[DJones]

Originally Posted by Wolven

No. What we need is for the provinces to work with the Federal government instead of picking a fight with them. If the country wants to move toward universal heathcare / dental care / pharma care / whatever care, it is not the role of the provincial governments to fight the program.

For example, the Feds moving ahead with the daycare program and Alberta decides to fight against it instead of implementing it then Alberta gets less money. Smith cries about how she should get the money with no strings attached so she can spend it on other stuff and leave the citizens of Alberta without this daycare program that is being implemented everywhere else. Thus we end up not getting this funding for months/years and then the UCP point to how we are getting less money to rile up the dummies who are not aware that it is actually the UCP's fault. They rage at "Ottawa" when they should be raging at the incompetence (or the intentional neglect) of the UCP.

I do not want any of those things. Hell this whole argument started by me saying there should be a rule that any federal spending on provincial jurisdiction should be able to turned down and the province gets full compensation. At no point have I been, hmm you know what our healthcare needs. Decision makers from Ottawa making decisions centered around the GTA that would then be forced on Alberta. That would somehow fix things.

Cool story bro. I would bet that if you polled the population you would find that you have more access than 99% of the population. Imagine if 50,000+ people had that kind of access to the councilor, or the MLA, or the MP. It is unsustainable. The only way to give everyone that amount of access would be to have a bigger government with each representative covering a smaller number of people.

You can go on facebook and talk to your city councilors. You can go to weekly meetings. Farkas is on reddit.

There's tons of events each year that you can meet these people at. Pretty much any charity/fund/sponsorship will have one of them at it. They live in your neighborhood, half of them are small business owners. I've met loads of them just through work and a few causes I like.

There's 34 MPs, 87 MLAs, and hundreds of councilors/mayors and your MP is likely 3000kms away most of the year. The disparity in access is gigantic.

I am glad we agree on Electoral Reform. I do not agree with a regional based senate but I do think senate reform is required and should likely start with it being an elected position with finite terms. The job of the Senate should be to implement what is best for all, not what is best for "my people" or "my region". There may be some differences in the requirements of the different regions, but they are not that drastically different.

You keep trying to create these wedges where you think "other" groups want things that you do not. It is far more likely that people who live in Ontario want most of the same things that you do:
- Best in world health care that increases Canadian's quality and length of life
- Best in world Education to empower our future generations to greater things than our past generations accomplished
- A culture that embraces progress and advancements so that we can lead the world in food / environment / energy / science and all of our people feel safe and respected
- Infrastructure delivered in a reliable and cost effective way (roads, transit, water, power, internet, etc)
- Perhaps some forward thinking things Universal Basic Income to soften the blow to society as AI takes over increasing sectors of the workforce.
- Other social programs and safety nets.

In each of the foundational issues, you likely want the exact same things as every other Canadian, or every other person in the world. With the exception being the Conservatives and Corporatists who actually do not want these things because it interferes with their desire to accumulate power and wealth.

The entire UCP agenda in Alberta is to destroy these public services you claim to be most interested in. They want people dumb, broke, and stressed out to the point that they cannot put up a fight as they take away our rights and freedoms. They want people like you to cry about Federal taxes and fighting Ottawa instead of pointing at their corruption and how they are actively stealing your money to give to coal companies or MHCare.

In short, you seem to be buying into the Culture War instead of focusing on the Class War. Some of what you say makes me think you want to be in on the Class War, but then you get distracted by the noise of proximity or region and trying to make conflict with other regular people that you should be aligned with.

Every large country has regional based second houses. It's a borderline stereotype. Smaller areas love it, more populated places hate it. One thing they agree on is that those regional disparities do reflect different politics. That's just a given. Like ####, our whole federal politics for a generation has been dominated by Liberals as the default central Canada and then two regional parties in Reform and Bloc. You can pretend that region, economics, demographics, industry, ect do not effect politics but thats just naive. People are a product of their environment and will behave accordingly. Shocking two provinces on different sides of a continent with different histories, economies, and goals want different things. That shouldn't be a bold statement, it is a undeniable fact

Need that second senate house to just hammer on the PMO. Really grind things to a hault. Legislative efficiency in a top down society is not a virtue. It's a risk.

If we agree with 90% of Ontario, that's great. We can copy eachother. If we don't agree, I do not want to follow them. I see zero benefit in following them blindly and I do not want them in charge of how the money gets dispersed.