Dear Editor,
In July of this year, Mayor Brown and City council presented Jason Kenney’s government (it isn’t my government since I didn’t vote for him) with a petition to address traffic concerns. The Airdrie City View was kind enough to publish my take on the idea in the Aug. 1 edition of the paper, where I told people: “Petitions are only as good as the governments they are brought to” and inferred the Kenney cabinet probably would not take notice. So, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.
Now, city hall is upset the government has cut funding for those same traffic projects, which the petition addressed.
People voted for Kenney and his cronies because they would make Alberta “great again.” His definition of “great” is to wage a war on the middle- and lower-classes with increased fees for everything, fewer provincial benefits, fewer government workers (meaning longer waits for all), attacks on the minimum wage, attacks against unions and trades, removal of tuition limits for post-secondary schools, de-indexing benefits for the disabled, lowered public-school funding (except for religious schools), no new schools, no new health clinics, no new hospitals, no renewable energy incentives, no money for public transit, less money for small businesses – the list goes on and on and on.
And now, Encana is taking another 6,000 jobs and moving from the province, because he has cancelled rail cars which would bring Encana’s oil (and that of other producers) to markets in lieu of the pipelines, which were previously cancelled.
If by making Alberta “great” means those things, then our common definition of the word is wrong.
Thanks, Kenney, for changing the definition of “great” into “disastrous” or “evil.” Thanks for higher property taxes, higher fees, higher income taxes (who will make up that $4.8-billion shortfall, other than you and me?), longer waits at government offices, less money for already-strapped non-profits, larger class sizes, lower minimum wages for already poor citizens, less money for the disabled, fewer benefits for seniors, no money for infrastructure and capital projects, and an economy crumbling even faster than before.
UCP supporters only have themselves to blame. They believed his lies and swallowed them whole, hook, line and sinker.
This government has no respect for democracy, the economy and us. Welcome to what some have called the “Great Kenney Recession.”
Ron Roffel
Silver Creek