Michael Ignatieff's latest policy announcement has signalled his intent to follow the strategy of his Liberal predecessors Jean Chretien and Pierre Trudeau: target Alberta to win the rest of Canada.
And he's gone back to the Trudeau era to do it.
In an eerily Jack Laytonesque show of bravery, Ignatieff hesitated until he was almost as far away from Alberta as he could be before dropping his biggest bomb of the race. The latest Liberal platform announcement unveiled a revampled edition of the long-favorite leftwing gem, a cap-and-trade program.
Albertans might remember it better by its former name: the National Energy Program.
Pierre Trudeau was successful in his quest to rape the Albertan economy in order to fulfill his need to oversee nationalized wealth distribution in the late 1970's-early '80's. Back then, the tools of misdirection used by the Liberals was the oil shortage and the bad economy. Seizing the opportunity to use a crisis to further his agenda, Trudeau exacerbated a West-East rift that still lingers to this day.
After bitter words and some drastic action by then Alberta Premier Lougheed, Trudeau ended up victorious in the end. While the rest of the nation saw Lougheed and Trudeau clink glasses of champagne, Albertans saw their Premier grab his ankles for a quasi-communist Prime Minister.
The NEP plan was a flop, of course. It didn't come close to accomplishing the stated objectives, and instead devastated the Alberta economy, and by extension, our community. It took more than a decade of deep cuts, cutbacks, and sacrifice by Albertans to finally dig our way out of the hole.
This time around, Ignatieff and his Liberals will use the environmental card, using Green Guilt to full advantage in order to push their socialist agenda.
No one should be fooled. No matter how much spin the Liberals try to play, a cap and trade policy will have the same effect as the NEP did on the Alberta economy: devastation.
It's so obvious, even our current lame-duck premier sees it.
If Michael Ignatieff is as intelligent as we are led to believe, he must realize any attack on Alberta's oil sands will reopen long-healing national scars.
Not everyone in Alberta would oppose Ignatieff's cap and trade policy, however. The separatists would be giddy beyond belief.
3 comments :
The Conservatives are also promising, more than promising, they already have an active program that will do the same, give us another NEP directed at Alberta.
Everybody should see that this Liberal plan is meant to pit Canada against Alberta, Canada against one region and that this is the nature of the Canadian political system. The Liberals, NDP and other parties have no choice.
Which is why the Conservatives are also moving in the same direction with their "environmental" programs. They have no choice.
Under the current system they, any serious Canadian political party, must steal from Alberta and throw increasing amounts of our cash at Canada and other Eastern Provinces.
Which is why Canada's richest per capita province does not have the best healthcare, is not the base of Federal departments, and does not even have twinned TransCanada highways connecting it to other provinces.
This is a Confederation in which Charter Membership has it's privileges and colonies like Alberta must pay.
These programs, including Cap and Trade will not target those industrialized sections that use energy. Canada (ON/QC) will not tax themselves unless they have our money to pay those taxes.
As more details of the Environmental Monitoring, CAP and Trade and other programs designed to take Alberta money and give it to Canada those few people who care about Alberta, those few people with roots here, those few who wish to see Alberta have a future that is more than an underfunded cash cow colony may indeed feel their cause should now be clear to all.
Their point has been proven, but does anybody, do enough people, care?
Or will we see a massive Alberta vote supporting this system which has repeatedly proven to effectively represent only Eastern Canada?
Polls suggest Albertans will once again vote for a party that will not represent them, a party that will not defend them or allow them the same status as the Charter provinces.
I'm not sure that makes the separatists or those wanting an improved Confederation happy. It should not make them giddy.
I love how they do this BS from a long distance. Cowards all of them.
They come to us for energy revenues to support the rest of Canada but when the going got tough here where were they? Busy handing out suitcases full of cash to the auto industry. They screwed us big time on that one and I hardly hear a word about that.
They treat Alberta like a prostitute, only check in to make sure the cash is still flowing and don't do a damn thing for us. Let's just say I do not have much use for those bullshit politicians that are littered throughout our federal and provincial ranks. These people have done well below acceptable in my books. For this country not to be self sufficiant by now is ridiculous. We have every resource and the energy to become self sufficiant but instead we've been sold out to the highest bidder. While we wounder what the hell is coming down the pipe next these assholes vote themselves 24% raises and assorted bullshit.
You know it's time the people of this country decided how things are going to be. The key is the net and making sure enough people are involved enough to make them listen. This is the way decisions are being made now, this will be how descions will be made from now on. It's statistical analysis, the world runs on it.
It'll happen sooner than you think. I read every day and I am reading it more and more every day.
Ladies and gentlemen......may I present the revolution.
If the politicians of Alberta, do not have the smarts at the bargaining table, then the people of Alberta should find one that does.
Just copy what the Quebec Bloc does. Scream that you will separate from Canada. It works for them. They get everything they want from our PM. So scream that you want to separate.
It boggles my mind that Alberta has to suffer lack, so that we in the East can have. The scales of justice should prevail. And if not.......then scream that you want out. That's a guaranteed trump card.
btw: It's the liberal party in the East that creates wasteful, expensive, bloated gov't bureaucracy. A vote for liberals is a vote for less for everyone.
Liberal Party = Tax & Spend Other Peoples Monies.
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