And still very relevant today.
April 4, 2019
Our Letter to the Editor of the ECA Review
Link >>> https://ecareview.com/the-last-best-west/
Dear Editor,
Regular, hard-working Canadians can no longer ‘prosper’ in places like the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) because housing prices no longer match regular incomes. And young and ‘not yet’ established Canadians cannot make a go of it anywhere else in Canada, no matter how low the house price because most jobs are in large urban areas.
And without home ownership – and we don’t mean the overpriced and over-mortgaged sort – you are really just a serf which wordlessly works at the whims of others.
So with lots of anticipation and a little desperation, large numbers of Canadians and people from around the world have made Alberta home.
In fact, Alberta’s population grew much faster than Canada’s total population from 2001 to 2016.
More than a million people decided to become Albertans.
That is more people than the total populations of either New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia or Newfoundland, or even a couple of those provinces combined. Wow!
Put another way, Canada, without Alberta, grew by 11 per cent while Alberta grew three times faster at 33 per cent.
And so again Alberta claims the title of the “last best west ” as it had in the early 1900s. Why? Back then it was ‘free’ farmland.
Not really free, one still had to risk and work for it. But today it is worthwhile work.
If you can’t find that work elsewhere, Alberta has been the place to be most of the time.
But today, regular, hardworking Albertans are being punished for their initiative through so-called transfer payments worth hundreds of billions of dollars. And look, the term ‘infrastructure deficit’, which some think was caused by paying down Albertans’ debt, is just a convenient way to blame and bully Albertans.
Remember, that while the Canadian government was over-taxing Albertans, we Albertans were absorbing large numbers of newcomers and still paying off our public debt.
And to this end, every Canadian government since Alberta’s creation in 1905 has ‘exported’ political divisions like conservative, liberal, and NDP parties.
From the very start, their aim has been to divide and conquer Albertans.
We can solve this by realizing that we are now Albertans and the Canadians we left behind have only ever had their very own interests at heart no matter how much they wrap themselves in a Canadian flag.
A flag that now barely covers our attractive Albertan arses.
Our first Alberta premier, Alexander Rutherford, once said, much to the chagrin of his Canadian liberal party bosses,
“I appeal to you not as liberals or conservatives, but as Albertans. The province must stand before the party.”
But today, for Albertans to survive and thrive, Alberta must always stand before Canada.
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