What will garner 2019’s big headlines?

By Medicine Hat News Opinon on January 3, 2019.

The top news stories and newsmakers for 2018 are in, but what will the same lists for 2019 feature?

In Medicine Hat, the far and away leading story in the minds of Hatters in 2018 is the coming of Aurora Cannabis — their gigantic growing facility is expected to be built and operating over the next 12 months.

The local headliner of the year, it was revealed Wednesday morning, is Mark Sakamoto. His book “Forgiveness,” a family history set largely in Medicine Hat, continued to earn national acclaim, and could be made into a CBC mini series soon.

Turn to the inside pages of the News in the same edition and there’s a sense of gloom. Aside from unease on the stock market, consternation over stalled pipeline projects, equalization, and a new carbon price in four other provinces, one local psychic even predicts “World War Three.”

That is posed in geopolitical terms, but politics on the provincial and national level will see no lack of skirmishes, it’s predicted, not to mention the situation in the United States, where a presidential election race will gain momentum heading toward 2020.

The last year was electionless for Hatters, who voted in the current city council in late 2017.

Albertans and Canadians both are expected to go to the polls in the next 12 months, with the provincial vote possibly coming soon after a new budget is unveiled in March.

That will be a long-awaited contest for conservatives in this province. They are confident a united front and united party led by Jason Kenney will thoroughly dispatch the New Democrats led by Rachel Notley.

That party, in charge since 2015, was enjoying a notable amount of mainstream support and success up to late summer, when a federal court suspended permits on the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion project. That could prove too steep a hill to climb for the NDP considering the largest question most people have of the party is how it handles the economy.

It’s hard to imagine either party simply cruising into an election, however, so expect some fireworks before the expected spring vote.

Nationally, conservatives are attempting to export the Alberta narrative about carbon pricing, political correctness and bungling social policy to the landscape as Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government seeks re-election, probably in the fall.

That audience, however, is a lot more diverse, and despite a lot of talk to the contrary, much of the Canadian economy seems to be thriving.

Canadian conservatives aside, no one has been thirstier for an election than U.S. Democratic Party supporters, who are now yearning for the coming primaries ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

Moving quickly to the local level, there are still major issues facing the city, but few events to circle on the new calendar.

The city budget passed in late December outlines no major municipal building projects, but lots of infrastructure, roads and pipe renewal. It also calls for service reductions and cost cuts in city hall programming and services that will no doubt be laid out over the course of time.

Of largest note, a mid-year progress report from the city’s petroleum resources unit into its growth strategy could reveal what future, if any, the city has in the oil and gas business.

In the private sector, pot growing facilities will be built, major commercial construction projects will be finished. The price of natural gas should in all likelihood remain low.

Wind turbines at the Capital Power Whitla Wind Farm south of Bow Island will go up in 2018, a year before Hatters will see a separate wind farm built between the city and the Cypress Hills.

Still, 12 months is a long time … too long a time to predict what may pop up, explode onto the scene, or, conversely, drop off the radar or fizzle out.