Opinion: Easy to hack and slash for UCP; conscience, creativity are required

By Medicine Hat News Opinion on March 6, 2020.

Voters were angry at the PC government after four decades and got an unprepared NDP government.

Voters were angry when the NDP did one too many overspends and voted them out. Now look what we did.

English cinematic writer Alan Moore (V is for Vendetta) once said “People shouldn’t be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.”

Wonder what he would think of the United Conservative party government?

In a Sept. 28, 2016 interview for Maclean’s, then Alberta PC leadership hopeful Jason Kenney told reporter Shannon Proudfoot when asked to comment on opposition members being tough on government with their incessant scrutinizing, “It’s easier for opposition members to condemn the government at the drop of a hat if they don’t understand. Sometimes there are no good choices for government. Sometimes the government has to answer questions with ambiguous language.”

Fast forward three and a half years later and Kenney’s words regarding “no good choices” for government and the “ambiguous language” are coming to fruition.

The last two weeks with the battles with unions, the medical community, those in education (i.e. school divisions “own source/reserve funding”; cuts to post secondary institutions’ funding, rural municipalities paying more for polling costs; cuts to seniors’ drug plans; a seemingly vomit – inducing, belt tightener of a budget with the latest of this week’s announcement of the closure of some provincial parks and the push toward privatization of hundreds of parksâ€¦ the Kenney government is getting pummelled in popularity polls (under 50% in the latest).

The fear and anger is that there are a lot of people out of work and those who had government jobs were comfortable.

Now, the same people languishing without substantial work are suffering more and those union members who had money are now feeling threatened. There have been numerous angry protests, but Kenney seemingly is unfazed by the critics.

While the terms hypocrisy, double standard and favouritism are often commonplace in politics, it is evident the past two weeks. With the infamous Canadian Energy Center aka energy war room and its $30 million (annual) budget; the fact the total debt for the province actually climbs from $95.6 billion in 2020-21 to $107 billion in 2022-23.

The government warns that there will be even further cuts if it doesn’t get better. Can anyone say “all-out general strike in September?”

Couple all of this negativity with the fact there’s battles with the federal Liberals regarding energy policies which sounds vaguely familiar to us old-timers, only feeds the fire for the anger, the pessimism and mistrusts amongst Albertans with Canada and with themselves.

But, this is what happens with governing a province using spreadsheets and nothing else.

Anybody with a financial scape can govern like this. Stay in your ivory tower, don’t listen to the masses who are hurting and ensure your ice cold conscious can withstand it.

The UCP faithful will say the NDP overspent on numerous programs, infrastructure and kept all of their socially and environmentally conscious friends happy. They had to stop the financial bleeding.

Understood. The province couldn’t keep sustaining those kind of deficit budgets and insurmountable debt.

Trouble is, those voters who are shocked by the actions of the UCP shouldn’t be. This is what they are. Yes, they have to bring in more jobs. Yes, the energy sector needs addressing and yes, someone needs to go figure out those equalization payments.

But there needs to be some give and take. There needs to be some creative and innovative thinking. There needs to be honey with bitter, bitter medicine. There needs to be more of an explanation of why and how this is going to help the province instead of the tired old finger pointing and “it’s their fault” mentality.

“There are no good choices for government.”

Indeed.

(Ryan Dahlman is the managing editor for Prairie Post East and Prairie Post West)