Alberta’s woes began long before the NDP came to power

By Letter to the Editor on January 17, 2018.

My conservative friends and I continue to find it hard to believe what a farce politics in Alberta have become. While we watch our fellow seniors going around badmouthing the Liberals and finding it smart to criticize us for electing the NDP, they ignore the fact that they were the ones who supported Ralph Klein and watched him destroy what our conservative hero Peter Lougheed had created for us. Who do they think put this province in financial ruin? It certainly wasn’t the NDP, and why do they think so many true conservatives voted for the NDP to put a stop to it?

They may enjoy paying the highest property taxes in Canada and the highest power bills, but we don’t, knowing there was no need to do so. Why don’t they care what destroying our health-care and education systems have done to us or what deregulation has done to our grocery bills. As grocery store managers state those huge freezers, especially the open air ones, use a tremendous amount of electricity and the public is certainly paying for it. The trail of Klein’s destruction goes on and on, but these people have nothing but praise for him and don’t care who has been hurt in the process.

This was the very same Ralph Klein our family knew in the 1960s who always bragged about being a Liberal and continued to do so as mayor of Calgary and the history books prove it. Don Getty told me in 2003 that inviting Liberal Ralph Klein into the Progressive Conservative party was the dumbest thing he ever did and I certainly agreed.

Now they have thrown their support behind Jason Kenney, believing every lie he feeds them totally ignorant of the fact that like Klein he is another former Liberal. Kenney was assistant to Ralph Goodale, now Justin Trudeau’s right-hand man, in the Liberal party in Regina.

So while they badmouth the Liberals and us true Conservatives, who are trying to save their butts, they have been supporting the right, making themselves look extremely foolish. But as university professors point out, they are what they are and you can’t change them. That is certainly true. I’ve been called a traitor, a communist, a left-wing nut, or a closet Liberal by these seniors I was trying to help. Now some of them are being financially destroyed by the highest long-term health-care fees in Canada thanks to what their hero Ralph Klein did to them, and sadly any one of us could be next. Their stupidity has taken us with them.

Alan K. Spiller

Edmonton

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