Alberta Politics & Government Thread 3.0

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by Knut

It is so interesting to me. THe vast majority in Alberta have moved past COVID and are just trying to return to normal. The only people posting about COVID are the Anti-vaxxers/Freedom convoy people. They have made it their entire identity at this time. Its time to move on. Smith brings it all back to the surface and hopefully that pisses people off.

The vast majority of people in Alberta and Canada have definitely moved on and past Covid and are living normal lives again but the claim that only anti-vaxxers and freedom convoy folks are still posting about things is definitely not the case. If you check out Twitter or the major Reddit subs you will find plenty of folks posting daily about ongoing concerns and ongoing calls to reinstate public health measures such as masking. Covid has become a lifestyle for a small group of Canadians at both extremes.

[Yikes]

Originally Posted by calgarygeologist

The vast majority of people in Alberta and Canada have definitely moved on and past Covid and are living normal lives again but the claim that only anti-vaxxers and freedom convoy folks are still posting about things is definitely not the case. If you check out Twitter or the major Reddit subs you will find plenty of folks posting daily about ongoing concerns and ongoing calls to reinstate public health measures such as masking. Covid has become a lifestyle for a small group of Canadians at both extremes.

Well said,

[14Roman14]

Originally Posted by Torture

Maybe 90% are following best practices but 10% aren't and we want to bring the 10% up to the same standard. You know, the same way pretty much every other regulation works.

So what are the 10 percent doing that Trudeau thinks he can do better?

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by calgarygeologist

The vast majority of people in Alberta and Canada have definitely moved on and past Covid and are living normal lives again but the claim that only anti-vaxxers and freedom convoy folks are still posting about things is definitely not the case. If you check out Twitter or the major Reddit subs you will find plenty of folks posting daily about ongoing concerns and ongoing calls to reinstate public health measures such as masking. Covid has become a lifestyle for a small group of Canadians at both extremes.

There are no shortage of qualified medical professionals who still recommend masking in busy settings and for those at risk, and continue to do so themselves. There may be situations where it makes sense for a masks mandate to come back. Again, on one side, there is science, on the other, well, just vast empty craniums. This "2 sides" nonsense has got to stop.

[BlackArcher101]

Originally Posted by 14Roman14

If farmers are already doing it, which they are, then why does Trudeau need to stick his nose in it and meddle around slapping regulation here and regulation there. People who are already doing a good job do not need his expertise on the subject, when he is far from an expert on so many things.

I love when someone doesn't like something the liberals enact, it's always somehow Trudeau that is single handedly at fault for. You think he wrote this himself without a team of writers and experts behind it?

[14Roman14]

Originally Posted by octothorp

So this sort of thing is why you come off as pretty uninformed, calling this a ban. The 4R fertilizer principle (which the government is recommending but is totally voluntary) is recognized even by fertilizer manufacturers as saving money, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and increasing yields. The only point of disagreement is the amount of GHG emissions prevented, where the government projects 30% and the fertilizer industry predicts 14%. But every expert who has done research on the issue recognizes that it is good for both yields and the environment.

As someone who grew up on a farm, it's so frustrating to remember the stories of my grandfather (about as staunch a conservative as you could get), who lived through the depression. When government experts recommended planting shelter belts to reduce surface erosion, fallowing fields, rotating crops between different nutrient requirements, etc., he was all in on adopting those principles, as were most farmers at that time. And those changes saved our food supply. It seems like many of today's farmers would take the same expert advice and decry it as government meddling.

Please tell me more about how fallowing fields helped with productivity on any way? People did not need government to tell them to take up those practices.
And yes, I think most would accept recommendations however as we’ve seen with power hungry governments, recommendations can quickly turn to iron fists good or bad.

[Makarov]

Originally Posted by 14Roman14

It causes problems when people from Ottawa who have no clue about our way of life come out with policies and regulations that end up hurting Alberta’s industry and prosperity. If the sovereignty act can help limit their power in any way it should definitely be explored in some situations.

As someone who has lived in both Calgary and Ottawa, I am truly struggling to understand why you believe that people from Ottawa have no clue about Albertans' "way of life".

[TheIronMaiden]

Originally Posted by 14Roman14

If farmers are already doing it, which they are, then why does Trudeau need to stick his nose in it and meddle around slapping regulation here and regulation there. People who are already doing a good job do not need his expertise on the subject, when he is far from an expert on so many things.

Maybe his supporters expect him to give direction at every turn, but most in Alberta if doing a good job want to just be left alone by the federal government so they can continue to do a good job.

It causes problems when people from Ottawa who have no clue about our way of life come out with policies and regulations that end up hurting Alberta’s industry and prosperity. If the sovereignty act can help limit their power in any way it should definitely be explored in some situations.

I am curious, are you a farmer or do you know any farmers personally?

[Ozy_Flame]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

There are no shortage of qualified medical professionals who still recommend masking in busy settings and for those at risk, and continue to do so themselves. There may be situations where it makes sense for a masks mandate to come back. Again, on one side, there is science, on the other, well, just vast empty craniums. This "2 sides" nonsense has got to stop.

All I know is that we should be doing everything we can to minimize strain on our health care system. Healthcare workers have had tremendous pressure applied to them and when people talk about "back to normal" that cannot be achieved without them in the conversation.

If people want to ignore COVID, that's up to them. But society still needs to do the bare minimum so that there is less chance they clog up - and suffer from - shortcomings in the Canadian healthcare framework. And the instructions need to be clear as day for those who want to follow.

[Knut]

Originally Posted by calgarygeologist

The vast majority of people in Alberta and Canada have definitely moved on and past Covid and are living normal lives again but the claim that only anti-vaxxers and freedom convoy folks are still posting about things is definitely not the case. If you check out Twitter or the major Reddit subs you will find plenty of folks posting daily about ongoing concerns and ongoing calls to reinstate public health measures such as masking. Covid has become a lifestyle for a small group of Canadians at both extremes.

I have deleted the most extreme on both sides from Twitter. (eg. Eric Feigl Ding etc). I was more talking my friends circle. It is back to posting about their kids and vacations etc. The only ones talking about VAccinations right now are those that were anti-vax. Smith re-energized them to the point that they are starting to piss off friends that just want to hang out with them and talk about non-covid stuff. They talk about alienation and being discriminated against but some bring it on themselves right now.

[Muta]

Originally Posted by Makarov

As someone who has lived in both Calgary and Ottawa, I am truly struggling to understand why you believe that people from Ottawa have no clue about Albertans' "way of life".

Because it's easy to say... alliteration for effect is very important, even if untrue.

[14Roman14]

Originally Posted by BlackArcher101

I love when someone doesn't like something the liberals enact, it's always somehow Trudeau that is single handedly at fault for. You think he wrote this himself without a team of writers and experts behind it?

Please point out a liberal cabinet member who is an expert on western Canadian agriculture.

[RedHot25]

Originally Posted by BlackArcher101

I love when someone doesn't like something the liberals enact, it's always somehow Trudeau that is single handedly at fault for. You think he wrote this himself without a team of writers and experts behind it?

I will probably get thrown to hades from everyone here, all sides, but ....but....I've worked for the federal government. In big bad Ottawa-Gatineau as well.

No where near this topic, but we did something national with international scope. You want to know how long the feds engaged with everyone (not in my case, but in this topical example, the farmers) - years. Literally years.

There are a lot of issues, but completely the above - blame trudeau, blame harper, blame whatever individual - is completely ridiculous, and while not perfect, also disrespects all of the people who put a tonne of hard work in making sure peoples (in gov't) opinions are heard, experts are consulted, etc; or people (outside gov't, i.e. the general public) who can respectfully advocate for or against a proposed change or issue.

[BlackArcher101]

Originally Posted by 14Roman14

Please point out a liberal cabinet member who is an expert on western Canadian agriculture.

No, I won't bother trying to prove anything to you. If you think Trudeau authored this, then what's the point.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

It's amazing to me that there are people who actually believe that Federal cabinet ministers are sitting in boardrooms in Ottawa drafting industry regulations.

[octothorp]

Originally Posted by 14Roman14

Please tell me more about how fallowing fields helped with productivity on any way? People did not need government to tell them to take up those practices.
And yes, I think most would accept recommendations however as we’ve seen with power hungry governments, recommendations can quickly turn to iron fists good or bad.

Not going to engage with you on this until you admit that you either lied or else were deeply misinformed when calling this recommendation a ban, and commit that you'll refrain from calling it a ban in the future. Until then, you're just shifting this discussion away from people calling you out, as you've done continually in this thread. Until you answer for your own misinformation-spreading there's no reason to engage with you in any kind of good-faith discussion.

[RedHot25]

Originally Posted by 14Roman14

Please point out a liberal cabinet member who is an expert on western Canadian agriculture.

You know that's not how this works right? Exact same thing if this was a Conservative gov't in charge.

If you are doing this, then, just for example, you obviously will never vote for Pierre Poilievre, because he has a similar lack of expertise in essentially every portfolio. Or heck, more relevant to this thread, out goes your vote for Danielle Smith.

(** to be clear to everyone, this is a non-partisan post. Swap in your preferred party/politician/etc in the above, its just trying to convey the idea of the process**).

[PeteMoss]

Originally Posted by 14Roman14

Please point out a liberal cabinet member who is an expert on western Canadian agriculture.

They were in consultation on this until August 31st and they literally haven't tabled a plan for they will get to this 30% reduction yet. You are being riled up by something that even exist yet.

This consultation ran from March 4, 2022 to August 31, 2022.

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada launched additional consultations to help guide the development of an approach for achieving Canada's fertilizer emissions reduction target of 30% from 2020 levels by 2030.

The Government of Canada consulted with Canadians, including farmers, producers, processors, Indigenous communities, women in agriculture, youth, environmental organizations, small and emerging sectors as well as other key stakeholders and partners.

[RedHot25]

And, I think I'm out now, but working in the federal gov't we had the equivalent joke that I hear often in Calgary, of "find me a true born and raised/stayed here CAlgarian, they don't exist!".

Same in the federal gov't, as funny enough, it was "find me someone from Ottawa/near by area who works for the federal gov't, they don't exist!". In fact my little team had people from Quebec (rural), Alberta, Ontario (way northern Ont if I remember correctly), Manitoba (rural) and I believe either BC or Sask.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by Slava

Going against my better judgment here, but there is a troubling element about the government using the emergency measures to quell the protests. They could've tried other avenues, and sure didn't seem to. When you have had other protests (for example the rail blockades), the government negotiated and tried to resolve those matters. Why did they jump right to restricting peoples rights here?

I’m not saying how any level of government handled this situation was right or ideal, but that doesn’t change the fact that what happened in Ottawa wasn’t a protest by the end of it. Given that most of the COVID restrictions were implemented at the provincial level and that even if border restrictions were lifted on our side it would have done nothing to get the US to change their border policy at the time it’s obvious this wasn’t really about mandates.

If I had to take a wild guess as to why there wasn’t more dialogue or negotiations to try and resolve the matter it’s probably because one of the demands of the protesters was for Trudeau to resign, not sure even the opposition would have liked setting that kind of precedent.

For the record, I didn't love the truckers convoy, but I do have concerns about how this was handled. It's kind of a "I might disagree with what you say, but I'll defend your right to say it" scenario for me.

I’m all for defending their rights to protest and hold rallies, but a small group can’t just close down a city to try and impose their will on a country. One of my biggest gripes with how the protestors acted is that it might give governments “itchy trigger fingers” in the early stages of future protests to avoid escalation.

And as far as characterizing their protests as "illegal occupations", that is what civil disobedience is.

Yes, and people are usually arrested for that when it crosses a line.

It's non-violent protest.

If these were nonviolent protests we wouldn’t have had protesters telling undercover rcmp officers that they were planning to make it violent.

Again, their particular message here wasn't mine, but non-violent protest is a big deal. And to be clear, part of that civil disobedience is people getting arrested and detained for those actions. It's basically how things should be functioning in a democracy in my view, but the restriction of rights is something that has to be examined.

I don’t think anyone would argue that use of the emergencies act doesn’t need to be scrutinized, and there’s a public hearing to do just that.

Funny that you never took such a strong stance when the UCP took away the ability for striking workers to impede people from trying to cross a legal picket line for any amount of time and also made it harder to set up secondary picket lines but all of the sudden you’re all about protecting the right to peacefully protest. I’d hate to assume that this is complete and total hypocrisy on your part.