolonged overspending that has led to seeking ways to cutting services today.

 It is frightening seeing where discussion is in the legislature today. The Liberals swung deeply into left-wing territory with their election of  David Swann as their leader and the NDP has always dwelled in the land of Marxism. Both of those parties are thrilled with the deficit and would eagerly make it larger should they ever get the opportunity.

 Unfortunately the only voices calling for fiscal restraint and responsibility in Alberta are outside of the legislature. The Wildrose Alliance Party has been making great strides and growth but it will be some time before the party has the chance to gain a seat in the legislature. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has been very effective in promoting a common sense approach to spending but our government dismisses them as goofballs.

 Snelgrove, had you listened to the calls for fiscal restraint that those “goofballs” had been making in the last decade you would not be sitting in the legislature looking like an idiot for being part of the government that took Alberta from a projected $9 billion surplus to a record deficit in less than a year.

 It is critical that we get voices in Alberta’s legislature promoting fiscal sanity. As things stand now, we have parties that stand; center-left, left and far left. With a few more years like this, we will be lucky if our great great grandchildren will be able to pay off the accumulated debt. The Wildrose Alliance Party is the only party promoting fiscal common sense and we need to get their members into the legislature ASAP. Lets hope for some by-elections at least as Ed Stelmach will not want to face the electorate any time soon.

 The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has a blog here with some great postings.

Some more on Iris Evans’ “Good news budget”.

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 It has been hard on the stomach watching our irresponsible provincial government officials patting themselves on the back due to their being able to reduce their spending increase to a mere 3.7% this year. Remember, these people have not stopped increasing spending, only the rate at which they will increase it. They have done this masterful feat by running a potential $7 billion dollar deficit and raising taxes (property owners are taking it yet again). The last decade of double digit spending increases has given the government a rather heavy addiction to our money.

 Miring through the budget documents is a painful exercise and the government works as hard as possible to find out exactly what they are spending all of our money on.

 The Executive Council is one department that seems to have been spared the savages of spending restraint. The Executive Council is the premier’s office of course. Bundled in with the Executive Council is the Public Affairs department that many fondly refer to as the premier’s ministry of truth.

 Last year the Executive Council got a funding increase of 27%. In light of our tighter times, they have limited the raise in funding this year to a paltry 20%.

 You see, in the eyes of Ed Stelmach it is much more important to convince Albertans that government is doing a good job as opposed to actually doing a good job. The Ministry of Truth employs 118 full time little monkeys who are tasked with producing pretty flyers, advertisements, press releases and lacklustre blogs that blow sunshine up the collective asses of Albertans.

 It is not hard to see why the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta is always rolling in money. The party needs not spend any of their own money on advertisers. The Public Affairs department spends almost $15 million per year telling Albertans why the Progressive Conservatives are heaven sent.

 With this tax-funded propaganda machine working around the clock, we can see part of why it is difficult to dislodge a government that has been in power for almost 40 years.

 Special Ed clearly sees this importance as well. Why else would he keep pumping these massive spending increases into that department in these times of supposed government restraint?

ministry_of_truth

Let’s talk bailouts.

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 OK, it looks like reality finally bit Special Ed Stelmach in the butt and he has realized what tax hikes and socialism do; they stunt and reduce business activity. The greedy “fair share” strategy and royalty hike that Stelmach and Knight pursued brought no increase to provincial revenues and simply managed to pluck the golden goose. On what is Stelmach’s 8th or so “tweaking”  of the royalty regime, the engines of misinformation are working overtime to demonize the oilpatch again.

 A Herald headline the other day demonstrates this rather well:

 Stelmach announces bailout for junior, mid-cap energy companies.

 Tax relief does not constitute a bailout!

 You would think that with all of the real examples of bailouts that we are seeing lately that people would understand the difference. The “stimulus packages” that Harper and Obama are flogging on the backs of our grandchildren are bailouts. The cheques being handed to the auto sectors are bailouts. The cash that the CBC is demanding would be a bailout. The money Air Canada gets every time they mismanage themselves to the brink of bankruptcy is a bailout.

 Where is the cheque coming to the big bad oil companies? Where has the oil industry even asked for a bailout? There are cheques going out, have no doubt of that. The cheques however are going from energy companies to the government.

 Will every tax reduction in the future (should we see any) be defined as a bailout? When Harper reduced the GST, was he offering a bailout to the entire population of Canada? Are we all welfare bums in that sense that we have been bailed out?

 Unsteady Eddie was already realizing that his new royalty scheme was idiocy even before oil prices and the market went into the toilet last fall. Land sale revenues (another cheque from energy companies to government) had plummeted in Alberta to the point that government was not gaining anything with their new “fair share” royalty program. Stelmach had made Alberta uncompetitive and it was very apparent as exploration and development boomed in Saskatchewan and BC while Alberta saw a reduction in activity despite $140 per barrel oil prices.

 In light of the world economic situation, clearly Alberta would be seeing tough times right now whether Stelmach messed with our economy or not. The pain Alberta will feel through this recession will be far more acute due to the market mistrust that the Progressive Conservative gang led by the idiots Ed Stelmach and Mel Knight.

 We are hearing of a credit crunch. Energy exploration and development are capital intensive ventures that require long-term planning and investment. When an energy company seeks credit, like everybody else it must demonstrate assets to the financial institution that may finance development. In energy that translates to proven reserves and speculation on their value when these reserves are developed. Now imagine how hard it is to get credit when the value of your reserves and cost of development changes by the month as Stelmach keeps trying to tinker with the rules. Would you like to invest in a jurisdiction known for tearing up agreements and increasing their take after the development dollars have been invested? Rest assured investors are asking these very questions.

 Stelmach can reduce royalties to even below the levels we had prior to his initial messing around. The market mistrust in Alberta will not go away. It will take a change of government or at least a decade of some true and steady leadership before we see business confidence in Alberta again.

 Some people claim that energy companies have not done enough to win over the hearts of the public thus they lack support at times like this. Just how far are they to go exactly? Have a look around. How many billions must these companies invest in communities before some appreciation is shown? How many more hundreds of millions in charitable initiatives and sponsorships must they invest?

 I don’t think anything will help. Too many people like to simplistically imagine that all of these companies are headed by Scrooge McDuck types who are swimming in money taken from the public. People don’t look at the millions employed, the billions paid in income-taxes and billions spread from the community level to the entire nation. Many do not realize how deeply their pensions are invested in these companies or how many government services are provided thanks to revenue generated from these companies. I don’t know if perception will ever be changed.

 One area that energy companies are working on in hopes of getting a better perception is pumping money at groups who have fully dedicated themselves to demonizing the entire industry and I have to admit I am stumped with this one.

 The Pembina Institute is a leftist organization that is dedicated to misinformation and pretty much every effort possible to halt all energy development. In looking at their report, I am astounded and disgusted to see who is funding them:

There is only one donor listed over $50,000. That donor is ConocoPhilips. In the $10,000 to $20,000 category we find the Canadian Gas Association, Enmax, Nexen, The North American Oilsands Corporation, and Suncor Energy. Getting into the $1000 dollar range there is an even longer list of energy donors.

 Why are you guys paying this group to kick you in the nuts? Have these investments made the releases from the Pembina any more rational or fair? Do you really expect these people to suddenly embrace you?

 When we see anti-energy types howling that energy companies are being bailed out, I would suggest that the dollars wasted on the clowns at the Pembina would be much better spent on ads trying to inform the public on what a bailout actually is.

 Giving more cash to the Pembina is an exercise in masochism at best.