MLA report Sept 6

Hello Chestermere! I hope you had a chance to enjoy the Labour Day classic.
As we celebrate the the last long weekend of the summer, the regular chaos of school and extra busy roads will take over and before you know it, we will be cooking Thanksgiving dinner. We are heading into some turmoil in this beautiful nation of ours, and it is time to let our Governments know exactly what we think about their choices in creating policies that hurt our economy, our people, our productivity, and our prosperity. If you have never been interested in politics before, or you know someone who may seem apathetic to what is happening in our world, please–it is time to take the time to write to your Prime Minister. Let him know how you are being impacted by the ideological decisions around pipelines, tankers, future pipelines, carbon taxes, buying Saudi oil, destroying Energy East, and killing Northern Gateway.
How do you feel about the government paying 4.5 billion dollars for a pipeline before they knew whether or not they could build it? While you have pen in hand write our NDP Premier. Tell her how you feel about her Government stepping in with more than 2 billion of your taxes to compensate for B.C.’s recklessness, and for the delays proliferated by our neighbours to the West? Tell her how you feel about paying for a so-called “Climate Leadership Action Plan” through a Carbon Tax that did not secure you pipelines, at a cost of about 3 billion per year? Tell her how you feel about paying another 2 billion + for cancelling the power purchase agreements when the carbon tax rendered the contracts more unprofitable because the NDP Government had no idea what they were doing when they created policies that would ultimately destroy the electricity market and destroy the fact that we had ZERO utility debt? How do we reconcile the fact that we were given a solemn promise that “social license” would buy us the right to build a piece of private sector funded infrastructure that pays for our roads, our schools, our hospitals, our social services and our way of life? How do you feel about the government putting a cap on the oil sands that effectively destroyed competition in the business of mining bitumen in favour of a few large companies that stood cheering on the stage with the Premier and agreed enthusiastically that the Government should charge YOU (not them) a carbon tax that does nothing to help the environment? (Some of them promptly sold out of Alberta in favour of places like Nigeria and Iran). How do you feel about the fact that your well being, jobs and livelihood takes second place to ideological “climate action plans” that do nothing to mitigate pollution? How do you feel about an NDP Government that raises your taxes during a recession (and collects less money to boot)? These questions are ones that I ask every single day, and truly, in the past few days, I question the relevance of having a Government that literally handcuffs its own people’s prosperity and attacks their own nation, our federation, national infrastructure, and does not follow its own rules and regulations and then fails Canadians! Our Premier should be apologizing to you for digging into your pockets, taking the carbon tax for “supposed” green initiatives (and just in case you are not already frustrated, the carbon tax is now put into general revenue which offers no accountability to you), and is using your tax dollars to create expensive alternative energy that is not driven by the market. It is going to cost the average Albertan way more just to heat your homes and keep the lights on whether it shows up on your bill or is hidden in your taxes. Oh and to top that off, Alberta is heading for a 96 billion dollar debt by 2023 according to the Government’s own forecasts which as you know are full of unrealistic assumptions. That’s over $23,000 for each of us. These decisions have consequences, and you are the ones that are going to pay for it! This reads like a soap opera but truthfully it feels more like a nightmare and makes me nauseated. Trans Mountain as a result of the court decision will not even get started until 2020-21, This is the same Federal Court of Appeal that killed Northern Gateway! The regulations and the new Impact Assessment Agency of the Canadian Energy Regulator brings with it red tape, uncertainty, reduces our competitiveness and ultimately will make it nearly impossible to build any new pipelines. This is the infamous federal bill C-69. It is up to us the electorate to learn about what our leaders are doing, and more importantly, how it is influencing and impacting you and your families. It is time to get involved, and it is time for our voice to be heard. As always we love to hear from you!