Quote:
Originally Posted by DJones
So again, we give money to the feds because other provinces can't support themselves but to get our share of that money we need to listen to what the feds say.
They are a completely unnecessary middle man. There is no benefit to them being in the equation. The entire argument for them appears to be that you guys do not want Alberta or your municipalities to be in charge of what are provincial/municipal jurisdiction. You would rather Ottawa make decisions for you.
You do you I guess. Will never make sense to me why people want to give away decision making
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So again, you are looking at the situation backward.
First issue you are backward on: The middle man is the province. The Federal Government of Canada is the primary organization and it created the province of Alberta to handle a subset region of the country in a more focused way. If we wanted to abolish an unnecessary middle man then we should abolish the Alberta government.
Aside from being "closer to the issues", the Alberta government adds very little value to the equation. The Federal Government has the currency, has the trade relationships, has the military, has the larger population to bring together to deal with big issues or to pool our resources to get advantages in procurement. In every regard, the Federal Government of Canada brings more value to Albertans than the Government of Alberta.
The job of the Government of Alberta is to handle regional issues of the province with more focus on behalf of the Federal Government and the Citizens of the region. Just like how the Municipal government handles the regional issues of the cities with more focus on behalf of the Provincial Government and the Citizens of the region. The one constant element in all three levels of government is that we are given the ability to elect a representative in each level of government (in the City you get to vote for both a councilor and a Mayor whereas in the Province and Country you only vote for your local representative).
Having said all that, if you want to get down to eliminating unnecessary governments then we could probably just roll BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba into a single Canada-west province that is geographically too big but at least then would have a population more on par with Ontario and Quebec.
Second issue you are backward on: What "decision making" do you think you have? You have no more or less decision making power with the Federal Government in Ottawa than you have with the Provincial Government in Edmonton or the Municipal Government in City Hall. Aside from voting for a representative, none of them are wondering "What does DJones thinks about this issue?" and it doesn't matter how close to the building you get.
This fixation on proximity and distance is weird.
- If you live beside City Hall, do you think the councilors will listen to you more than if you live in the outskirts of the city? They won't.
- If you live beside the Alberta Legislature Building, do you think they will care what you think more than if you live 500km away? They don't. (In fact they don't care about you at all)
- If you live in Ottawa, do you think you have more decision making power than if you live in Calgary? You don't.
We are all the same level of decision makers because none of us are working in the government. An unfortunate reality of our governments is that the only non-government people with more "decision making" influence over the governments are the rich people who can use their money to make things happen for themselves.
So, unless you run for office, you are not a decision maker in government at any level. You vote for a representative at each of those levels and that representative makes the decisions on your behalf. If you feel like you are not represented in the Federal Government, that is because you are either (1) a dimwit who doesn't vote but then expects to have a right to complain about things or (2) keeps voting for the Conservatives when they clearly do not give a crap about you and, even if they were in power, would do zero things you want them to do on your behalf. (If you really wanted to have a voice in this government, you would have voted Liberal so that the MP in your riding would be in the ruling party and thus that MP would have more influence in government to bring the issues of your riding forward.)
If at the core of this you feel that the issue is that the people are not being represented well, then I agree, and we should be electing a government that will implement electoral reform, specifically a MMPR system that still keeps regional representation but also empowers all voters to feel that their vote counts, since voting is the only decision you get to make.
Following that, I think using technology to enable more direct democracy is the real way to give power back to the people. Only one party would be willing to flirt with electoral reform or direct democracy and their colour certainly isn't Red or Blue.