Few things undercut trust in political leadership more effectively than hypocrisy and we are seeing it in spades within Canada.
While we huddle in our homes, blocked from visiting family members while our jobs are lost and our businesses face bankruptcy, members of the political elite are basking on tropical islands in the comfort of knowing that their six figure incomes are protected.
While police will beat and threaten to taze youth for the crime of daring to play outdoor hockey:
A top minister in Doug Ford’s extremely oppressive administration is found to have been vacationing in the Caribbean while posting scheduled tweets to fool citizens into thinking he was actually in Canada. Doug Ford knew of this for weeks.
Note the asshole signaling virtue with his mask on. I suspect that he rarely wore it while in the tropics.
How many more are hiding out there?
Now that these guys are being exposed, the press is smelling blood in the water. Rest assured they are watching airports and social media postings. We will be seeing more of this.
How the hell can we be expected to sacrifice so much, ostensibly to fight the pandemic when those who are telling us to sacrifice won’t do it themselves?
The lockdowns will be falling apart in months to come and much of the reason will be a population tired of being told “Do as I say, not as I do!”.
We can’t take orders seriously if the political leadership doesn’t. Canada’s federal health minister was jet setting unmasked for months while we see American politicians breaking laws in order to see hair stylists.
They had best pray that the vaccine brings the pandemic under control because lockdowns are a fading alternative for people and hypocritical political leadership can carry much of the blame.
While Naheed Nenshi and other control obsessed politicians are trying to lock restrictions to cover for over a year from now, the passive majority is getting more and more upset.
A vaccine is providing a potential light at the end of the tunnel. People will put up with the lockdowns for now in hopes that the vaccine will work.
If the vaccine doesn’t work though, its over.
The virus will have to run its course.
We can’t keep locking down for years over a virus which has a 99.8 percent survival rate.
It will take a battle. Governments hate giving up power.
Citizens will not comply for lockdowns along with the bankruptcies, suicides, overdoses, cancer deaths and depression for years to come.
As soon as anybody in Alberta complains about equalization, you can rest assured that some haughty academic type will quickly spring into action and chide them with “You don’t understand how equalization works.”.
Now that Premier Kenney has formally committed to holding a referendum, we common slobs will have a great opportunity to be taught on the issue.
The Canadian equalization program is a convoluted mess and due to that, it is true that many folks indeed don’t fully understand how it works. Since that is the case, the ivory tower sorts who thrive on scolding commoners for their lack of understanding of equalization should be welcoming the Alberta equalization referendum with open arms. What better way to educate the unwashed masses than to have a pitched campaign held for over a month with pro and anti equalization sides making their case to the public on the issue?
Our imperious, learned classes are still upset despite this opportunity to educate those backwoods commoners through a referendum.
“It doesn’t matter what Albertans choose in a referendum!” they shout. “It can’t force Ottawa to change!”
This is true. A referendum is a great way to make a broad public statement though and again, it will help educate our ignorant souls right? When coupled with municipal elections, a referendum question isn’t a costly thing to add to the ballot. Of course, there are some left-wing municipal politicians who may not want a ballot item that may draw out conservative minded voters but that is a separate issue (and benefit of the referendum).
Our educated betters love to remind us “Alberta doesn’t cut an equalization cheque to Ottawa!”
This is indeed true. That doesn’t mean that equalization isn’t screwing us however.
Imagine all of the federal taxes collected from GST to corporate and income taxes all going into one big pot. The federal government then doles out transfers back to the provinces through a myriad of programs including equalization. It is through this method that the federal government has taken over $600 billion more tax dollars from Alberta than it has returned in transfers and services. So no, equalization never gets a dedicated cheque from Alberta. Ottawa simply takes it other ways. Quebec however does indeed receive an equalization cheque and it is almost always for the same amount that Alberta puts into confederation without a return.
Equalization is simply the one program where the government has specifically dedicated it to inter-provincial welfare and under the name of state-enforced economic equality (socialism) thus why it is such an odious symbol to we Albertans.
Yes then!
Let’s get on with the referendum. Let’s hash it out!
Educate us oh wise ones!
School us on how foolish we are to complain about pitching in so much to a nation that has now turned its back to us while we are down.
Then let’s see how we respond to this great learning opportunity when the question is formally put to us at the polls.
It will be a great educational exercise and a practice run for referendums on future issues.
I have written on it many times. I decided that its time to verbalize it.
Canada’s wretched, racist reserve system and Indian Act need to come to an end. How many more generations need to suffer? How much longer do we have to watch poverty, health issues, crime and general misery run rampant on Canadian reserves despite constantly increasing expenditures and dedicating resources to them?
Race based policy is always wrong and it shows in spades as Canada continues to try and fix an irreparable system.
If I could wish for any single policy that I could magically implement, it would be to end the racial apartheid happening in Canada with the reserve system. Aside from some parasitic lawyers and bureaucrats who benefit from it, this system creates nothing but misery for all and at great expense.
Lets start calling it out for the failure that it is so we can begin to look at realistic solutions to this growing crisis.
Yes I know that Covid-19 almost exclusively only kills the already dying.
Yes I know that the media and some self-serving elements of government have hyped the risks of Covid.
Yes I know that the initial modelling of the death rates due to Covid was utter bunk.
Yes I know that our policies have been driven more by fear than reason but we have to admit it, fear has won the day.
We have to take our medicine and get this damn pandemic into our rearview mirror while we still have a shred of economy to try and rebuild from.
The real court in this whole affair is the court of public opinion. Whether we like it or not, the majority of the public prefers to see government imposing crushing measures against our economy and free living than to let this bug run it’s course and I see no indication of this changing.
For the last two weeks in a row I have checked out the anti-mask/lockdown protests in Calgary and both times I have come away disappointed. If government is going to feel compelled to back off on restrictions it is going to take a huge groundswell of average citizens and this simply isn’t happening.
Yesterday the weather was as beautiful as it can be in December at nearly 14 degrees. There was little else to do thanks to limits on family gatherings, sports and other forms of weekend entertainment. If indeed there was a growing sentiment to have citizens rise up and tell government to back off, it will have shown yesterday. People should have been coming out in the thousands. Turnout went down.
At best there were perhaps 500 people and the crazy/rational ratio was similar to what I saw the week before. Yes, there were many genuinely concerned people who aren’t crazy who were in attendance but those people need to massively dominate these kinds of gatherings and they aren’t even close. The conspiracy theorists and paranoid dominated the affair and this will assuredly keep any reasonable pushback from growing.
As the first speaker railed on about the extremely well debunked myth that vaccines cause autism, it was clear that there was no grassroots movement of common people growing here.
I understand that the development of the Covid vaccine has been rushed which is of concern. That is a reasonable thing to be worried about. To start into the utter bullshit that vaccines cause autism or that they were modelled to control our minds though helps with nothing.
What do those in opposition of the Covid-19 vaccine want then?
Do they want us to drag out this on again, off again lockdown status for years? If something like a vaccine doesn’t bring this to an end, that is exactly what we will get. People aren’t pushing back en-masse and they clearly won’t.
We need a light at the end of this nightmare tunnel and vaccination is the only thing providing that.
No I don’t support mandatory vaccines. I am hopping though that most people are rational enough to understand that we need to get them.
So yes, I am going to push back against the anti-vaccination kooks who insist that one of the greatest medical developments in a century causes autism or was created by lizard people.
The worst thing that can happen is that the vaccine is ineffective. It is at that point when I think common citizens will finally rise up and say that we have to dump the restrictions and protect the vulnerable as best we can until this thing runs its course.
The bottom line though is that nothing is changing now until the vaccine has been broadly applied and hopefully works.
When people in my age and working bracket are eligible for the vaccine, I will get it without hesitation. I do hope and expect that a majority of other citizens follow suit.
When we are all lizard people together, it won’t seem so bad anyway. Then we can start working on recovering our economy.
