Hello Chestermere! We have had an extremely full week, and I can honestly say that it has been nice to see the sun. One more note about the Country Fair. The Insurance Bureau Of Canada is the umbrella group representing Canada’s private insurance companies. They had a booth at the fair helping people determine if they had the right coverage and advising them on how to navigate the claims process. A few months ago they asked my office to recommend some deserving charities in Chestermere – Rocky View. We sent them a pretty long list (there are many, after all) and they picked our Food Banks. At the fair I was thrilled to be present as Bill Adams, IBC Vice President, presented 3 cheques for $1,000.00 to representatives of the Chestermere Food Bank, SE Rocky View Food Bank, and the Veterans Food Bank. Liz Morrison and my husband Malkeet were happy to receive the money for Chestermere along with Julie Meier for SE Rocky View and Joey Bleviss and local Veteran Ray Hessler for the Veterans Food Bank. We collect for all of them. It’s great to see organizations like the Insurance Bureau Of Canada giving back and stepping up to support charities in the communities they serve. In times like this our Food Banks are a vital service and this generous donation will help immensely.
While we bask in the “sunny ways” of our Federal Government, I think we should talk a bit about social license. The definition is as follows: The “social licence to operate” (coined by Jim Cooney in 1997) or “SLO” refers to the level of acceptance or approval by local communities and stakeholders of mining companies and their operations. Sounds reasonable enough right? If you lived in a mining community or near the oil sands or you are a petroleum producing jurisdiction, as a community we would all need to have some understanding and agreement as to what to expect having these activities happening in our back yards. I think I get that part. The question is who is speaking on behalf of the community, and does it actually represent what is in the best interest of that community? For Alberta, does it mean that Leonardo Di Caprio and other uninformed celebrities may be seen as the conscience of our province and the voice of social license? Leaving aside the question of how he can confuse a Chinook for climate change, do we really want these people to frame the debate? Or should it be Albertans who are smart people who know that energy is a pillar of our prosperity? As we see drilling activity in the oilfield painfully slow down showing a 25 % drop in wells drilled this quarter, we see more and more of our fellow Albertans leaving our province, and more families in need of services such as our food banks. In the drilling industry alone, we see approximately 5,000 direct jobs lost recently, and close to 30,000 jobs lost by those who are employed indirectly. Does the NDP Government not know that these numbers are people, that they are families? During the Carbon Tax debate at the legislature last session, we begged the Government to reconsider the notion that behaviour could be changed by taxing everything we do. That is what the Carbon Tax is, it is a tax on everything. We tried to explain that between the royalty review, increasing the minimum wage during a deficit, and the Carbon Tax that the government in essence had created an environment unsuitable and risky for investment and this instability has driven away so many possible innovative chances to continue our already very diverse expertise in this province. We have the highest and most stringent regulations in the world, and the most ethical and environmental stewardship in the responsible recovery of our natural resources. We demanded that the government show accountability to Albertans on how their Climate Change Plan would alter behaviour? We expressed to them their short sightedness over the PPAs and we tried to explain that there must be a plan, and that jobs and the economy must be the top priority as we look at how we produce energy! At the Federal level, pipelines will create jobs. These projects must be approved in order to help us become competitive in the world market. We need to be a country where people want to spend money and invest when we bounce back, and we will bounce back!
As families watch their kids head back into school, they also watch their education taxes increase. The Carbon Tax will increase costs for everything from “Ballet to Baseball”. The cost to the School Boards here is somewhere in the neighbourhood of $1,000,000. That money is equivalent to several teachers, teachers aides and school programs that instead goes into a slush fund and poof who knows where those dollars go. We hope that some of the suggestions that we have put forward to the NDP Government will resonate such as exempting School Boards from this tax, getting back to the basics, making sure parents have the information they need to make decisions about their child’s education, and promoting choices in our education system such as charter schools. There was a charter school for children with disabilities that did not receive the Government’s support this year that is now defunct. Is this really what Albertans want? I think the Government needs to put on their listening ears and their thinking caps and find a way to manage your money better, find efficiencies and create a more stable environment for our teachers and students. Our youth is our future, I think they are worth the investment, don’t you?
I would like to invite you all to a fun Paint Nite fundraiser on October 6 hosted by myself and a Town Hall hosted by Wildrose Leader Brian Jean on October 11 at the CRCA. Come on out and give us your input. Hope to see you there and check facebook.com/WildroseLeela for details.
As always we love to hear from you. Stay strong Alberta, and know that we have your back!
