Western Alienation Prise Deux

The West is doing just fine economically at present. Delayed projects mean a longer timeframe that deflates an overheated economy. It allows infrastructure to catch up and makes living costs more affordable.

The problem for the West is a coalition government with one seat in each of Saskatchewan and Alberta and six in BC, all of which are in urban areas. The Liberals and NDP have no hope of succeeding without the Bloc and the Bloc has no interest in governing, only an increased slice of Canada's GDP for Quebec.

If Quebec increases its share of GDP by increased productivity, fine. If they increase it by extortioning it from the ROC via support for the coalition, how will this price be paid?

Westerners rightly assume that the price will be paid by the west because the coalition has nothing to lose by screwing the west. For this reason, I suggest that an election is the ONLY fair method of resolving this crisis.

Quote:

If Quebec increases its share of GDP by increased productivity, fine. If they increase it by extortioning it from the ROC via support for the coalition, how will this price be paid? 

worth every penny. 

Don't forget that a Western province like Alberta is resource rich and have been able to keep a good portion of the revenues within it's borders. 

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why is it that polling booths look like cattle chutes?

I don't think this will lead to more Western alienation, but if the coalition moves on environmental issues, the Conservatives will probably argue that it will. They'll probably call Linda Duncan a sell out or something, if she gets into cabinet, especially if she's the Environment, or Natural Resources Minister. We will then hear how some sort of carbon tax, or cap and trade, policy is "hurting" Alberta, and therefore the west...since Alberta is always the stand in for "the West" for reformatory types, despite the fact that they aren't even a 1/3rd of the west's population, or even the biggest province in the west.

     The west isn't doing fine economically.  Major corporations like Husky (cut its' capital budget by 50%) just haven't told the public yet.  There's going to be chaos in the patch.  Unemployment in the west is going to hit hard in 2009 and with so many people indebted beyond what their means, it's going to get crazy out there. 

     And what will the conservatives offer as policy solutions?  Sell assets at discount rates to political supporters?  As if anyone believes that buying high and selling low is good policy.  Cut taxes?  That's the conservative mantra right down to believing that tax cuts on piano lessons will create more concert pianists.  Pray?  Maybe the sky god will respond.  Maybe not.

The west isn't doing just fine, people in BC, especially in the north are hanging on by their finger nails.  Meanwhile it is December first, and the ground here in the Rockies is not even frozen, and we had rain today. The pine beetles are spreading further south and east and not a damn thing is being done by Harper for the environment and the catastrophe facing BC. It has come to the point that I really believe he believes the world is going end shortly, so why do anything.

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"watching the tide roll away"

I hate to say it, but several Eastern commentators really don't get the Western attitude. Things are going to cool down in the patch, Ratbert is right that it will have some positive consequences, but it will also have a lot of people underemployed or unemployed and rather upset. There will be ripple effects through the economy and if the natural resource prices don't rebound, people in across Western Canada are going to find themselves in a fairly angry malaise. 

The most palpable expressions of Western alienation come in two forms: 1) The notion that the West pays for the East (most prominently epitomized by equalization payments and fancy dancing with the federal-provincial transfer system- ocassionally at the behest of Quebec) 2) That the West's opinion is not respected (when have you ever heard of a policy held up because "the West" didn't like it. Canadian politics is virtually always an Ontario-Quebec game despite the fact that the West sees itself as a viable and important political entity).

 The federal government should try to address these concerns. The most important thing is to make it seem more like the West isn't just getting bilked to the benefit of other provinces. There also needs to be a lot of consultation and investment. This should not happen at the provincial level, because voters do not pay as much attention to the provincial-federal shenanigans as they do to local politics. The government should be signing deals with the mayors of towns and cities in the Conservative heartland. This is where they will get noticed and also where more of the acute needs are expressed. If the government is seen as giving Westerners more value for their tax dollars, then attitudes will soften. If people are given the impression that their opinions and votes will count, then attitudes may change.

Anne McClellan was a reactionary monstrosity and a total disgrace to humanity. All she did as cabinet minister was suck up to her donors in the oil patch and try to sabotage any gov't action on climate change. Man people think that if there is one person who is most to blame for Canada having such a dreadful record on global warming its her.

Anne MacLellan = eco-terrorist supreme - YECCCHHH!!!

Michel Trudeau died, I don't know what ratbert thinks he did? Hell he may not even have been born when the NEP(which actually benfited westerners before they rewrote the history books.) came about. Please go read how the east and in particular Ontario was paying twice the world price just so we could have the oil exploration. Which I was in favour of as long as we didn't sell it off once the companies became profitable like your con governments recommended.

I don't understand the whole alienation thing at all.  Hell windsor is the asshole of the country we all say canada stops at london. But you rarely hear anything about leaving canada. Although there is the odd talk of a tri county(kent essex lambton) city state.We have a very diverse economy between the 3. For the most part we don't exist on the radar. I wish the mayor of Sania would run for the NDP the guy is very progressive, I think it's Mike Bradley.  

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"Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it."
Noam Chomsky

George Victor wrote:

 

 

  but... The East, catering again to Quebec.

Groundhog shit. 

In the short term, the west's energy industry is doing just fine. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081202.wbcsurplus02/BNStory/politics/home Check out this story about BC's natural gas potential. Some of the project delays in the oilsands are based on waiting for commodity prices for steel and such to fall and also to stretch the available supply of an ever aging group of tradespeople. Some relates to payback to Alberta for royalty changes.

In the long term, if prices do not rebound, Canada's trade surplus will suffer significant harm as it is energy prices that keep it in the black.

Perhaps the insightful Mr. Victor can direct his energies to explaining where the new coalition plans to extract the funds needed to address their $30 bn stimulus plan

Taxes will NOT be raised, anywhere.  The coalition agreed to that.

Horror of horrors, there would be (gasp) deficit spending to dig us out of this finance capital pit.

As Paul Krugman of NYTimes (the Nobel guy) put it yesterday: "But the deficit worrier have it all wrong. Under current conditions, there's no trade-off between what's good in the short run and what's good for the long run; strong fiscal expansion would actually enhance the economy's long-run prospects."

How about the tight-sphinctered fiscal policy a la "Steve"?

Krugman: "The idea that tight fiscal policy when the economy is depressed actually reduces private investment isn't just a hypothetical argument: it's exactly what happened in two important episodes in history." (FDRs now infamous 1937  spending reduction, and Japan, 1996-97).

So you see, bert, Alberta should be glad about what's happening. But you'd better hope than Obama and the environmentally conscious states can  justify holding their nose while importing tar-pit product. I realize your oil has meant a good balance of accounts, but do you think the grandkids will bless your name?

Coalition time government intervention would look like the quarter-century period following the Second World War (now there was a deficit) when government spent to maintain "full" employment.

It was the period well before food banks and homeless sleeping in church basements. Remember that? Twenty years back it changed, eh?

The food banks of Ontario do not know how they will meet the demand...up 13 per cent in Toronto in the last six months BEFORE OCTOBER. Food price increases...baby food up 11 per cent, pasta, up 48 per cent.

Oshawa's needs up 15 per cent. And the increase in human suffering is only beginning to be felt.

But don't worry, yer oil is only down to a three-and-a-half year low. The banks have been financed with public money and  the hard-pressed oil companies will not have to go into hand out mode. Hunger will be limited to the newly dispossessed.

Why does Alberta sound like Appalachia in times like this? Your radio call in shows.  The spin meisters pull the chains and animus is directed not to the source of the pain, but to something called The East. 

Frightening stuff.

In the West, a deep sense of betrayal

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20081203.BCMASON03/TPStory/TPComment/BritishColumbia/

It is against that backdrop that British Columbians, and westerners in general, are reacting today to a plan by the Liberals, the New Democratic Party and the Bloc Québécois to kick the Conservatives from office and take over in Ottawa. And the reaction has not been kind.

In all my years listening to the callers who make talk radio in Vancouver such a hit, I have never heard such anger. Of the dozens who phoned in yesterday morning to Bill Good's No. 1-rated talk show on CKNW, calls were running 95 per cent against the coalition.

I thought this was well said, from a new blog, globeandmailwatch:

My last letter to the Globe & Mail 

Because doing it this way should be a lot more fun.

Dear Gary Mason,

Contrary to your column today,
it is not true that BC voted 'mostly Tory' in the last election. Steven
Harper won 61% of the seats with well under half the popular vote, and
if Westerners are going to feel alienated about anything that would be
a good place to start.

As I'm sure you know, it is also not true
that talk radio callers are representative of anything other than their
spittle-flecked selves. Is that really the best data you can find?

Over
half of BC and Manitoba voters and almost half of Saskatchewan voters
did not vote for the Tories; even in Alberta, a third did not, and they
managed to elect an NDPer in Edmonton. Are all these people feeling
'betrayed' by the coalition too, or are they thrilled at the prospect
that they might now, albeit indirectly, get a little representation?
Lazy writing like yours today does absolutely nothing to help a
Torontonian like me figure out what is really going on in the West. All
it does is confirm my suspicion that Canadian journalists have a habit
of saying 'the West' when they mean 'loud rural Albertans'. Thanks for
nothing,

yours sincerely,

Dr. B.

 

http://globeandmailwatch.blogspot.com/2008/12/my-last-letter-to-globe-ma...

 

 

Excellent letter to the Globe.

"Big energy and big banksters have been feasting for a long time, and
this is where we're at: on the brink of global recession and Ottawa
with nothing saved for a rainy day. Most well paid captains of
industry think ahead and build cash reserves for their corporations. If
Canada's elected leaders were corporate leaders and performing
similarly, they'd have been fired for running things so badly and
actually having reduced overall revenues and having reduced investments
in workers over the last 28 years. We can rely on selling precious
fossil fuels and raw materials and selling off the family jewels and
silverware to friends of upper management for only so long.
Neoconservative economics are now proven to be unsustainable in the
long run."

Fidel - Great metaphor (or analogy or whatever the correct literary term is).

RevolutionPlease wrote:

Ratbert wrote:

Its also interesting to note that in all the leftist energies directed at the ongoing struggle between capital and labour for a bigger slice of a shrinking pie, it is only the capitalists who need to change, never labourites, who merely need to be given more.

The pie has been consistently growing and the "labourites" slice keeps getting smaller while the "capitalists" get fatter.  How aboot some facts dude.

I presume you have been too busy Bogarting that joint in the last year to notice that the pie is gone, the 'capitalists' (including RRSPs and pension plans) busted  and the labourites searching for salvation.

Party on, Dude.

It is a danger to over simplify any one group of people in any one region of Canada.  Dismissing all people from one region as this or that is  lazy thinking.

 Not all Albertans feel alienated, nor do they collectively hate Quebec or the east.  Not all francophone are Sovereignists, and not all people in Quebec are Sovereignists.

I think that some Canadians in Western Canada think that they must play the role of the alienated; they have played the role so long they do not know how to function any other way.  Even when their party of choice becomes the man they still cry foul, and claim they are victims.  This vocal minority influences perception of the west,

Alberta's oil policies have done more to harm this country than the "enemy" in Quebec that some in the west demonise, but some Albertans don't want to hear that.  They are told Quebec is the enemy and they believe it, and don't question playing the roles they are expected to play by those that seek to manipulate them. 

 Another example of some Albertans crying foul and playing victim is in regard to the Metis and First Nations in this province standing up for their right to hunt.

Some Albertans view "others" as threats that are taking something from them.  Albertan jobs, Alberta resources... these things are no more Albertan than the air we breath or the water we use.