Hello Chestermere! First of all I would like to thank Kim Soderburg – Mcrae and the rest of the organizers of the Chestermere Country Fair Parade. What a great event! We even managed to avoid the forecast rain. I would like to thank all my friends for helping with the parade yesterday. As always, the kids and Elvis made the day! Special thanks to Vern and Connie for bringing their beautiful horses and wagons and Allison and Anita for helping with the teams. Everyone is busy these days and we are very grateful to all of you for taking the time to help out. I think you will agree that we got a great reception from everyone on the parade route which is due in no small part to your enthusiasm.
We covered a lot of ground this week, and if you visit our Facebook pages, you can see some of the awesome pictures we have of the various events we attended. I hope I had a chance to see you at some of these events around Chestermere and Calgary. I am always so honoured to be invited!
I would like to base some of this article on an article by Ted Rechtshaffen in the National Post this morning: “What a couple of kids at the CNE can teach the government about budgeting. ” Whether it is kids or our elected officials, there needs to be a greater ownership over spending (https://nationalpost.com/personal-finance/what-a-couple-of-kids-at-the-cne-can-teach-the-government-about-budgeting/wcm/8624270d-053b-4ba0-bc62-e735167640d2)
In my case, the reason I became involved in politics as an adult was because of overspending. I realize that there are large infrastructure projects that need to be started, schools, roads and hospitals, but don’t you ever wonder–where does it all go? How do we reconcile the numbers? This is from the above, cited article:
“Here are the basics for the federal government:
2018 Projected Total expenditures: $338.5 billion
2018 Projected Total revenue: $323.4 billion
2018 Projected Deficit: $18.1 billion (including a $3 billion adjustment for risk).
These figures are for just the one year.
The federal government’s market debt — the debt on which Ottawa pays interest — topped $1 trillion in March of this year.
In a year where the economy is in relatively good shape, how can we project an $18.1 billion deficit? To learn from the CNE example, how about this ‘You have $323.4 billion to spend, and that is it. Once it is done, there is no more money.” How hard is that? This isn’t 2009. There is no economic crisis. This is a year where there is absolutely no excuse for running an annual budget deficit.”
We add to that, the growing Alberta debt that could be close to 96 billion in a few years, and that is with $60/barrel oil!
While we are on the subject of oil,here is another great article to read by Terry Etam from the September 10 BOE Report headlined: “Guilty until proven innocent – If we could burn the endless stream of oilsands disinformation we wouldn’t need fossil fuels.” (https://boereport.com/2018/09/10/guilty-until-proven-innocent-if-we-could-burn-the-endless-stream-of-oilsands-disinformation-we-wouldnt-need-fossil-fuels/
Governments are making bad decisions based on bad policy. When we allow foreign funded groups to lobby against our amazing natural resources, coupled with governments who hurt their own citizens by handcuffing their prosperity not only do these governments have a spending problem, they also seem to think that the money they spend hand over fist grows on trees. The fact that our governments allow mistruths to be perpetuated will forfeit any ability to build any future energy infrastructure for our country, and yet that seems to be ok? Our present Provincial NDP Government brought eco-activists onto the Oil Sands Advisory Panel, and paid them with your money to stand in the way of building pipelines. The NDP Government decided to start passing legislation on the Climate Leadership Action Plan before it even dug into understanding our resources or our electricity market. The decisions they have made stand on their own “lack of merit”, and they are detrimental to our way of life, how we take care of our vulnerable populations, and how we pay for those much needed large scale infrastructure projects. Please read the cited articles as I believe they offer some insight. We need to take our messaging back and remind Canadians and the world that we are blessed. I spoke with a lovely person this weekend who immigrated here from Switzerland. She said to me that she loves her homeland, and came here in 1998, and could not express how deeply she fell in love with her new home. She reminded me, that this love is fundamentally why we fight so hard to make ourselves better as a people and as a nation, and that leadership matters, policy matters, and most of all people matter. We have every opportunity to put our best foot forward, and the question is, if you and I believe that we can do this, be the best producers, trade fairly, be internationally renowned, then why do our governments lack the same fundamental faith in the people they represent? Why do they think they know better than you or I? As always we love to hear from you.
