Alberta Politics & Government Thread 4.0

[GioforPM]

He seems nice:

https://www.cbc.ca/lite/story/9.7105913

[Johnny Makarov]

Originally Posted by Jason14h

You wonder why people who voted UCP might not waste time posting when JM ensures his daily 5 year old intelligence level posts of "Deplorable Morons" "Bootlicker" or whatever his buzzword of the day is, or Fuzz posting some random Facebook or Bluesky comment from some internet rando as proof everyone in this province is an idiot.

The 5-10 people who post in this thread every day have already made up their mind that anything done by the UCP is bad, and anyone (53%) of the province who voted for them is a deplorable moron. Why would anyone attempt to engage in a discussion on any topic?

Oh boohoo. Are you sad you just outted yourself as moronic UCP voter? lol

Go ahead. I dare you! Defend the UCP!! hahahaha.

[indes]

Originally Posted by Jason14h

You wonder why people who voted UCP might not waste time posting when JM ensures his daily 5 year old intelligence level posts of "Deplorable Morons" "Bootlicker" or whatever his buzzword of the day is, or Fuzz posting some random Facebook or Bluesky comment from some internet rando as proof everyone in this province is an idiot.

The 5-10 people who post in this thread every day have already made up their mind that anything done by the UCP is bad, and anyone (53%) of the province who voted for them is a deplorable moron. Why would anyone attempt to engage in a discussion on any topic?

I asked earlier if someone could let me know how the UCP has positively impacted their lives through policy decision (making other people's lives that you don't like worse, doesn't count).

Didn't get a lot of feedback, so I'd welcome some discussion points.

[Johnny Makarov]

Originally Posted by Looch City

I love the UCP and I'm not afraid to say it.

Come at me bro.

Oh you, you god damn moronic deplorable bootlicker!

Even crazy geologists from Calgary can't even wade in here to defend the Wildrose.lol

[DJones]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

First off, no Facebook.


Second, most of them aren't rando's.


Third, I didn't say everyone, just the ones who vote for people who are clearly unqualified, uneducated, unwilling to learn facts that counter their dogma, and uninterested in governing a province in Canada in the best interests of the citizens living there. And no, it's not just because I disagree, it's because their methods are pretty incompatible with their goals, because they refuse facts, data and science, and govern on feels, vindictiveness, and conflict.

Haha, not anyone that talks to me, they're the good ones. You guys are kinda proving his point.

And its not like you'd agree with their reasoning anyway, you just hand wave it as greedy and stupid and continue on. It's mainly a matter of priorities. Someone that votes NDP wants the government to tax and spend. They value the government about how much money and services they provide people. BC jacking up spending is a sign of good leadership for example.

A UCP voter doesn't look at it like that. They go, here is your budget based on todays taxes, figure it out. In the mean time get out of my way so I can hopefully get a pay raise at work.

Inevitably leads to knee jerk reactions where typical UCP person views the NDP as leeches. Typical NDP person views the UCP as greedy and stupid. Meanwhile 90% of people can't tell the difference between them and the two parties agree on 80% of things

[GordonBlue]

no shock here. the UCP I believe would be courting interference, not trying to stop it.


Alberta ‘excessively vulnerable’ to foreign interference, experts warn

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calga...ence-9.7114928

“Alberta is excessively vulnerable to American interference,” Jean-Christophe Boucher, a professor of political science at the University of Calgary, told Radio-Canada.

Boucher, whose research focuses on foreign interference, is unequivocal: "If there were a referendum in Alberta, there would be no one within the Alberta government who could analyze and collect data to ensure that the conversation about the referendum is not being manipulated by foreign actors."

“Alberta is not ready at all. It’s almost completely unready,” adds Patrick Lennox, a former director of intelligence with the RCMP, now turned security consultant. “There is no capacity whatsoever to push back against that form of misinformation and disinformation that's going to happen.”


Given the length and the complexity of investigations related to foreign interference and online disinformation, Lennox believes that “the chances of somebody being investigated, arrested and charged during the period of a referendum campaign is zero.”

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by DJones

Haha, not anyone that talks to me, they're the good ones. You guys are kinda proving his point.

And its not like you'd agree with their reasoning anyway, you just hand wave it as greedy and stupid and continue on. It's mainly a matter of priorities. Someone that votes NDP wants the government to tax and spend. They value the government about how much money and services they provide people. BC jacking up spending is a sign of good leadership for example.

I think it’s a little naive to say a voter supports one party and not another because they want that party to tax and spend. They all do that. If you don’t believe the UCP would raise your taxes go ask any property owner in the city of Calgary to see their most recent property tax bill.

A UCP voter doesn't look at it like that. They go, here is your budget based on today’s taxes, figure it out. In the mean time get out of my way so I can hopefully get a pay raise at work.

The UCP have consistently failed to “figure it out” when it comes to budgeting within the expected tax revenue. They have also literally passed laws that get in the way of people trying to get a pay raise at work and at the same time passed laws that allowed employers to pay employees less than they were required to prior to passing those laws.

Inevitably leads to knee jerk reactions where typical UCP person views the NDP as leeches. Typical NDP person views the UCP as greedy and stupid. Meanwhile 90% of people can't tell the difference between them and the two parties agree on 80% of things

Knee jerk reactions? The UCP have had the opportunity to address a lot of long standing issues and are instead doubling down on those while throwing money we don’t have an unlimited supply of at problems they primarily created.

The way you separate people into boxes of NDP person and UCP person demonstrates how badly you’re misunderstanding the role of a voter in a democracy. I’m an Albertan, not a political label. I want all parties to move in the proper direction to do what is best for their constituents rather than be driven blindly by the ideology of the people pulling their puppet strings.

I don’t support everything that either party does and want them both to address the things I don’t agree with. The UCP have failed miserably in my view at moderating their policies while the NDP have shifted theirs significantly since 2015. I don’t believe in blindly voting for one party and I’d happily vote for the UCP if they ever gave me a reason to because that would give the NDP a reason to address their policies that I don’t agree with.

That’s how your power as a voter is supposed to work but instead we’ve got too many people like yourself giving undying loyalty to one party or another. The quickest way to ensure that an elected official doesn’t fight for what you actually want is to tell them that you’ll vote for them no matter what.

[Fuzz]

Alberta’s government is investing $46 million through the TIER fund to develop the innovative technologies needed to safely and effectively reduce tailings ponds and clean the water. Led by three major oil companies, a post-secondary institution and two businesses, this funding will help reclaim the water in tailing ponds and eventually return the land for use by future generations.

For example, CNRL will use $18 million in provincial funding to reduce liquid waste and expensive, energy-intensive equipment in Wood Buffalo, while Imperial will use $12.8 million to test a new way to treat tailings that reuses more water and speeds up land reclamation north of Fort McMurray.
Suncor will use $7.5 million for two pilot projects, including demonstrating established technologies to treat oilsands mine water, helping manage growing volumes of stored water and advancing the reclamation and closure of tailings facilities. Meanwhile, NAIT will create standards to help measure treatment performance and adopt new technologies across the oilsands.

Oilsands operators are responsible for site management and reclamation, while ongoing research continues to inform and refine best practices to support effective policy and regulatory outcomes.

https://www.alberta.ca/release.cfm?x...FDD8411382F96A


So all these companies are massively profitable, carry the responsibility of managing their own waste, but Alberta taxpayers have to fund their cleanup projects? Please someone make this make sense, because it seems to me they can pay afford to pay for it themselves, and the government already decided they are responsible to do so. How is it they get the profits, and we pay for the cleanup?

[puffnstuff]

Well you obviously cant expect a company to have their own bootstraps to pull up on.

Grumble grumble fiscal conservatives...

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

https://www.alberta.ca/release.cfm?x...FDD8411382F96A


So all these companies are massively profitable, carry the responsibility of managing their own waste, but Alberta taxpayers have to fund their cleanup projects? Please someone make this make sense, because it seems to me they can pay afford to pay for it themselves, and the government already decided they are responsible to do so. How is it they get the profits, and we pay for the cleanup?

Are you aware how TIER is funded?

Essentially you are forcing companies to pollute to use taxes assessed on pollution to clean up pollution.

Now personally I don’t think carbon taxes should go into carbon reducing products so I am against this. But I seem to recall you want Carbon taxes to go into pollution reducing activities so you should favour the current version of TIER

[Fuzz]

It's funded by the industrial carbon tax, but if that money just flows back to them to reduce their cost of production, then what is the point? TIER has also received grants from Federal programs to fund it(and I'm not sure how much, if any, provincial dollars have gone to it).

Ultimately though I don't understand why they can't and are not obligated to solve and pay for this themselves. They've been saying for decades they can do this. They made billions in profits last year.

[woob]

Because it's O&G, bro. They must be coddled and handled with care for fear of angering them and/or reducing their profits. Are you even an Albertan, Fuzz?

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

It's funded by the industrial carbon tax, but if that money just flows back to them to reduce their cost of production, then what is the point? TIER has also received grants from Federal programs to fund it(and I'm not sure how much, if any, provincial dollars have gone to it).

Ultimately though I don't understand why they can't and are not obligated to solve and pay for this themselves. They've been saying for decades they can do this. They made billions in profits last year.

The left wing versions of the carbon taxes provide funding from taxes collected on projects which will reduce long term emissions. The point being companies will be forced to spend on projects which in the absense of subsides aren’t economic but with subsidies and taxation are economic.

Essentially it forces a certain portion of the profit from the industry to be used to clean up the industry.

[Jason14h]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calga...ment-9.7117659

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by GGG

The left wing versions of the carbon taxes provide funding from taxes collected on projects which will reduce long term emissions. The point being companies will be forced to spend on projects which in the absense of subsides aren’t economic but with subsidies and taxation are economic.

Essentially it forces a certain portion of the profit from the industry to be used to clean up the industry.

But isn't that what regulations are for? So now we are micro-managing the stuff they don't want to use their own profits for, so we "tax" them and then give it back to them to use to cleanup their own mess?

"Left wing versions" would have carbon taxes go to things like transit and consumer efficiency rebates and the like. Right wing versions give the money back to the polluters.

Kind of funny the very next post is for the province to handle it's own environmental reviews. Why not, they are so good at holding companies to account now. What could go wrong?

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

But isn't that what regulations are for? So now we are micro-managing the stuff they don't want to use their own profits for, so we "tax" them and then give it back to them to use to cleanup their own mess?

"Left wing versions" would have carbon taxes go to things like transit and consumer efficiency rebates and the like. Right wing versions give the money back to the polluters.

Kind of funny the very next post is for the province to handle it's own environmental reviews. Why not, they are so good at holding companies to account now. What could go wrong?

Consumer efficiency rebates is effectively giving money back to the polluter to reduce their pollution. Thats what in general TIER does.

The light bulb program is no different, energy efficient buses are no different. It gives money to polluters to invest in infrastructure to pollute less. Whether it’s a private sector polluter, a government polluter or an individual polluter doesn’t really matter when the target is $/kiloton removed.

I’ve always been team just tax and the problem solves itself but when you are on team consumer efficiency rebates and spending carbon taxes on programs you shouldn’t get upset when that model is used in a sector you don’t particularly like.

[Fuzz]

I'm not against that regarding carbon taxes, but I think this is different.


I don't believe we should have environmental regulations that some specific segment of industry can access a pool of funds to cleanup, when those very regulations put the cost of cleanup on the producer, and always has. But now a fund will help out? Had our programs originally been designed around pooled research and technology, and the cleanup was always a shared responsibility, it would be different. But this is changing rules for a specific issue because industry has been unwilling to spend the money over decades to figure it out. But now they get money from elsewhere, so that gets earmarked for it. It feels like they are being bailed out, and can expect to be bailed out in the future so will commit less of their dollars to cleanup, because they know carbon tax dollars are there for them, and the rate they pay won't change based on presumed lobbying to get access to the funds, so it's free profit.


I think it's bad policy.