Games politicians play are often a turnoff
By Medicine Hat News Opinon on March 15, 2019.
It is politics every which way you turn these days and sometimes it is hard to see who is looking out for the average person. On the provincial front it seems there has never been more given to so few in such a short space of time, to paraphrase Sir Winston Churchill. Even as the clock ticks down to the imminent election the NDP government is determined to make a basket of announcements every day with billions of dollars dished out for one program or another. It feels as though a divorce is underway and the government is working hard to lure Albertans with gifts. You know the scenario – divorcing parents each want to persuade their child to choose to live with them and so they lavish gifts on the child. Provincially, though, the gifts are all on credit and the child may have to live in poverty trying to recover from all the spending. The UCP is taking the “responsible parent” approach in contrast. As fast as the NDP announces another project the UCP is telling Albertans it will cut programs to reduce costs because we can’t spend out way out of trouble. Which approach Albertans prefer will only be known on voting day. On the federal front, the SNC-Lavalin fiasco is not going away either, even though Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took a much needed break on an isolated island off the coast of Florida to distance himself. The fact that this all started because of the potential loss of thousands of jobs, and concern over the loss of votes in an election, should have us all taking notice. The message the government has sent loud and clear is that if you are a big enough company, in a certain part of the country where you feel you could lose votes, you are above the law. Those concerns seem to trump legality and due process of the law and that is very serious. Many people have already pointed out the potential for job loss with SNC-Lavalin was not an issue because the work within Canada would remain the same. Another company would get the contract and give Canadians those jobs. It is not as though SCN was manufacturing something and threatened to set up the manufacturing operation outside of Canada. So the job loss was a moot point except the perception of this in Quebec, which holds sway politically and that could have negatively impacted the Liberal party in this fall’s election. This had nothing to do with an MP standing up for jobs in Canada. Provincially and federally the political games being played are enough to turn the voter off completely. (Gillian Slade is a News reporter. To comment on this and other editorials, go to https://www.medicinehatnews.com/opinions, email her at gslade@medicinehatnews.com or call her at 403-528-8635.) 14-13
