I seriously doubt that the “news” of a fourth Conservative MP crossing the floor to become a Liberal would even rank in the Top Ten of concerns voters have on their minds at the moment; however, my problem in trying to understand just why Marilyn Gladu made such a move, especially when it looks as though come this next Monday evening PM Mark Carney will become the proud father of a Liberal majority in Parliament.
Indeed, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that most of her new Liberal “friends” view her transition to be nothing more than opportunistic.
Equally repulsive to these members, Ms. Gladu is someone who associated with and supported the leadership that organized the Freedom Convoy and the vaccine skeptics who’ve reintroduced the world to medical diseases scientists believed would no longer impose their deadly illnesses upon tomorrow’s children. However, she does at least recognize that Mark Carney’s changing of the direction in our economic policies and trade practices, especially with respect to his current efforts to radically divorce our market dependency from the United States, is long overdue.
What is refreshing about her change in attitudinal approach to political issues is that she’s at least prepared to ditch the typical small-“c” conservative tendency to denigrate the intellect, culture and achievements of Canadians, a ploy still being utilized by Western Canadian separatists, especially in Alberta, to take voter issues and turn them into opportunities to finger-wag with fake bursts of outrage that only blame our most recent “rulers” in Ottawa.
Many of my so-called “critics”, especially in the Saskatchewan Party, would maintain that I do my own fair share of finger-pointing, in particular at Premier Scott Moe, Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre or U.S. President Donald Trump. They may have a point, but it’s a minute one, as I try to highlight the “why” in how governmental policies usually end up as failures by seeking out the roots festering voter dissatisfaction and work from the ground up to vaccinate the issues from the viral attacks of our political masters.
As an example to this deflection of meaningful political progress, I sincerely believe that the Saskatchewan Party lost its moral purpose when candidates began shunning public debate under former premier Brad Wall. The result of that practice is that now the party of Scott Moe has lost whatever zeal it could offer in advocating for the party’s policies and the eventual election of candidates being reduced to being nothing more than “no-names” whose voices neither count nor have influence within the party.
We need only look at the two MLA’s we now have representing Prince Albert to see the result of this avoid-the-public practice, their reports published in the Herald fill with worshipful references to the Heliport that will soon grace the Union Hospital just like it is in “big cities” such as New York or Chicago. Left out is the reality that our health care system is now being deliberately farmed out to private clinics in Alberta, yet unlike Manitoba’s efforts initiated under NDP Premier Wak Kinew, American health professionals are being “liberated” from their paper-pushing, insurance claim dominated practices leading to personal bankruptcy to come to Canada and finally practice “real medicine”.
Health care issues have dominated political discussion for decades; however, since most of the positive ideas as to how to further reform the system are generated by NDP consciousness, the more “right of centre” parties still trot out their stale sloganeering, maintaining that the Party is “tax and spend”, even though this province is over $41 billion in debt and facing bankruptcy, as it did following the Devine years.
Equally ludicrous is that we still hear that social democratic parties “have no idea as to how to manage the economy, as they have no business acumen” – from a party having led since its inception by two FAILED businessmen. The opposition of the right STILL clings to this notion that it’s the “responsibility” of our governments to at least balance the budget, even though the expectation of our voting public is that our government’s primary function is to provide social assistance and infrastructural services that the private sector either can’t or won’t supply.
In an effort to force the public to transition its monetary concerns back to their own sentiments respecting the economy, our conservative thinkers introduced a new cliché, “affordability”, into the political lexicon. Interestingly enough, President Trump, by virtue of his desire to go to war with Iran in partnership with Israel, we now have an interesting paradox to demonstrate how what we now have and appreciate as a social benefit should be cast aside in favour of what we’ve ignored whenever the topics of environmental health and global warming are mentioned.
This “war”, which the U.S. administration has tried to defend since its start-up, has resulted in more than a 20 per cent reduction in the delivery of crude oil to market and inflationary prices that have seen gasoline prices rise more than 30 per cent in less than two weeks, while creating total chaos on stock markets world-wide. This begs the question: Why is this happening in the U.S., especially given that Trump maintains that the nation has an energy surplus, and can be further enhanced by ramping up production in Venezuela? More to the point, why is this happening in Canada, which itself is one of the world’s major producers of bitumen crude?
What this cost ripple has produced is the fact that we’ve become not only reliant upon the need for oil to service our daily needs, but DEPENDENT upon that supply continuing so that our personal and business fiscal needs do not further increase the pain of our current affordability crisis; therefore, WHY haven’t we taken steps to diminish the monopolistic tendencies that our continuing dependence upon oil has led us?
In 1984, Exxon technicians warned of an impending climate crisis if the industry did not restrain the influence of carbon gases in our atmosphere. We did nothing, even though Exxon’s move towards developing wind power sources have been visible in Texas fields for years. Following the formation of OPEC, Mark Lalond and Pierre Trudeau sought to establish a National Energy Program to solidify our energy independence, as was being done in Norway. American oil lobbyists cheered as Albertans shouted, “Let the East bastards freeze in the dark.” And now, “green energy” research has been demonized and reduced in both Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Why?
American oil exploration efforts are now winding down, the industry lost over 38,000 workers last year, with another 50,000 more expected to lose their jobs in the next two years. Labour unions are already pointing to how wage negotiating sessions are becoming increasingly confrontational. Why, then, are we not embarking upon huge retraining programs for these displaced workers into trades upgrading, where they can then earn equivalent wages working in a seriously understaffed housing market?
Given this state of economic reality in Alberta and Saskatchewan, why are these two governments still defying economic and environmental reality by pretending that the THEORIES of the LEAP Manifesto are but the theoretical meanderings of an unhinged “leftist” idealogue?
In next week’s column, I’ll try to answer that very question….
Ken MacDougall is a retired teacher and former candidate for the federal NDP. His column runs on Saturday
