Tag Archives: alberta

Gem-grade Alberta ammonite fossils for high-end decorating

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My self-serving posting for the family business for the year.

The Ammonite Factory in Canmore has expanded into designing and selling ammonite fossils into show pieces for designer home and office decor.

Ammonite has recently been declared the official gemstone of Alberta. Finding whole fossils with gem-quality material is very rare.

Every piece is unique as fossils vary in size and color. A piece can be found to meet any decorating scheme.

Fossils inlaid into large Rundle Rock slabs can be mounted and displayed in any environment.

Blue and green are the rarest of colors

Fossils and art pieces can be sourced to fit your Feng Shui goals

Check out the Ammonite Factory online or come out to Canmore for a visit. There are gems, art pieces, and fossils for all tastes and budgets. Found only in Alberta Canada.

Meet Nate Pike from Calgary Alberta

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I support independent journalism along with citizen journalists. I should. I am currently making a living in that industry.

I think people’s efforts should flourish or wither based on the quality and principles of their work.

Nate Pike is a lowly person who participates in trash journalism based on posting the personal information of others and trying to expose them to ridicule or humiliation.

I don’t think Nate should be sued, swarmed online, or canceled. I just want to ensure that his actions are documented online in perpetuity for those who may be searching his name for whatever reason.

The recent action taken by Pike was to post the profile from a dating site of a person who had been out of politics for years. There was nothing unusual in the profile. Just a person who was seeking to meet somebody. Nate thought it was a good idea to post an image of the profile on his little news account called “The Breakdown” and essentially tried to belittle the person in a snickering way.

Even Pike’s own followers were repulsed by the pointless invasion of somebody’s personal space and privacy online. They called for Nate to pull down this puerile, pointless posting.

This is where Nate Pike’s true nature shines through. He refused then and refuses now to delete the posting. As of this posting, it still remains up.

We all make mistakes. Many of us have posted impulsive things online that we shouldn’t have. The mark of a decent person though is the ability to realize an error and work to correct it. Deleting his disgusting post would have been the first and least of the efforts Nate Pike could have made to right this wrong. Apologizing would have been even better. Instead, Nate Pike wants the posting to remain on the internet forever. Just as this little posting about Nate will.

So keep this in mind if you are researching Nate Pike from Calgary Alberta who has run for the Alberta Party in a provincial election and for Ward 3 in a municipal election. He is a petty little man who gets off on trying to humiliate others who have done nothing to him.

Bear that in mind as well if looking into his little venture into citizen’s journalism with @thebreakdownAB where he posts personal information on others while begging for donations with a Patreon account. There is little of credibility to be found in his writings.

Hope you grow up one day Nate. Until then, enjoy this little bit of the attention you so clearly were seeking.

Carbon can be a commodity rather than a liability

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While the term “Just Transition” sounds innocuous enough, it is anything but. It represents a plan based on the presumption that the world will no longer need petrochemical products in the near future. Proponents of Justin Trudeau’s “Just Transition Act” view energy transition as being a black and white issue. They feel that petrochemical production must be halted altogether as soon as possible while we seek new means of energy generation. This ideologically driven approach to policy is certain to irreparably harm Canada’s energy sector while doing little to mitigate climate change.

Producers in Canada’s energy sector are well aware that the old way of doing things is finished. They also understand that Canada remains blessed with some of the most abundant energy resources on earth. Rather than throwing up their hands and working under the assumption that we will be shutting in our petrochemical resources, our energy producers have been taking a pragmatic approach through embracing the principles of a circular economy.

In a circular economy, producers no longer are simply focused on extracting, refining, and selling an energy product. The age-old principles of reduce, reuse and recycle are now being applied with resource extraction. Companies are now looking at the entire cycle of their operations and with technological advancements, net-zero emission goals are within reach.

Carbon that once was released into the atmosphere is now captured. Rather than viewing carbon as a waste product to be disposed of, researchers are finding ways to turn it into an asset.

Carbon dioxide is already being used for enhanced oil recovery projects. This reduces water and steam injection and naturally sequesters the carbon underground.

Technology is being developed that can use carbon in concrete, plastics, and liquid fuels. Captured CO2 can be used to accelerate algae growth which can be used as feed-stock for food, biofuels, and plastics.

We are just beginning to see the potential uses for captured carbon and new applications for it are being discovered all the time.

To foster continued innovation in carbon technology, industry leaders and investors need to be confident that they can get a long-term return on their investment. Why invest in new technology when the government appears to be poised to shut down the industry that it will apply to?

It will be nothing less than a tragedy if Canada shuts down one of its core industries based on ideological and political motives. We have an opportunity in front of us to be technological leaders in the production of net-zero emission petrochemical products. Both the economy and the environment will suffer if we allow our petrochemical sector to be shut down rather than cleaned up. The world will continue to consume fossil fuels from nations with low environmental standards while our domestic energy prices will skyrocket.

We need to move away from binary thinking when it comes to the future of petrochemical production. There is a third way and it isn’t transition, it’s transformation. The petrochemical industry is embracing positive, forward-thinking change. If only the government would let the industry get on with it.

Charting a course to Western independence.

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I formed the Alberta Independence Party in 2000 at the ripe old age of 29. I was full of piss, vinegar, and inexperience. The party didn’t last long but the experience gained was invaluable.

Now more than 20 years later, other Western independence groups and parties have come and gone. All of the same regional grievances exist and we are no closer to independence than we were decades ago.

We continue to go in circles and keep making the same mistakes. While the situation of the West hasn’t changed in the last 20 years, I have.

I have remained active in provincial political circles and have served in roles ranging from election candidate for the Separation Party of Alberta to VP of policy for the Wildrose Party of Alberta when they were the official opposition.

After every assault on the wealth or culture of the West, we see new supporters of independence created. Every time a Conservative candidate takes us for granted or a Liberal candidate insults us, a few more people realize that the West’s relationship with Canada is untenable.

New supporters of Western independence are often politically inexperienced. They are ready to pursue independence but don’t know where to begin. They need a guide and I am putting it together.

It’s time for a new approach and there is little need to keep slamming into the walls that I already have.

The book is now in the final stages of editing and an electronic version will be published soon. The introduction is below. Consider signing up in the form at the bottom of the page so you can be informed when the full book is available.



_________________________________________________________________________

INTRODUCTION


Support for Western independence in Canada has had ebbs and flows for decades. Western alienation in Canada has existed since the beginning of confederation.

This book is for those who have concluded that the time has come for Western independence but may not know where to begin. We have tried to achieve change through the electoral system for generations to no avail. Attempts to change the constitution are futile as demonstrated by the failure of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords.

Canada’s system is outdated and lopsided. It is designed to serve Central Canada at the expense of outlying provinces. The deck is stacked and we will never win by playing within the existing structure.

The Reform Party burst upon the scene with the message of “The West wants in”. Through decades of pressure and compromise, the Reform Party merged into the mushy Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) of today. Even with O’Toole throwing Western interests to the wind by flip-flopping on his carbon-tax and firearm rights stances, the CPC was rejected by Central Canada in favour of the scandal-ridden Liberals. Western interests will never be a priority in federal politics. It is political suicide for a federal party to serve anything but Central Canada’s demands.

Western independence parties and movements have come and gone over the years. The Western Canada Concept made inroads in the 1980s and faded away. The Alberta Independence Party made ripples at the end of the 1990s and dissolved shortly into the 2000s. The Separation Party of Alberta came and went by 2010. Wexit was formed in 2019 and morphed into the soft-regionalist Maverick Party that made little more than a blip in the 2021 election.

We need to approach the pursuit of Western independence differently or we will never break out of the pattern of chronic failure that has marked the movement so far.

Rather than spawning more parties and advocacy groups, Western independence proponents need to build their base as individuals.

A lasting foundation for Western independence won’t be built through electoral runs or advocacy groups that seem to be little more than fundraising machines. Those organizations inevitably fall apart due to self-interested leadership, infighting or the compromising of core principles by the impatient.

Every supporter of Western independence needs to become an ambassador for the movement. The discussion forum for independence needs to be at dinner tables, over the neighbour’s fence, and in the lunchroom at work. Growth needs to be organic and from peer to peer.

This book will provide the tools to become an effective advocate for Western independence. Not as an annoying fanatic, but as a rational voice for a concept whose time has come.

Supporters for Western independence need to be won one person at a time. It will take patience and many conversations but this is how we will build the environment for the sea-change required in order to make Western independence a reality.

As Western independence proponents, we must to be able to effectively counter the common arguments made against independence. We need to be able to express how it’s the Canadian system rather than the Canadian people that we are eschewing.

We also need to avoid the mistakes made by previous independence movements.

Rather than having an independence movement represented by a handful of parties and groups we need to have a movement made up of hundreds of thousands of active, individual supporters. A true grassroots movement is invulnerable to the damage that organizations can cause under poor leadership.

When we communicate with our peers about independence, we speak directly and genuinely. The bias of the mainstream media is bypassed when we take on communication individually.

Once the strong foundation of support for Western independence is built, the parties will follow. As the late Ralph Klein said, his secret was to find out where the parade was going and to get in front of it. Once we build the parade, rest assured we will see plenty of prospective leaders and spokespeople rushing to get in front of it.

The concept is old but our approach needs to be new. This book will chart the path to Western independence and it begins with you.

_________________________________________________________________________


Sign up for updates below. I promise I won’t spam you with anything not related to the book. I am not a party leader, my word is still good for something 😉

Rural crime. If nothing changes, another death is inevitable.

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It doesn’t take a lot of time to see how increasingly bold and violent rural criminals are becoming. Just a quick google search found all of these violent rural home invasions in Alberta just in the last few years.

A 64-year-old man was hospitalized with a gunshot wound during a failed home invasion this week near Vermilion.

Blackfalds RCMP are looking for three suspects in a home invasion at a rural property near Red Deer.Police say the three entered the home in Linn Valley Monday morning at about 8 a.m. dressed all in black with face masks and carrying long-barrelled guns, RCMP said.

RCMP have identified a suspect in connection with a home invasion in rural Alberta where an elderly man was threatened at gunpoint.The masked robber was alone when he broke into the home in the Municipality of Foothills at about 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, police said. He pointed a firearm at the 77-year-old resident demanding money.

Many Alix residents are feeling uneasy and unsafe in their community after a local man was allegedly attacked with a machete by two men in a home invasion incident.

Ponoka RCMP are looking for five male suspects in a home invasion in Morningside.At approximately 2 a.m. on June 24 police say the men entered the home and restrained and robbed two occupants. Police were alerted to the incident after receiving a 911 call.The two residents were located in the home with minor injuries resulting from an altercation that occurred in the home.Further investigations revealed that the men entered the home with a firearm and restrained the two victims. Further to the invasion the suspects took five firearms, coins and a 1995 maroon Dodge Ram that belonged to the victims.

The RCMP has arrested two men following two home invasion incidents where a man was held at gunpoint.Two men are facing charges after a lengthy investigation involving Morinville General Investigation Section (GIS), the Forensic Identification Section and the RCMP Edmonton Serious Crimes Branch.

Sylvan Lake RCMP say two men rang the doorbell of a residence on Leaside Crescent at 9:30 p.m. on Aug. 7.The 65-year-old female home owner answered the door and the men came into the residence and assaulted her. Police say she was punched several times by one of the males, but was not seriously injured.

There are many more reports of violent incidents and literally thousands of property crimes to report. I think I have posted enough to make my point.

RCMP are advising rural residents to lock their doors, call 911 and cower and pray if people invade their property. People are expected to hope that the criminals are not violent and they are expected to let their hard earned property get stolen over and over and over again.

Sorry folks but that just isn’t good enough. In light of an explosion of rural crimes coupled with 40 minute police response times, rural citizens are feeling the need to protect themselves and their families and they will be using firearms. Chiding from fools who live in urban environments where neighbors are mere feet away and police response times are often under 5 minutes won’t dissuade rural crime victims from planning on self-defense nor will threats from the law.

The old saying of “I would rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6” is what applies here. In reality, we know that no jury would convict in these cases so yes we may very well choose to come out with guns blazing.

How are we to know if and when the latest invaders are going to be violent?

Do we know if they will simply stop at stealing from the yard or garage? Will they just steal one of the vehicles and leave? Will they decide as many do to break into the household? Are they just thieves or are they rapists as well? These are the things we have to think about while we sit in our homes as people invade our property. We often will have as long as an hour to think about it before police arrive. The criminals know this too of course and that is a large part of why rural crime is spiking.

Some fools say “It’s only property, let it go!”.

Really? How much are we expected to “let go” of?

This property is often what we require to make a living. Tools of our trades. Vehicles. Fuel. All things that we need to use in order to feed our families. Are we supposed to let these crooks just keep taking it at will? That is what is happening as some properties are getting hit over and over and over again. Not all crooks are stupid and they remember which houses are taking the cower approach to crime. They know that they can comfortably rob those homes repeatedly.

Another popular vacuous statement is “Let insurance take care of it”.

Do these people think that insurance is free? Every time you make a claim the premiums will rise. Not only that, many rural homeowners are finding that insurance companies are refusing them coverage for theft because it simply is happening too much. Where does that leave us?

Yes, it is inevitable that somebody is going to die soon. The only question is whether it will be a homeowner or a criminal.

Perhaps some or even many have died already. How often do we hear of addicts who have suddenly disappeared never to be seen again? I wonder how many of those picked the wrong rural property to rob and found themselves buried on the back 40? There is nobody around to hear the gunshot or watch the backhoe work.

It should not come down to this but that is where we are going.

Rural crime is exploding due to a number of factors and unless all of them are addressed we will see it continue to rise and with tragic consequences.

The biggest elephant in the room is the native element in rural crime. Native reserves are socioeconomic disaster zones where crime and addiction are running rampant. Rural crime rates explode in areas within 50 km of any native reserve and it is hardly a coincidence. Nothing terrifies politicians and authorities in general more than dealing with the catastrophe that we call the reserve system but it will only get worse until somebody gets the balls to take on the issue.

While dominated by natives, not all rural crime is committed by them. The Maurice case in Okotoks has no racial element to it at all. In the Maurice case though, the criminals were found to be in possession of methamphetamine. Addiction is another huge piece in the rural crime puzzle. Increases in funding and supports for addiction treatment will go a long way towards reducing rural crime (along with health and incarceration costs). We need to seriously work on addiction issues everywhere in Alberta.

The justice system needs more teeth as well. The vast majority of rural crimes are being committed by a small number of repeat offenders who are constantly being released in our revolving door justice system. We need to give strong sentences to repeat offenders and need to stick with them. It is no cheaper to have them in and out of court 6 times a year than to simply keep them in prison for a solid year. Maybe with a long sentence they can get the treatment they need. Releasing them sure as hell isn’t working.

Local policing needs more resources. The NDP announced funding for 39 more officers recently. That indeed helps and it is appreciated. It is however a drop in the bucket when it is considered that we have well over 100 detachments in the province.

We could better prioritize our police resources. How much time do uniformed police officers have to dedicate to traffic enforcement and writing reports? Are there not auxiliary units for paperwork and other minor incidents? Lets examine how we can free up our highly trained RCMP officers for the more serious responses rather than tying them up on mundane issues.

Rural crime watch organizations are self-funding and often have some pretty lean budgets. With more resources in funding and training these organizations can become much more effective in preventing crime and making rural communities feel safer.

Those of us living in rural communities do not want to take the law into our own hands. If we wanted careers in law enforcement, we would have applied to be police officers. We would gladly hand off home protection to the authorities if we felt it was effective.

Right now though, 40 minute response times coupled with unreasonably long police response times makes us feel we must take care of things ourselves.

Warnings won’t make us stop protecting our households and property with whatever means are at our disposal. Only substantial changes to how we deal with rural crime will do that.

Until the change happens, we are on a collision course with tragedy as somebody is going to die.

Separation? Not until Alberta cleans up its own backyard.

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Ahh look at that dashing young separatist leader. I was hardly grey yet. It took another 15 years of political play before I really developed that thinning, silver mane that I now enjoy.

Yes, as some commenters on the blog like to remind folks (as if it was a secret), I founded & and led the Alberta Independence Party into the 2001 election back when I was in my 20s. We made a pretty good splash at the time but fell apart not too long after the election. I will be the first to admit that my inexperience and poor leadership choices were primary factors in the later collapse of the party. I still learned a hell of a lot during that period though and in the years since.

With the Energy East pipeline now a dead project, I am hearing many enraged Albertans calling for secession. These flare ups of separatist sentiment come about periodically and they fade away again over time. Sustained federal Liberal governments are prime contributors to provincial ire as Chretien did more to boost separatism in Alberta through the 90s than I ever could have as leader of the AIP. Trudeau Sr. brought Alberta separatism to its peak in the 80s and now Trudeau Jr. is working to fill his Daddy’s Prime Ministerial shoes in feeding western alienation in Canada.

Separatism in Alberta won’t be going anywhere far for now despite people being more than a little upset with our broken system of confederation. A more dynamic leader with a better organized movement could surely go farther than I did but it still will inevitably fail until a number of things are addressed.

Selling secession is a tough task. You are dealing with some very deep seated emotional attachments to the nation for folks. Their flirtation with separatism is often fleeting and passes as their anger fades.

The first thing that will be tough to sell is convincing somebody that Alberta would be any better managed on its own than it is right now within confederation.

We have a provincial NDP government people! 

Until we get the socialists out of Edmonton, how the hell are we supposed to claim that we would be any better off as an independent nation? We as a province have proven ourselves to be capable of electing a provincial government that is even worse than the federal one. Notley’s lip service to pipeline infrastructure development has has been token and flaccid at best. The NDPs lack of solid support for the energy industry and its lack of strong lobbying for it abroad is a large part of why pipelines are not being built.

Do you think that TransCanada’s decision to dump Energy East is solely due to Trudeau’s management of the NEB? They took into account how terrible a place Alberta is to do business in right now too.

If we were suddenly independent, that would mean Notley would be our Prime Minister (or President or whatever). Would you really like to empower the NDP that much more? Alberta truly would look like Venezuela but without the attractive weather.

In order for a serious separation movement to grow, all other options have to be tried and failed.

The provincial government needs to truly fight Ottawa and neighboring provinces with all of the powers of the courts and provincial jurisdiction that they can.

We need a provincial government that will turn off the taps to BC for awhile to teach them just how important Alberta energy products are to them. This can be done with Eastward products too. No bullshit carbon tax ideas in pursuit of a fake concept of “social license”. The government needs to truly battle the roadblocks facing our energy industry.

Danielle Smith pointed out the next important points on her show today as well.

Back in 2000 Stephen Harper along with Tom Flanagan, Ted Morton, Rainer Knopff, Andrew Crooks and Ken Boessenkool penned a letter to Alberta’s government called the “Alberta Agenda” (later called the Firewall letter). 

This letter laid out steps that the provincial government could take in order to gain more local autonomy and strengthen our position within confederation. All of the steps are within our jurisdiction as a province. We just need a government with the will and courage to implement them.

Here is the text from the letter below:

 Withdraw from the Canada Pension Plan to create an Alberta Pension Plan offering the
same benefits at lower cost while giving Alberta control over the investment fund. Pensions
are a provincial responsibility under section 94A of the Constitution Act. 1867; and the
legislation setting up the Canada Pension Plan permits a province to run its own plan, as
Quebec has done from the beginning. If Quebec can do it, why not Alberta?

Collect our own revenue from personal income tax, as we already do for corporate income
tax. Now that your government has made the historic innovation of the single-rate personal
income tax, there is no reason to have Ottawa collect our revenue. Any incremental cost of
collecting our own personal income tax would be far outweighed by the policy flexibility
that Alberta would gain, as Quebec’s experience has shown.
Start preparing now to let the contract with the RCMP run out in 2012 and create an Alberta
Provincial Police Force. Alberta is a major province. Like the other major provinces of
Ontario and Quebec, we should have our own provincial police force. We have no doubt
that Alberta can run a more efficient and effective police force than Ottawa can – one that
will not be misused as a laboratory for experiments in social engineering.

Resume provincial responsibility for health-care policy. If Ottawa objects to provincial
policy, fight in the courts. If we lose, we can afford the financial penalties that Ottawa may
try to impose under the Canada Health Act. Albertans deserve better than the long waiting
periods and technological backwardness that are rapidly coming to characterize Canadian
medicine. Alberta should also argue that each province should raise its own revenue for
health care – i.e., replace Canada Health and Social Transfer cash with tax points as Quebec
has argued for many years. Poorer provinces would continue to rely on Equalization to
ensure they have adequate revenues.

Use section 88 of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Quebec Secession Reference to force
Senate reform back onto the national agenda. Our reading of that decision is that the federal
government and other provinces must seriously consider a proposal for constitutional reform
endorsed by “a clear majority on a clear question” in a provincial referendum. You acted
decisively once before to hold a senatorial election. Now is the time to drive the issue
further.

All of these steps can be taken using the constitutional powers that Alberta now possesses. In
addition, we believe it is imperative for you to take all possible political and legal measures to
reduce the financial drain on Alberta caused by Canada’s tax-and-transfer system. The most
recent Alberta Treasury estimates are that Albertans transfer $2,600 per capita annually to other
Canadians, for a total outflow from our province approaching $8 billion a year. The same federal
politicians who accuse us of not sharing their “Canadian values” have no compunction about
appropriating our Canadian dollars to buy votes elsewhere in the country.

Mr. Premier, we acknowledge the constructive reforms that your government made in the 1990s
– balancing the budget, paying down the provincial debt, privatizing government services, getting
Albertans off welfare and into jobs, introducing a single-rate tax, pulling government out of the
business of subsidizing business, and many other beneficial changes. But no government can rest
on its laurels. An economic slowdown, and perhaps even recession, threatens North America, the
government in Ottawa will be tempted to take advantage of Alberta’s prosperity, to redistribute
income from Alberta to residents of other provinces in order to keep itself in power. It is
imperative to take the initiative, to build firewalls around Alberta, to limit the extent to which an
aggressive and hostile federal government can encroach upon legitimate provincial jurisdiction.

Once Alberta’s position is secured, only our imagination will limit the prospects for extending
the reform agenda that your government undertook eight years ago. To cite only a few examples,
lower taxes will unleash the energies of the private sector, easing conditions for Charter Schools
will help individual freedom and improve public education, and greater use of the referendum and
initiative will bring Albertans into closer touch with their own government.

The precondition for the success of this Alberta Agenda is the exercise of all our legitimate
provincial jurisdictions under the constitution of Canada. Starting to act now will secure the
future for all Albertans.

Before secession is even considered, these steps have to be implemented. As that letter broke onto the political scene at the same time the AIP took off, I can assure you I know that its proposals strongly effected our ability to grow. I don’t know how many times I heard people say “Let’s try the Alberta Agenda First. Then maybe separation.” This truth will remain today for any aspiring separatist movement.

Last but most importantly, if a movement for secession is to be successful in any way, they have to mean it!

People then and people now are openly saying “let’s threaten separation”. That’s like telling an entire table you are bluffing before raising the pot. Some say that Quebec has always simply threatened but never meant to go. Quebec came within 1% of separating in 1995 in a referendum with a 94% turnout. They were not bluffing people.

To seriously threaten secession a province needs serious support for secession and Alberta isn’t even close yet despite how vocal some are becoming.

I still contend that Canada’s system is broken. I still feel that we will one day need constitutional reform and that the only likely catalyst that could make that happen will be a province either separating or being on the verge of it. Ted Byfield used to call that notion “reconfederation” and that is where I sat when leading the AIP. I really did want out, but felt that secession could lead to negotiation a better confederation later.

Secession sounds tempting at a glance but it simply is not a viable goal or option right now. For those who truly want to get there eventually, you have to pursue the aforementioned steps before secession is even a consideration. Until then, you are simply wasting political capital.

 

Injecting some facts into logging practices in Alberta

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As Alberta’s economy tries to lurch back into gear due to pressures from a socialist provincial government coupled with low oil prices, the hysteric eco-left has decided to target logging in hopes of stifling thousands more jobs and billions in revenues.

In court, Greenpeace admitted that they spread outright admitted that they spread falsehoods in their fervent opposition to logging.

The eco-left will never hesitate in lying to justify their causes. They have embraced environmentalism as a religion and feel justified in doing anything to promote their dogma.

To counter some of the BS being spread by environmentalists on the logging being proposed in the Highwood watershed, I did a video tour of the area to be logged and covered some of the areas where logging has already happened.

Facts are to environmentalists as light is to vampires.

The Springbank Dam obsession.

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I use the term “obsession” when speaking of the proposed Springbank dam flood mitigation project because the support for this proposal by the left is borderline obsessive and is contrary to all common sense.

The Springbank dam proposal is inferior to the McLean Creek proposal by every measure yet Nenshi and the NDP are contorting themselves desperately in favor of this terrible plan.

I am listing the problems below and will finish with why I think the left has such obsessive support for this plan.

Protection:

While the Springbank dam project may mitigate flooding in Calgary, it completely neglects Bragg Creek, Redwood Meadows and the Tsuu T’ina reserve. All of those communities were devastated in the 2013 floods as homes and businesses were utterly destroyed.

The McLean Creek flood mitigation route would protect both Calgary and all of these homes. Why would we neglect these vulnerable communities like this in favor of Springbank?

Environmental footprint:

The McLean Creek option takes up a much smaller space than the proposed Springbank dam project.

When it comes to measuring land disrupted, the comparison between the two proposals is stark.

Disruption of people and infrastructure:

The Mclean Creek option is on public land with no residences. The Springbank dam option is all on private land. This is a key distinction in understanding the left-wing’s fervent, ideologial pursuit of the Sprinbank dam.

The Springbank dam would destroy Kamp Kiwanis which hosts 11,000 underprivileged children per year on their site. A camp that has existed for over 60 years.

The Springbank dam would impact eight major natural gas pipelines. These pipelines will have to be re-routed at a huge cost to taxpayers along with the new environmental impacts as new routes are cut.

The Springbank dam would impact 22 residences some of which are historical ranches that have operated for well over a century.

Naheed Neshi in being one of the obsessive supporters tried to spread bullshit in claiming that no homes were in the Springbank dam area. He was called on his BS quickly.

Nenshi doesn’t like facts getting in the way of His ideology.

Cost to taxpayers:

The Springbank dam project was initially projected to cost $200 million dollars. The government has just released a report where the projected cost has now exploded to $432 million dollars. The McLean creek option remains $26 million cheaper than the Springbank dam.

When we consider how fiscally inept the Notley government is, we can be confident that the Springbank dam costs will continue to skyrocket. The lawsuits from private landowners alone will cost a fortune.

By all measures, the Springbank dam option is inferior to the McLean Creek option.

Area MLA Cam Westhead with the NDP will be of no help for his constituents. As a resident of Bragg Creek, Westhead knew that campaigning in support of the Springbank dam would be political suicide. Westhead campaigned in opposition to the Springbank dam and quickly flip-flopped as soon as he got his precious seat in the legislature.

What’s a little bullshit if it gets you a seat eh Cam?

I wonder if Westhead can even show his face in places such as the Powderhorn Saloon (devastated in the floods) in his home town these days. I don’t suspect that Bragg Creek residents are thrilled that he threw their community under the bus.

I contend that the whole matter comes down to ideology. Dedicated leftists such as Nenshi and the NDP traditionally despise private property rights. They are gleeful at the prospect of setting a precedent through the expropriation (government theft) of thousands of acres of private property.

Icing on the cake for these ideologues is that many of these landowners are somewhat wealthy. How dare they prosper in Alberta on land that has been in their families for generations!!

I went for a drive through the area and did a short video rant on it last night.

Landowners oppose the Springbank dam. First Nations oppose the Springbank dam. Bragg Creek opposes the Springbank dam.

All that opposition means nothing when it gives the left a chance to poke a finger in the eye of the productive however.

Let’s hope things haven’t become irreversible by the time we finally kick the Notley Regime to the electoral curb.

The sad history of liberals in Alberta.

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It is hardly a secret that Alberta is not a liberal friendly province. Alberta has been and remains a frontier for the ambitious and independent.  Agriculture drew courageous settlers in the late 1800s. Oil drew more in the early 1900s and high tech energy related jobs still draw people from all over the world today.

To relocate into a new environment and take a gamble on a new life takes courage. To endure and remain until you have established yourself takes dedication. In other words, since the beginning of confederation Alberta has drawn strong, independent minded people who don’t want or need big government to get in their way. To put it another way, Alberta has never really been a strong draw for liberals.

This can be seen quite clearly as the Liberal Party has languished for over a century in Alberta as a party yet cant form government.

In 1905 Alberta joined confederation and Liberal Alexander Rutherford was appointed as our first premier. Rutherford called an election later that year and established himself an elected mandate. Not too difficult to do when no opposition party system had been created or established yet. It took 12 years before Albertans organized and tossed the Liberal Party of Alberta to the electoral roadside for what has now been a century.

Had there not been a Liberal government in Ottawa in 1905, I suspect that we never would have seen a Liberal party in power in Alberta.

While the Liberals have run in 25 general elections since 1917, they have never come close to winning power in Alberta. Laurence Decore came somewhat close in 1993 by running on a platform more conservative than the Progressive Conservatives. The populist wave led by Ralph Klein beat back that effort and today despite burning through half a dozen new leaders the Liberals are as deep in the electoral toilet as ever in Alberta.

What is a dedicated liberal sort of person to do in such a situation?

Any realistic liberal (there are a few out there) knows that they will never form government under the Liberal Party banner so they need to seek other alternatives.

A liberal can doggedly keep trying under the party banner as they pursue another century in opposition.

A liberal can simply give up and go federal.

A liberal can go municipal where party allegiance isn’t always evident. That way they can campaign conservative and then govern as a liberal upon election while depending on electoral apathy in order to maintain their job.

A liberal can sneak into a conservative party and hope to turn it liberal.

To be fair though, Sanda Jansen is more of a simple opportunist than a liberal. Jansen would have been begging to join the Wildrose Party had they won the general election. Jansen only cares about residing in a government seat. The party means nothing to her.

The strategy of infiltrating and controlling the Progressive Conservative Party was a successful one for a time. From the later years of Klein’s leadership to the party’s electoral catastrophe in 2015 it was evident that the party was leaning far more to the “progressive” side and drifting away from the conservative side as liberal style entitlement scandals erupted and deficit budgets became common again.

The liberal transformation of the PCs led to the development of the Wildrose Party as an increasing number of conservatives gave up on the PC party.

Unfortunately, due to the now legendary act of treachery led by Danielle Smith and Jim Prentice, the electorate became so horrified and disgusted by both parties that they accidentally elected the Notley NDP.

Now, while the NDP “cure” is turning out to be worse than the disease, we are at least seeing some good long term outcomes here.

The liberals within the Progressive Conservative Party were by nature opportunists. Many of them jumped ship shortly after the party lost power. They had no interest in serving as an opposition party. Other liberals hung on in hopes of turning the shell of the party into a re-branded Liberal Party. Those hopes were dashed as Jason Kenney engaged conservative grassroots voters and swept into the leadership last spring.

The upside I am looking at is that the liberal element has been very effectively flushed from the PC party making the ability of creating a unified conservative party viable.

Now where do all these homeless liberals go?

Fear not. They have taken a page from the 1937 Liberal playbook when they tried to come into power under the Independent Citizen’s Association. You see, Liberals realized that they couldn’t win under their party banner so they tried to hide under a banner that stood for nothing. They banked on the electorate being so tired of openly partisan politics that they would latch on to a party that claimed to shun partisanship through being a coalition of independents thus non-partisan than ever. This coalition failed dismally and the first stealth Liberal attempt ended after the 1940 election when the coalition fell apart. If a party wont openly stand for something, they simply cant concentrate support.

Undaunted however, disaffected Liberals are confident that they can pull this off through the Alberta Party.

The Alberta Party has been around in a few incarnations since the 1980s.  In 2010 a group of liberals took over the small party and in hopes of creating the stealth liberal party they desired. Ever avoiding a solid policy stance on anything, the Alberta Party held a painfully long process that hey coined “the big listen”. The logic was that if they claimed to be always listening to Albertans that they would somehow gain broad support. In maintaining this party that wasn’t a party approach, the Alberta Party took the province by storm in the 2012 general election with a solid 1.33% of the vote.

Undaunted, they carried on. They replaced the term listen with “center”. They follow a simplistic belief that the majority of people are in this mushy world of being in the center and that they surly will engage this giant yet sleeping majority and get a firm center (liberal) government in Alberta. Fiercely battling in the 2015 general election the Alberta Party garnered a staggering 2.28% of the vote. Apparently the center was sleeping that day.

Interestingly though, some experienced liberal operatives will be moving into the Alberta Party this time now that they have lost their Progressive Conservative home. A few champagne socialists will likely pony up some contributions to the next campaign as well.

Will the rallying cry of “centrists!” lead to the first Liberal government in Alberta in over 100 years? I sincerely doubt it.

All the same, it is nothing if not interesting to see a tenacious group of people working generation after generation to sell a product that simply does not appeal to the majority and through so many ways.

We are in quite a period of political flux in Alberta right now to say the least. It will be interesting to see where all the chips land in the next couple years and where liberals will go after the Alberta Party loses another general election through running on nothing.

The Progressive Conservative establishment selected their candidate

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janse

Now that the remnants of the Progressive Conservative Party old guard have finished trying to rig their leadership race rules as tightly as possible in favor of the party status-quo (which is moribund and indebted), they have now settled on their preferred candidate.
For those who want to turn the clock back and return to the Progressive Conservative Party that held no solid principles and governed simply based on the rationale of retaining power, Sandra Jansen is the clear candidate of choice.
Through her own actions over the years, Sandra has exemplified the shallow, self-serving, opportunism that the Progressive Conservative Party had come to represent after holding power for over four decades in Alberta.
Jansen never held or shared any conservative principles with the party of her choice. Jansen is and was a Liberal through and through as she demonstrated many times over the years. Sandra was canny enough to realize that if she aspired to rise above an opposition seat in Alberta and gain a cabinet position or even the Premiership, she would have to pretend to be a conservative and gain her seat through the party that appeared to her as being an unbeatable juggernaut (at that time).

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Jansen happily jumped on board with Alison Redford as Redford sold her party’s political soul to unions in order to win the party leadership (Redford later betrayed those union supporters too of course). As a loyal Redford supporter, Jansen was rewarded with a minor associate minister’s portfolio.


Even in an obscure ministerial role, Jansen could not help but let her Liberal elitism leak out as she embarrassed herself by berating electricians as being too low of form of trade to maintain political roles.
Jansen quickly scurried into hiding and let the party take care of damage control due to Sandra’s rather embittered outlook on tradespeople was exposed.

electrician
As Redford fell into disgrace, Jansen wisely kept a low profile and waited to see who the next leader to latch on to would be. That person of course was Jim Prentice. In hopes of climbing the cabinet ladder, Sandra Jansen happily sponsored what would turn out to be a disaster in the first incarnation of Bill 10.
Despite claiming to be a champion for LGTBQ kids, Sandra Jansen sponsored a bill that would force those kids to appear before a judge in court in order to form support clubs in schools if the school or board refused them. As the backlash over Sandra Jansen’s bill grew, things got more absurd as the PCs of the time said that LGTBQ kids no longer would have to appear before a judge in order to form clubs, they would simply have to get an order from the Education Minister. It was also implied that these kids could simply form clubs down the street and away from school property if need be. Gee how progressive Sandra. Would they get off property washrooms and fountains too if there were more concerns?

Sandra Jansen’s version of Bill 10 was a complete catastrophe that offended most of the province. Prentice was forced to intervene and pull the bill off the table in order to try and rework it into something palatable in the spring.
Below we can see Jansen meekly standing aside as Prentice takes over and works to clean up her mess.

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Jansen has since claimed that her sponsorship of the bill was a terrible mistake. Hindsight helps that way. In reality, we all know that if the bill had passed in the legislature in it’s first incarnation and had Prentice not disastrously lost the general election that Sandra Jansen would happily be sitting in a cabinet seat in the Prentice government today doing what she is told and aspiring to his role in government.
A strongly principled person would never have sponsored legislation that goes against their personal principles. A person who puts ambition above principle however will do so without hesitation as we saw Jansen do.

If Sandra Jansen had what it takes to be a leader, she would have passed on sponsoring that bill or even spoke against it. Some in the PC caucus of the time did so. What other principles will Sandra Jansen set aside if she feels they will hinder her personal political path? Only time will tell.
The Progressive Conservative Party took what should have been a terribly humbling loss in the last general election. Their complacence and arrogant practices led to Alberta accidentally electing an NDP government. Despite this, the remaining old guard within the party feel that the best course of action is to bring in another leader that is weak in principles and carries the baggage of the last two leaders who left in disgrace.
The PC party has an opportunity to look ahead and re-brand with a new approach or they can elect a retread of Alison Redford who is a little less bright.

redbean

We will find out in the next few months.