With Alberta enjoying another rather unexpected oil boom, Rachel Notley has promised that an NDP government won’t piss it all away.
That’s exactly what she said.
“I spend a lot of hours on Alberta highways and I often see that bumper sticker — you know the one — that says ‘Please God, give me one more oil boom. I promise not to piss it all away next time,’” Ms. Notley said in a statement emailed to media yesterday.
“Well, we’ve got one more oil boom and it is bringing extraordinary revenue into the provincial treasury,” the leader of Alberta’s Opposition New Democrats and the former premier of Alberta continued. “My commitment here today is that should Alberta’s NDP form the next government, we will not piss away this boom.”
This is an important statement. Let me explain why.
There may be Albertans who don’t approve of rough language in political discourse. I expect some of them will criticize Ms. Notley for expressing this sentiment in this particular way before jumping into their pickup trucks, slamming the doors, and screeching off in the direction of Sundre, red, black and white “F#&k Trudeau” flags snapping in the petroleum-generated breeze.
But it got your attention, didn’t it?
When it appears in a news story, you may even be tempted to read the rest of what Ms. Notley had to say, even if it’s only to make sure she didn’t slip a “F#&k Kenney” or a “Danielle is Bats#!t” into the release. (She didn’t, of course.)
And there’s the thing. A wily old Alberta New Democrat of my acquaintance, who has retreated to a mountaintop in Tibet or some such alpine jurisdiction whence he imparts the Meaning of Life and other secrets to supplicants, keeps reminding me the Alberta NDP needs to find a way to assure Albertans they’ll will be prudent with their taxes.
After all, despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary, most Albertans have been brought up to believe the fantasy that New Democrats are wild-eyed spendthrifts and Conservatives are good money managers.
If you want to talk health care, the NDP will come to that discussion with far more credibility than Mr. Kenney or any of his possible successors. All the more so with a seventh wave of COVID-19 now breaking across North America.
Ditto if the topic of discussion turns to public education, especially with Mr. Kenney hangin’ in there so he can force his pet project, the UCP’s garbage school curriculum, on an unwilling province.
But the fiscal responsibility piece historically plays to the Conservatives’ advantage, even though in bad times they act like vandals and in good times they spend like drunken sailors. (Nowadays, I expect, sailors are more temperate thanks to the Royal Navy putting a stop to their daily rum tot in 1970.)
So perhaps Ms. Notley’s not-quite-mild language is what it’ll take to get Albertans to wake up and notice there’s coffee brewing.
If it works, readers may see that she committed to five principles to finally help get Alberta off the fiscal roller coaster before the next plunge:
– Recognizing oil revenue is unreliable and shouldn’t be used for ordinary operational spending
– Focusing on getting the best return on investment
– Recognizing Alberta will not get off the revenue rollercoaster without real progress on diversifying the economy and creating long-term jobs
– Acting now to help Albertans facing a cost-of-living crisis not seen in decades
– Fixing the damage done to the public health care and education systems
Readers will note that the last point leads back to the NDP’s key strengths in the important election fight that is coming soon.
I have one small quibble: I have my doubts anyone, including Ms. Notley, has ever actually seen that bumper sticker, although the story’s been around so long a lot of Albertans, perhaps including the Opposition leader, are starting to think they did.
I’ve been driving Alberta’s highways and byways for decades, through booms and busts alike, and I’ve never seen it, even with my surgically corrected hawk-eyes.
There are very few photos. Which is not to say the bumper sticker yarn is a fib, exactly, just that it represents a profound truth so universally understood it doesn’t require actual sightings.
This will almost certainly be Alberta’s last oil boom, and we have a Conservative government poised to piss it all away again.
The only point of debate among Mr. Kenney’s would-be United Conservative Party successors is what to piss it all away on.
Ms. Notley is offering something a little different.
Be nice, Alberta! Calgary Stampede starts today with a $10-million-plus boost from feds
Today marks the opening of the Calgary Stampede, that 10-day annual festival of intoxicated bankers and oil company executives dressed up like cowboys saying nasty things about Justin Trudeau.
Conservative Alberta politicians inclined to use the annual Cowtown bean-fest as a platform for intemperate commentary about the prime minister and his Liberal Government need to remember that Ottawa has just sunk more than $10 million into the Stampede to help it “make a full-scale come-back” from the effects of the pandemic and the 21st Century.
This was announced last month by Ottawa’s Prairies Economic Development Canada agency to not much attention from media.
I asked Rohit Sandhu, the PEDC’s communications manager, if there were any strings attached to the cash. Not many, by the sound of it.
“The bulk of the $10 million in funding (up to $8 million) is directly provided to support continued operations of the Calgary Stampede festival during a period where its revenues were reduced due to the impacts of the pandemic,” he said. “The remaining funding is being used for adaptation measures and enhancement activities to meet public health and safety guidelines, as well as to improve the quality of the event.”
Were there any concerns about spending federal money on an event notorious with animal rights activists for ill treatment of chuckwagon horses and other animals?
“As a major recurring festival and event with annual revenues exceeding $10 million, the Calgary Stampede met the eligibility criteria to apply for and receive funding” through the Government of Canada’s Major Festivals and Events Support Initiative, he responded.
Which is a nice way, I suppose, of saying, we’d rather not talk about that.
As for the usual suspects from Calgary, gratitude, not churlishness, would be in order this week.
The one thing Alberta enjoys is pissing away all those oil booms. Why worry? There’s always another from wherever the last one came from. Though the current oil boom is the result of a perfect storm of two events — the pandemic and the Russo-Ukrainian War — it should be expected that the boom will not be long lived. And if that war gets out of hand, well, there maybe few left alive anywhere to keep that demand going for very long. In other words, all the oil boom fever that Alberta is rejoicing in will soon break and the whining and crying can start all over again.
Jason Nixon is talking up using the increased revenues to restore the Heritage Fund, but the temptation to go on a spending spree remains high. That’s the CONs’ default, after all. Of course, Notley, making the easy effort to be the adult in the room (Since there are so few these days) is talking about investing for a future when the oil runs out — and it most certainly will. Though your average Albertan is likely to just blame Trudeau when the last drop is squeezed out of the ground, Alberta has never struck me as the sort of place that thinks about the future. Why? It’s not like anyone living there is actually from there. And the vast majority can’t wait to get out at the first opportunity. In other words, Alberta is truly the land that no one wants, save for First Nations peoples and the wildlife.
So all this talk about saving and investing for a raining day is likely for naught, like saving Boris Johnson’s political career.
Rachel Notley is on the right path, notwithstanding the harsh language used in her statement. If she does what Peter Lougheed did, and gets the proper oil royalty rates that he did, and the proper corporate tax rates, like he did, Alberta will be better off, for when oil prices go lower. Unfortunately, oil prices are going lower. As it stands, Alberta lost $575 billion, because these pretend conservatives and Reformers altered Peter Lougheed’s oil royalty rates to a very low amount. Also, thanks to Ralph Klein, Albertans must come up with an astonishing amount of $260 billion to rectify oil company related damages. In addition, Alberta lost another $150 billion from these pretend conservatives and Reformers having poor tax rates. Billions of dollars were also made to disappear, from the most priciest shenanigans that these pretend conservatives and Reformers did, from over the years. The UCP does them too. We need someone with common sense, who is akin to what Peter Lougheed did. Rachel Notley is that person. The UCP don’t have what it takes to properly look after the well being of Alberta.
FYI that bumper sticker is indeed real, and occasionally appears on older no longer beautiful vehicles. I have seen it, but am always surprised it’s still around. That said, would never sully my vehicles bumper with ANY sticker.
“During the period of the Calgary Stampede, the activities of The Calgary Exhibition and Stampede Ltd. are exempt from the noise restrictions outlined under the Community Standards Bylaw.”
I live amongst the radicalized.
Well Geee!
That sounds like a real winning plan! Why haven’t any political leaders used it before?
btw, it’s very unlikely this is “Alberta’s last oil boom”. To paraphrase, there’s a lot of tar in them there hills (or flats, as is the case). If we humans haven’t burned our technological society to a crisp we’ll be using petro-resources well into the 22nd Century.
That being the case, the primary consideration for managing the wealth created for the greatest public good would be Long Term Planning. Something that is so absolutely foreign to the Alberta mind-set that it’s never been attempted, let alone talked about in polite circles.
Ranger: Trust me, it’s the last one. Or at best/worst the second to last. Remember, the Northwest Territories, of which Alberta was part, had the word’s greatest supply of beaver pelts. It still has the word’s greatest supply of beaver pelts. What changed? Fashion. Nobody wants them any more. DJC
You posted beaver? Are you nuts?!
DJC. If you’ve been following what’s been going on in Holland with the farmers, O&G are going to be around for some time, I think. Imagine telling the prairie farmers that all that really expensive, diesel engine equipment that they can’t use it anymore! I’m kinda attached to eating and the farmers supply the food!
Farmers us a trivial amount of fossil fuel compared to transport, commuter cars, or the airline industry. That newer farm equipment uses hardly any diesel compared to earlier models and of course as farms scale up in size, the amount of fossil fuel used per amount of production declines. I suspect that until battery tech catches up, farms will be the last places sipping at the fossil fuel tap. The real problem then will be consuming enough fossil fuel to make refining the stuff economic.
On the contrary, David, beavers consider them to be an essential and stylish accoutrement. They’re never seen without them.
Ranger and David, you’ve both made valid points. I suspect there will be more oil-price spikes. Whether the result is a “boom” or just a wet firecracker fizzle will be the question. Much depends on whether Alberta bitumen is usurped by Venezuela and/or Mexican heavy crude, or lighter stuff from even further overseas. Our stuff is literally the gunk scraped from the bottom of the barrel (yes, I’ve had the misfortune to have worked with it—and laboratory-scale exposure was quite enough, thank you).
In the short term, the limited number of refineries here and in the US that can upgrade and then refine bitumen will limit sales. Forget the CAPP fantasies about Chinese bitumen refineries buying Alberta bitumen. It ain’t gonna happen at this late date. Longer term, David’s point about changing fashions come into play. Burning this goo won’t be fashionable in another decade or so. Then we’ll be stuck with cleaning up the “stranded assets” (a polite phrase for white elephants and boondoggles).
Ranger, I’ve heard of two long-range plans by an Alberta government. Peter Lougheed’s government started both. One was development of the bitumen deposits, via the Alberta Oil Sands Technology and Research Authority (AOSTRA). They partnered with oil companies to develop the technology needed to extract and upgrade bitumen.
The other was the Heritage Trust Fund. The fund was doing fine till Lougheed retired and his successor, Don Getty, broke open the piggy bank during a recession in Getty’s first term as premier.
Sadly, neither has lived up to expectations. Bitumen extraction left enormous toxic lakes (“ponds” is now a PR deflection from the inconvenient truth) that will never be cleaned up, even while global heating and the climate crisis are—too slowly—forcing us to burn less fossil carbon. Don Getty was only the first Old Tory to raid Peter Lougheed’s piggy bank for the crucially important purpose of buying votes.
I remember seeing the bumper stickers, but not for many years. I think they had their heyday prior to the development of digital cameras, so people didn’t take many pictures of them when they had to pay for the film, and storage was a lot more complicated.
I do remember seeing some of those stickers, however, very few, but certainly remember a lot of people saying it. I have however heard oilmen say “You don’t need to be a genius to look at the facts and see what managing an oil industry properly has done for Alaska and Norway , while stupid Albertans have allowed ours to be given away. Our oil production is massive compared to those two yet we have noting to show for it”. I had lunch with several of my senior friends on Wednesday and there is still one guy who blames it all on Notley and Trudeau just like Kenney wants him to do. Like we all know seniors have a horrible reputation for being easy to fool and he is certainly one of them.
Alan K. Spiller: It’s unfortunate how people still believe the lies these pretend conservatives and Reformers feed them. It doesn’t help improve things.
I read they first half of this blog to my wife. We both laughed.
Not only would have Ms. Notley been at home in one of Mr. Lougheed’s cabinets, it would appear she can channel him too … which shows how far the united clown party has drifted off course.
The UCP needs a several more terms in opposition.
Why would I (a borderline communist) support Rachel? Because she is Tommy Lougheed and Peter Douglas wrapped up in a sensible policy framework. You can take the UCP out behind the barn and do what my rellys used to do to pigs that were runts!
Gratitude? Calgary? That’s asking a bit much, don’t you think? /s
I have seen the original bumper sticker and its new incarnation. A young family member saw it recently. Unlike the mythical unicorn, it is real.
BTW, the Calgary Stampede hit a million visitors over the course of 10 days when I was a teenager. Let’s just say that time has moved on and attendance is pretty much stagnant, even before the pandemic hit. You might be wondering why the heavy subsidies are needed, and if the quaint fair has passed its prime. Is it a sacred cow? Now back to 10 days of public intoxication. Just saying that for every true fanatic who has not missed a single parade in their lifetime, there’s likely another Calgarian who schedules annual holidays out of town for the duration. Some stick around, but avoid the downtown and any form of retail shopping, where ears are assaulted with canned cowboy music. Some retailers start the country tunes when the click strikes June, so it’s not entirely avoidable.
Here is the issue. Government doesnt make opportunity. Individuals accepting risk for rewards and supplying cost effective services provide opportunity.
So, what can Notley do to not “piss this away”?
Is she going to get rid of government unions and open up opportunities for individuals to do a better cheaper job?
Nope, heres your helpful list:
– Recognizing oil revenue is unreliable and shouldn’t be used for ordinary operational spending
Oil revenue is actually very reliable. Because people need it to eat and have a lifestyle. But I can solve your spending problem. Stop spending.
– Focusing on getting the best return on investment
If politicians were good at such things, they wouldnt be politicians.
– Recognizing Alberta will not get off the revenue rollercoaster without real progress on diversifying the economy and creating long-term jobs
Alberta is a land locked jurisdiction with bad weather. How are you going to compete with jurisdictions that can attract population density without it costing more than its worth? There is one way. Independence, I hardly think the NDP is considering such.
– Acting now to help Albertans facing a cost-of-living crisis not seen in decades
Same answer as above, stop spending.
– Fixing the damage done to the public health care and education systems
Independence works for this. We could then afford whatever we wanted for public health, instead of being dependent on federal money and equalization.
Ok Notley, go for it! An independent Alberta with small government sounds good.
Bret Larson: Stop spending? These pretend conservatives and Reformers only know how to do the priciest shenanigans, so showing any fiscal prudence is clearly not something they know how to do. More than one of us has already explained what has happened. When it all go sour, these pretend conservatives and Reformers play the blame game, and they also make unnecessary cuts to the much needed basic services. Alberta is no further ahead. The UCP are a prime example of this foolish way of doing things. Some cases in point, includes $10 billion that is not there anymore from corporate tax cuts, where no employment was bolstered, $7.5 billion is gone, from a blatant assumption that Donald Trump would get a second term in office, and KXL would proceed, $1.6 billion is gone from the UCP using faulty accounting procedures, and $4 billion is gone, and there is no accounting as to how this money was used, or where it even went to. The UCP has increased the size of government, and has the largest government in the history of Alberta. That’s also a waste of money, big time. These pretend conservatives and Reformers are the exact opposite as to what Alberta saw under the wise leadership of Peter Lougheed.
Anonymous Apparently Bret Larson loves driving on our roads filled with potholes while he helps these reformers steal our wealth. He has certainly bought into the lies Kenney fed him about spending too much money. I wonder how he would have built the 55 schools these reformers left us short of without spending any money ? He forgets that it was Notley who increased corporate taxes by 2% in an effort to gradually get us back up to Lougheed’s rates. It’s my understanding that she was planning to begin increasing royalties in 2021 and fools like Bret Larson weren’t smart enough to let her do it. Kenney fed them the lie that what she was doing was unsustainable and it was , if you were going to let an idiot like Kenney slash taxes by $9.4 billion and state he would never increase royalties, like he did to make certain it was unsustainable. What these fools forget is the massive deficit Notley inherited and there is no way you can fix it without spending money. Our roads will likely cost taxpayers $20 billion to fix and these potholes are destroying our cars. Three members of our family, including me , have had to replace struts and my mechanic stated that it is an ongoing problem. He loves making money on Kenney’s stupidity.
Western Canada Concept operative says what?
So you think the answer to inflation is to cut the wages of ordinary workers? That will make more people poor. Start at the top with oil executives, why don’t we, and see how that goes.
Your whole statement is made up of falsehoods that might fool the ignorant. Why are you coming here to mislead people? Wrong audience.
I would agree that Conservatives reputation for good fiscal management is not really well deserved. Conservative parties have governed Alberta much longer than any others, but looking at their track record of surpluses and deficits, it is at best 50/50. Conservatives tend to talk about fiscal responsibility more, so maybe that is how this image is maintained and of course they have made cuts to reduce deficits in the past. However, often they were the ones that also created the problem in the first place.
I do recall once seeing a bumper sticker similar to the one in the picture (although more concise), but for all the talk about this slogan, actual bumper stickers were very rare. However, obviously it was a sentiment that many people related to or agreed with.
I agree this is a good topic to bring up at this point. After all, shouldn’t we discuss how we are going to manage our money when we are getting or expecting a windfall. Avoiding the discussion or leaving it to later only leads to bad or ad hoc decisions we will later regret. For instance, sure we may now (or soon) have enough money to pay for a provincial police force, but is that really a good idea or sustainable in the long run?
I think the five principles are a good starting point for this discussion and I hope all parties will respond to how their policies relate to this. We’ve seen the boom/bust happen too many times in the past to know that it can end badly – spend lots of money in the good times and then cut when circumstances change dramatically. We need to have a government that is more thoughtful about this, as it might be the last shot we have to get it right, and plan for a more economically stable future where our prosperity can be more enduring and not subject to the wild fluctuations of resource prices.
I have seen that bumper sticker but can’t recall if it was during one of my several sojourns in Alberta when the proclaimed tenets of fiscally conservative fundamentalism failed to protect my more-regular British Columbia haunts from severe and prolonged unemployment. Wherever it was, it struck me and my workmates as funny because “pissing away” (that is, blowing the work-camp paycheque by getting piss-drunk in a frontier or, even, more substantial town on days off—and maybe a trip to the dentist) was regular fare for aimless young men (the pervasive gender of all camps, back in my day) with a fat wad in holed pockets. I did the tree-killing and the days-off thing in both provinces, so my memory’s a bit fuzzy now, so many decades later. But that bumper sticker was (is?) real. Mighta even seen it here in BC, even on bumpers otherwise decorated by BC licence plates. My kid brother did seismic and metering in the Alberta patch over the years—mighta seen one on his monster truck with the Ontario plates, last seen in our old man’s front field rusting with the rest of the family collection in Upper Canada (betcha his memory is about as good as mine, dome-spots, rifle-racks—‘cept for the rear-axle dip in Cold Lake on a supposed “ice fishing” expedition. Maybe…)
Briefly, before I forget, my views on the bitumen industry: if every uptick in market price for conventional oil is considered a “boom” and bitumen enjoys a share in it, then there might be a series of such bitumen-boomin’s yet to come—it will always be filtered through the partisan political echo chamber, a slippery, sliding slope of a scale, at least in dilution; in a holistic sense, return on investment, especially public investment, is difficult to discern and probably just as impossible—but, with policy-in-corrected-dollars and a genesistic wiping-clean of the slated scroll, public, as well as private, benefit might accrue, even as the general petro-industry winds down (as it must in environmentally-corrected global context); the resource is tremendous in size and writing it off is about as likely as ending all old-growth logging in BC by, like, yesterday—that is, not very—however, the prospect for integrated petro-chemical investments that include carbon sequestration, green plastics, agricultural fertilizers and other opportunities is fair to good, depending on governing political philosophy and its relevancy to the public good (including environmental sensibility); Alberta’s geographical remoteness is offset by every kind of infrastructure integration with continental and offshore opportunities, so long’s, in my—and most other people’s—opinion, federal strengths prevail over secessional parochialism. (Remind: the ocean is for seafaring and inter-federate squabbling over tidewater access is for fighting—and the federal solution is to make every Canadian citizen own three-and-a-half inches of TMX pipeline from bitumen dilution to flotation— silence at the dinner table thus achieved until desert’s done.) But they’s storm clouds a-comin’ on thet economic horizon—how long’s that “boom” gone last? “One more time/ Just one time/ I’d sure like to see those old friends of mine…”
Our dismal scientists (more dismal for their affiliations with various politically-partisan positions) are now forecasting economic recession for next year when, we might suppose, government largess will be doubly condemned by Canned-Ice Bergen’s suckling as that that was aimed at helping us through the worst of Covid—that is, unless subsequent waves demand more of the same. But, if we can weather all that, then the hypocrisy of condemning federal equalization transfer will be a piece of cake: just take out “equal” and a quarter of the battle is won. Let’s just hope that quarter doesn’t end up electing the next prime minister of Canada or premier of Alberta.
The power of narrative has always been enough to cast democratic socialism, whether ‘blue-dipperdom’ or ‘red-toryism,’ as fiscally inept, and even to mangle the meaning of “myth” by defining it as antiquatedly quaint, but factually untrue—as in, the myth that the NDP are crazy, idealistic spendthrifts who break every bank from the national treasury to the shoebox under the bed. In fact, the myth —in its actual sense—is this pithy wisdom: it is both prudent to be fiscally prudent AND distribute the profit therefrom fairly. Simply fill in the blank (Keynes, YHWH, TC Douglas, Tommy AND Jehovah, Horton, Horton And Dr Zeus, or Keynes AND/OR whichever enterprise, public or private, left the corners of the field unharvested).
The partisan conflict over two major public services in Alberta, schools and hospitals, is simply that one side insists the policy of the other side will destroy society. Quick!—somebody call the cops! Naturally there’s a similar dichotomy in the Wild Rose province about policing, too, but fortunately the former two are the most likely to impact the most Albertans (and very fortunate that one of them, schooling, can’t be contested by citing body-counts like Covid and “stand-your-ground,” rural Alberta-style, can). Let us consult the record.
And now, as my baby Bro said on his B-Day: “I’m 63 and I gotta pee.” Being a senior citizen myself, I sure won’t be “pissing away,” roughly put, my pension cheque, only one of which ever went “boom!”—this I solemnly promise (it already spent itself inflating prospects that I can afford to get juiced, at least a little bit, at some point this weekend—her nibs allowing, of course. Or maybe I’ll whip up a bumper sticker, out to the shop, listen to some Ronnie Hawkins. Her B-Day’s coming up, make a nice present, no? Now THAT’s real freedom!)
GSTQ and Bless Canada!
It’s hilarious how Jason Kenney wants ignorant Albertans to believe all the lies about Trudeau. How stupid does Kenney think we are? While Reformers continue screwing us out of our oil and tax wealth to try to buy votes , Trudeau continues to make Kenney look like a damn fool. From a former Royal Bank manager’s stand point I really don’t know what Albertans would have done without Trudeau and I never thought I would ever say that. The guy has literally saved our hides. Giving our airport $25 million, Calgary Stampede $10 million , $4.5 billion to buy a pipeline and save our oil industry, and an extra $30 billion to save our young workers during this pandemic, yet Albertans continue to believe that he is the bad guy. You can’t be any dumber than that, can you? Want to bet these Reformers would never have been willing to do it. Screwing the people out of their oil and tax wealth and forcing them into a lot more privatization is all they care about. With this fool Poilievre promising to destroy a lot more jobs if elected you know he wouldn’t be helping anyone other than his reform party pals and their rich friends. Whether we like Trudeau or not he hasn’t been this stupid, he shows he does care about all Canadians. These Reformers don’t and they prove it by the way they have always treated our doctors, nurses, teachers, and students.
I’d feel even better about Rachel’s campaign promises if she’d mentioned diversifying away from oil & gas and more into wind, solar and geothermal energy. But I guess she can’t spook the voters whose jobs come from O&G, or the CEOs whose stock options depend on ever-increasing sales.
Mike the oil industry already knows it and are doing just that. Shell oil is going to run their refinery at Scotford on solar power. While Albertans whined about Trudeau’s high targets for reducing admissions the oil industry agreed they could be reached using green energy and weren’t concerned.
Notley contradicts herself by claiming to not want to “piss it all away” while still calling for increased health and education funding. Until AB can pay down all its debt, fund operations out of tax revenue and improve health and education efficiency to at least the average of BC and ON, it will be “pissing” it away. 110% of this surplus should go to debt repayment and the Heritage Fund. The extra 10% should come out of public sector payroll to fund accelerated debt repayment and investment, while bringing health and education funding down from nosebleed levels.
It’s nice to see how the Canadian Republican Party , Reformers, they certainly aren’t conservatives, had a Calgary stampede barbecue so they could beat up on Trudeau and one another once again. Apparently Poilievre was the winner bad mouthing Trudeau in true Republican Party fashion for daring to want to ban handguns. The same Poilievre who praised his pal Kenney for the way he handled Alberta’s COVID disaster, praised the truck convoy mess in Ottawa, doesn’t care what it cost taxpayers, and doesn’t give a damn about who lost their lives during COVID crisis or the ongoing shooting disasters in the U.S. He doesn’t care that Canadians wants to see it stopped before it becomes the norm in Canada ,like it is in the U. S. A. while he finds it smart to support it.You can’t be any dumber than this guy, can you? As a former German pointed out to me during the Klein disaster “ Now you know what happened in German in the 1930s. While Hitler and his supporters spread their lies we could do nothing about it. These fools outnumbered us two to one, just like we are seeing in Alberta. You will never stop Ralph Klein from financially destroying you, like he is doing. He has too much support.” The only hope we have to save us from Poilievre is the true conservatives in Ottawa and eastern Canada we know the fools on the prairies never will do it. They aren’t smart enough.
Continuing my bizarro Stampede journey, I thought it would be fun to check out the politicking on site. It’s weird that an event that’s pretty much a carnival would be the choice place for politicos to rear their ugly heads and ply their grifting ways.
Skippy Pollivere was out and about, acting like some hybrid version of a prime minister and a carnival barker. With Andrew Scheer, Jason Kenney, and Brett Wilson nearby, one could say that Pollivere was running the local freak show.
Skippy went through his usual laundry list of items, all of which have the usual “blame Trudeau” response. Of course, the CONs had their trained seals out to give the whole event a Convoy atmosphere.
And PMJT showed up, though I have no idea why. Considering the abundance of financial support that the Liberals have secured for the Stampede, one would have thought that Trudeau would be hailed as an honorary cowboy or some other stupid Calgary shite. But crying and whining is the only thing that Alberta is good at.
Finally, I trailed into a CPC event where Murphy Brown (aka Candy Bergen) was presenting the reasons why only the CONs can save Canada. Apart from making the planes, trains, and automobiles running on time (Mussolini would be proud.) Bergen presented some pretty lofty claims, like the Conservative Party founded Canada, built it, saved it, rebuilt it, and made everyone free. Pretty lofty claims, indeed. But conveniently forgetting that it was the Liberals who were consistently voted into office more often, and lead Canada through more crises and global threats. Yeah, Candy, the Nazis were a problem, believe it or not. Basically, Candy was preaching to the idiots in the room.
The “Please God….” sticker was taking up a large percentage of the rear bumper on my neighbor’s pickup in Grande Prairie during the late 80’s.
The remainder was taken up by one that stated, “The Only Good Tory is a Suppository”. He was a political outlier, I must say.