Hello All hope you are having a good day :-)!
About: Alberta view

Not necessarily my view.  I agree on one thing though Joe Clark was honest
and my MP for years.

Subject: A View from Alberta

I got this by email the other day.

If you agree,please pass it around.
If you don't agree, please pass it around anyway.

   A view from Alberta

     Another election! By now Canadians are fed up with the whole mess and
a complete change of government is very tempting. It seems to make so much
sense to give the Conservatives a try when the Liberals have so much
mileage down some pretty rough roads.  The Americans were in the same
position when, tired of the scandals of the Clinton White House, they threw
their lot in with George Bush. Now, mired in an interminable, expensive war
and with a national debt of eight trillion and growing, many Americans are
regretting the choice of change for change's sake.

   So, the wise thing for Canadians to do is study Stephen Harper quite carefully.

Who is Stephen Harper?

    Well, he seems to be a youngish man who has achieved a great deal of
success with limited experience.  He has been a sessional lecturer in
economics at Calgary's Mount Royal College and the University of Calgary,
neither position very prestigious. Of course, is is academic career was
very brief because he was elected as a Reform Member of Parliament for
Calgary West two years after getting his M.A. He left the Reform caucus
after a falling out with Preston Manning to lobby as president of the
National Citizens Coalition.

    In 2002, after Stockwell Day's political career imploded, the Alliance
party chose the less controversial Harper as their leader. In 2004, he beat
the equally inexperienced Peter Mackay to become leader of the new
Conservatives. His mentors at the University of Calgary were the U.S. born
political scientists Ted Morton and Tom Flanagan founders of the very
conservative e "Calgary School". Flanagan would later become his
campaign manager. His published work when he lectured at the University of
Calgary advocates the dismantling of welfare programs, smaller government
and fewer restrictions on American investment in the oil patch. While
president of the National Citizens Coalition, he tried to strike down a law
limiting third-party advertising during election campaigns, a move that was
seen as benefiting  big business.

   Harper has advocated reducing Canadian tax rates to below American
levels. There is little doubt that he would bring in American style
economic policies.  Those conservative laissez-faire economic policies in
the United States have created quite a legacy. In the fifteen years between
1983 and 1998, the richest 1% of Americans saw their wealth increase by
42%. The richest 40%, excluding the richest 1%, saw their wealth increase
roughly 20%. Wealth is seen as all accumulated assets, investments, homes,
savings, pension funds less debt load.  In the same time period, the bottom
40% of Americans saw their wealth drop p 76%.  Tax cuts, deregulation and
reformed social spending designed to stimulate the American economy created
wealth but also created economic c disparity.  Harper as an economic
conservative sees these measures as ultimately benefiting the nation. But 
how did Harper come to this economic philosophy? Obviously his economic 
views have not been shaped by experience in the market place or significant
research in economic theory. His careers have not taken him beyond Alberta
or Ottawa.  Is he the leader to take Canada in a new economic direction?

   The Conservative movement in North America has strangely made a lack of
expertise a virtue in its political candidates. Before entering politics,
Bush bankrupted oil companies and Alberta's Ralph Klein was an alcoholic
reporter for a local TV station.  Wealthy and dynamic Alberta wants it s
share of power in Ottawa but all it offers to lead the nation is Stephen
Harper. Even Ralph Klein has told the national media he doesn't think that
Harper can win! Conservatives will back Harper up with vicious ads that
amount to a new prime time series 'The Libranos'.

    Electoral races depend on media campaigns not the quality of
candidates. The new conservative movement in North America has such disdain
for government that it never sacrifices its best and brightest to careers
in public office. Of course, some clever ones like Dick Cheney must take a
hiatus from their lucrative and powerful corporate positions to insure
government serves the corporate agenda. New conservatives expect the market
place to skim off the top of the talent pool and the rest can serve civil
society. In their arrogance, they see average citizens who can't afford
their own security services, private schools, or off-shore tax dodges as
undeserving.

    The Canadian  tradition, however, has been a concern for the common
good, not every man  for himself. At one time, public service was an
honourable profession.

   Harper's own fiscal agenda will be the least of Canada's problems,
however, if he signs treaties that deal away Canadian sovereignty. He has 
little reluctance to draw closer to the US to which his appearance on Fox
Network and his motion in parliament to apologize to the US for our lack of
support in Iraq attest.

    In 1998, global opposition put an end to OECD  negotiations to
establish the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), a  treaty that
would have multiplied the power of corporations over  governments and
radically limited ted our ability to control our own social, economic and
environmental legislation.

    With Bush in the White House and his former deputy secretary of
defence, the hawkish neo-con Paul Wolfowitz heading the World Bank, it is
not inconceivable that another initiative similar to the MIA will be
introduced. Increasing multinational control over Canadian assets becomes
more and more attractive with the realization ion that Alberta's oil sands
have become the only large petroleum reserve in a politically stable area
of the world. We might never know how much Harper buys into global
domination by multinational capitalism until it is too late

    Canadians are disgusted by the Liberals at this point in history and
may be prepared to overlook a lot if a candidate from another party seems
like a straight arrow. Alberta politicians are untainted, or that is what
mo st Albertans want the rest of Canada to believe. Of course Alberta
federal politicians are an unknown quantity since few have had power in
Ottawa in years. Joe Clark has always been honest but Albertans have
repudiated him. Alberta provincial politicians, on the other hand, are very
distinctive entities and clear indicators of the prevailing political
mindset.

    Harper's  former University of Calgary mentor, Ted Morton, is MLA for
Foothills-Rocky View and is campaigning with the Alberta Conservative party
to replace Klein when Klein retires. Alberta money and Alberta MPs are
Harper's basic  support and will profoundly influence his government. It
should be of great interest to Canadians, then, how government works in
Alberta. Well, Alberta does have an auditor general and he does report
waste a nd mismanagement. Fred Dunn is Alberta's own Sheila Fraser. Few
care. Dunn reported that although the Alberta oilsands production increased
by 74 per cent between 1995 and 2002, royalties from the oilsands actually
decreased  by 30 per cent. In that period Albertans only earned $200
million from the oilsands, or nearly $800 million less than they did from
video lottery terminals. Dunn looked at 10 of 48 active oilsands projects
and found t hat the government wasn't using adequate procedures to verify
which project s were paying their fair share and weren't questioning the
numbers that oilsands companies were giving them. The previous auditor
general Peter Valentine called the Klein government to task for negotiating
an irresponsible loan of $420 million for West Edmonton Mall. Nobody really
knows how much Alberta taxpayers ultimately lost because the matter was
settled out of court with a nondisclosure clause. Albertans who are enraged
by Ottawa's mismanagement are completely unfazed by mismanagement in
Edmonton.  It's as if they think Quebec greed is sleaze and Alberta greed
ed is initiative. Most Albertans accept Ralph's dictum: what's good for the
private sect or is good for Alberta. The Klein government sold the Holy
Cross Hospital in Calgary for $4.7 million so that Hong Kong doctors could
turn it into a private hospital. Just the land had been valued at $8.4
million. Agro-business supports Klein's Conservatives generously. Rural
Alberta ns are the only Canadians who have no say in deciding if large pig
factory farms or feed lots will be established in their communities. The
power to decide if environmentally damaging agricultural enterprises will
go ahead ad in a community has been transferred to an appointed agency of
the provincial government.  The oil patch supports Klein's Conservatives
generously. Very few poison gas well hearings by the Alberta Energy and
Utilities Board (EUB) ever side with the area residents and against the oil
and gas companies.

    Who can explain why Albertans buy into this? Is it just that one of the
most educated populations in Canada is gullible enough to be bribed by the
royalties on their own oil?  Or do many Albertans truly believe government 
should just get out of the way of corporations that are the engines of the
economy? Do they believe that the deserving will profit along with
corporations and the disadvantaged are no concern of theirs? What do
Harper's closest supporters think? Does handing out fraudulent contract s
to corporate friends concern you more than compromising the climate, air,
water and soil that sustain life for the profit of corporate supporters?

    In the next election Canadians have some difficult decisions. Stephen
Harper can change the country fundamentally and lock us into those chan ges
through international agreements. Paul Martin has a track record in
parliament and he has been investigated and exonerated by Justice Gomery.
Stephen Harper is an unknown quantity and giving him a chance is an
experiment.

  Before you vote consider your choices very, very carefully.

    Mary Gaia-Maretta
    Calgary
    November 28, 2005



Hope this helps.  Keep us posted.

We are a fine board trying to make it better.
http://www.pris.bc.ca/ghannah
ghannah{at}pris.bc.ca
Cheers! Gord
-=Team OS/2=-
--- timEd/2 1.10.y2k+