Tax-and-spend socialist job creation at work
By Letter to the Editor on March 22, 2018.
Re: “Barnes, Kenney shallow on carbon tax,” March 9 In Mr. Cote’s letter he suggests that politicians who are pro-carbon tax are progressive new-age thinkers and those that oppose are past their due date. Alberta has not reduced any other taxes to directly compensate for the carbon tax unlike B.C. that has a revenue neutral carbon tax. When comparing statistics between the two provinces, this fact should not be overlooked. Mr. Cote states: “in December 2017 Alberta gained 26,000 jobs and the unemployment rate fell to 6.9 per cent.” How low would unemployment be with out a carbon tax? We will never know. Taking a wider view, from the May 2015 Alberta election to December 2017, government employment has increased by 12,400 positions and full-time private sector jobs decreased by 73,100. This is tax-and-spend socialist job creation at work. Mr. Cote also touts that rebates will compensate many Albertans carbon tax. The government is choosing to issue a rebate at the present time. Once we are all acclimatized to the tax, the rebate will be withdrawn; this is classic bait and switch NDP tactics. The natural gas on my February utility bill was $41.28, the carbon tax on the gas was $31.95, that is a 77.4 per cent tax. Looking forward to 2022 the under the Trudeau/Notley plan this same natural gas bill will be $41.28 and $53.26 for the carbon tax, a 130 per cent tax. This is NDP social license making our lives better. Canada’s carbon emissions in 2013 were 1.6 per cent of world totals. Worldwide, 1,600 new coal fired plants in 62 countries are planned; meanwhile Trudeau and Notley believe if they just tax us enough the world will be saved. This appears to be Mr. Cote’s definition of a progressive politician. Mike Somerville Medicine Hat 10-9
Once again we see one of our fellow Albertans making a fool of himself bashing the Carbon Tax that has been in place in Sweden since 1991 and B. C. since 2008 and it’s been proven that it works well, but like so many others he doesn’t care about pollution, let our children deal with it. . Other countries also have a carbon Tax if he would bother to check and some of the U.S. is considering it.. Yes he is right that B.C. did cut taxes elsewhere to help compensate for it but is he aware that my B.C. relatives are paying $1.60 a liter for gas at the pumps, have a 7% sales tax and still pay a monthly health care premium, so whining about our carbon tax doesn’t make him look very smart when we are so much better off in many other ways, does it?. Where does he get the idea that the government is planning to withdraw these rebates down the road when it hasn’t been done elsewhere and as we know it will actually help some people, or doesn’t he want to see people helped, like Jason Kenney doesn’t ?
While he whines about his carbon tax he conveniently ignores the horrific mess Klein’s deregulation of electricity has created for Albertans and as former MLAs have pointed out, just think what it’s done to the cost of health care and education for us. One of Lougheed’s former MLAs told me it was the dirtiest trick Klein could have played on the people. Of course he promised you that it would make your power bills a lot cheaper, has it? It was just one more of his lies that he fed his supporters , knowing they would believe it. Everywhere deregulation has been tried it’s been a huge failure as my late father, a power plant engineer would tell you and now we see the disaster in Ontario financially destroying the people and it’s why no other provinces were dumb enough to try it. Electrical engineers state that thanks to deregulation Albertans have been paying far more for their so-called cheap coal -fired produced electricity than areas where gas is used, but that doesn’t seem to bother Mike.
Maybe Mike should try to get himself educated about what’s happening in this world and look at why so many Alberta Conservatives voted in the NDP and why they don’t vote for just anyone who attaches the word Conservative to their name like Liberal Ralph Klein did and like Liberal Jason Kenney has done. If these gullible Albertans had bothered to check into Jason Kenney’s background they would find that he was Justin Trudeau’s right hand man Ralph Goodale’s assistant in Regina. He came to Alberta to join the Preston Manning , Stephen Harper Reform Party movement and has never been a true conservative and as any tue conservative knows there is a huge difference between a conservative and a reformer. The only mandate the reformers have is looking after themselves and their rich friends, and cutting billions off government spending by dumping the costs onto the backs of the people, like their hero Ralph Klein did using these policies. Doctors state that what Kenney is promising to do to you with his promise of a lot privatization of health care is something you had better not ignore, if you don’t want to find yourselves lining up at the food banks.
So while Mike and his friends go around pretending that they are such great conservatives and support another former Liberal in Jason Kenney who claims we need a two-tiered health care system like his hero Ralph Klein tried to force up[on us with his Third Way, an American cousin of mine has been saying for years”Don’t let anyone destroy your Public Health care system. Trust me you don’t want ours”.
Him and his wife are paying $500. per month each for basic coverage and he says that if either one of them ever needed $300,000. in medical care they would likely have to come up with $250,000. It would be a huge burden on them.
While Klein was trying to force his Third-Way upon us some of his MLAs told several of us that they had their doubts about it working and doctors made it well known that it wouldn’t work and Klein was forced into early retirement.