Alberta Politics Thread v2

[Handsome B. Wonderful]

Originally Posted by belsarius

Yup.

Since most of the hiring in education and health then most of those jobs are not focused in Edmonton, but around the entire province.

Stop. You're embarrassing yourself at this point. You literally don't know what a public job is.

[OMG!WTF!]

Good...


https://www.660citynews.com/2019/03/...ected-premier/

And he says a $30 yearly trail permit fee for people using off-highway vehicles and campers in the backcountry would go to restoring current trails and creating new ones.

[PepsiFree]

Press Progress, which has a left bias, so keep that in mind, but if these emails are legit then this whole story is even more interesting: https://pressprogress.ca/kamikaze-do...-mails-reveal/

[malcolmk14]

As a UCP member (I do not endorse Jason Kenney), I received emails from Jeff Callaway just absolutely ripping Brian Jean on September 6th 2017, September 8th 2017, September 20th 2017 and October 3 2017.

Then on October 4, 2017 he wrote another email saying he was being intimidated and bullied by Brandon Swertz & Brian Jean, he suspended his leadership bid, and then sent out an e-mail endorsing Kenney on October 5th 2017.

Not one time in all of the prior emails did he even mention Kenney's name.

I remember during the leadership debate on September 20th I could not even follow what Callaway was trying to say. I responded to his Sept. 20th e-mail saying he doesn't have a clue & there's no way I'm voting for him. Haha.

[Roughneck]

Gotta move fast on flood mitigation, but not too fast I guess.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1106005440238891009

[Cowboy89]

Originally Posted by Muta

LOL. Pretty obvious to start planning for diversification instead of putting all your eggs in one basket, no? Particularly with the advent of advanced technologies through the 90s? Oil and gas has always been volatile, you don't have to look far into your crystal ball to understand that.

If you gave me 100% control over the province's treasury right now, I can guarantee that I can temporarily generate solid GDP growth numbers for Alberta. Basically I would run the mother of all deficits ever known to any province, load up helicopters with cash and dump them on population centers all across Alberta.

As ridiculous as that sounds and however awful an idea that is, it would have a stronger impact on the economy than what the NDP are doing right now (because every individual would spend their money based on what makes sense for them individually rather than people like Joe Ceci blowing it for them), would be just as sustainable as the NDP's current budgets where they are running an operating deficit, and would beat any bureaucrat's ideas for 'diversifying the economy.' That's all the NDP are doing right now on the economic file, they are pissing away massive amounts of money borrowed from our future fiscal. That's not a feather in Edmonton's cap or any economic model that needs to be adopted by Calgary!

Despite what some people believe here, economies can't be invented by governments, but they sure has hell can be f'ed up at the stroke of the pen by governments. If the government can diversify the economy and find lucrative industries out of nothing, then places like Detroit would have been fixed a long time ago.

[Slava]

^Its not too late for you to enter the race! Helicopter pilot jobs and free money? It’s brilliant and I want to see it in action. I want to donate, especially if the chopper can hover a little longer over my place. Elect Cowboy89!

[belsarius]

Originally Posted by Handsome B. Wonderful

Stop. You're embarrassing yourself at this point. You literally don't know what a public job is.

What the hell do you think a public sector job is? Just people in the ministries?

The only embarrassment I have is how poorly the education system has failed you if you are arguing teachers and nurses are not public sector jobs.

[Mr.Coffee]

Originally Posted by Roughneck

Gotta move fast on flood mitigation, but not too fast I guess.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1106005440238891009

This is brutal by Kenney. Guess he figures he has Calgary all locked up so #### em eh?

This project was critical to flood mitigation which we now know happens. We also don’t know the extent to frequency of these events due to climate change so let’s hope it’s the 1/100 years thing and not the 1/10 thing.

[Senator Clay Davis]

Originally Posted by Cowboy89

If you gave me 100% control over the province's treasury right now, I can guarantee that I can temporarily generate solid GDP growth numbers for Alberta. Basically I would run the mother of all deficits ever known to any province, load up helicopters with cash and dump them on population centers all across Alberta.

As ridiculous as that sounds and however awful an idea that is, it would have a stronger impact on the economy than what the NDP are doing right now (because every individual would spend their money based on what makes sense for them individually rather than people like Joe Ceci blowing it for them), would be just as sustainable as the NDP's current budgets where they are running an operating deficit, and would beat any bureaucrat's ideas for 'diversifying the economy.' That's all the NDP are doing right now on the economic file, they are pissing away massive amounts of money borrowed from our future fiscal. That's not a feather in Edmonton's cap or any economic model that needs to be adopted by Calgary!

Despite what some people believe here, economies can't be invented by governments, but they sure has hell can be f'ed up at the stroke of the pen by governments. If the government can diversify the economy and find lucrative industries out of nothing, then places like Detroit would have been fixed a long time ago.

I agree with most of this, but I just wanna say Detroit's problem is loss of tax base, not poor economic diversification. The Detroit Metro area is actually doing pretty good economically, but the City of Detroit itself is struggling (not that that stopped them from building the Red Wings a new arena, but I digress).

[Mr.Coffee]

They lost the tax base because people had no jobs and moved.

[Senator Clay Davis]

The jobs are still there, the people just live in the outlying counties. The equivalent here would be most of the city moving to Airdrie or Okotoks. Detroit city was the murder capital of America for a while so it's mostly just an unsafe city to live in. Suburbs, not so much.

[GordonBlue]

Originally Posted by Wiggum_PI

Apparently Brian Jean is returning to politics as leader of the Freedom Conservative Party. Interesting...

https://calgarysun.com/opinion/colum...-back-big-time

I like him as a person, but that's it.
and the freedom party is one I'll never vote for.

[oilyfan]

Originally Posted by Muta

Ah yes, the Major Infrastructure map. Link to this one with an asterisk; it's notoriously inaccurate and out of date half the time.

But using that site, Edmonton has double the amount of government infrastructure projects going on than Calgary does... with more coming online in the future that isn't on that site yet.

No disrespect, but you are making zero sense. The site is wildly inaccurate, but using the site Edmonton has double the infrastructure projects? Nope. I posted the numbers.

[Ozy_Flame]

Originally Posted by oilyfan

No disrespect, but you are making zero sense. The site is wildly inaccurate, but using the site Edmonton has double the infrastructure projects? Nope. I posted the numbers.

I think he meant the site is highly inaccurate, but if you're going to use the site, there is more government projects in Edmonton. And whether it's government or not, those kinds of projects utilize resources across the private sector (architects, engineers, construction, services, network/communications, etc.)

[Slava]

The UCP is going to have a big problem. Apparently the RCMP is investigating now, and their leadership is facing an enormous amount of scrutiny. I know in the federal politics thread that it's only the Liberals who are corrupt, so I don't know how this could be happening, but there seems to be a rather blatant circumvention of the law that took place here (or is alleged to have), and this close to an election that could be a death knell.

[Lubicon]

Originally Posted by belsarius

Yup.

Since most of the hiring in education and health then most of those jobs are not focused in Edmonton, but around the entire province. Sure there are some added jobs in Edmonton because of the offices, but it isn’t only Edmonton that needed teachers aides or retirement homes. If hasn’t been middle managers in an office being hired, but nurses and teachers aides.

Secondly, it may not be a diversification issue, but a demographic difference that is a driver of the difference in Edmonton and Calgary. Where Calgary’s main job losses were white collar office jobs, Edmonton has more tradespeople. In a downturn it’s the trades that can find more work, I need my toilet unplugged more than an HR rep. That in itself would give Edmonton’s economy an edge on Calgary’s for recovering.

So yeah, I think the public sector isn’t what’s solely driving Edmonton’s economic growth. It isn’t as if the NDP hired 60,000 people to sit in a desk in an Edmonton office.

This is not necessarily correct, or at least last time I saw numbers it was not correct. Yes Calgary's job losses have largely been white collar, that part may be correct. However the blue collar/white collar split for each city is roughly the same. The difference being more of Edmonton's white collar are civil service while more of Calgary's are private sector. Private sector took the brunt of the white collar losses in the past few years. Blue collar is about the same for each city and I would suspect the job losses are roughly equal in each city in this sector.

[oilyfan]

Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame

I think he meant the site is highly inaccurate, but if you're going to use the site, there is more government projects in Edmonton. And whether it's government or not, those kinds of projects utilize resources across the private sector (architects, engineers, construction, services, network/communications, etc.)

Maybe I am missing something. But where do you see that?

[Ozy_Flame]

Originally Posted by Slava

The UCP is going to have a big problem. Apparently the RCMP is investigating now, and their leadership is facing an enormous amount of scrutiny. I know in the federal politics thread that it's only the Liberals who are corrupt, so I don't know how this could be happening, but there seems to be a rather blatant circumvention of the law that took place here (or is alleged to have), and this close to an election that could be a death knell.

RCMP take over investigation of UCP 'irregular financial contribution' allegations

Alberta's Office of the Election Commissioner has turned over to the RCMP its investigation into allegations of irregular political contributions involving the so-called "kamikaze" campaign of United Conservative Party leadership contender Jeff Callaway.

"Our inquiries into your complaint have identified potential violations that fall outside of the jurisdiction of our office and, as a result, the RCMP are now engaged," the election commissioner's investigations manager, Steve Kaye, stated in a March 9 email obtained exclusively by CBC News.

Kaye, a former Saskatoon city police officer, sent the email to a complainant, who was anonymous, to inform them that the election commissioner was obligated to share the information provided by the complainant to the RCMP.

[Ozy_Flame]

Originally Posted by oilyfan

Maybe I am missing something. But where do you see that?

I don't know where the double part is (government infrastructure), but a quick search of all the projects that are institutional show Edmonton has more. And filtering the data sets down to developers that are public institutions, there does seem to be more Edmonton projects (29 to 19). It's probably worth exploring the dataset a bit more in depth though.