Alberta’s future in a Crystal ball.

 

Alberta’s future in a Crystal ball.

A hundred and twenty years ago Alberta was the promised land and a new Canada was investing to develop it. There was farmland, ranch land, minerals, and coal. The aboriginal population didn’t fight as their relatives in the US did, and the only problem was getting people to move here. Train lines were built, and governments and churches got together in an effort to bring people who are tough enough to survive and build a province.

When I first saw Alberta it was a dreamland or heaven on earth. Farms and ranches dotted fertile fields, little coal mining towns with churches, and cities with industries and services. The population was comprised of a lot of optimistic people who enjoyed life and were looking forward to an even better future. During the Lougheed years, we built universities and hospitals, new infrastructure appeared everywhere and rural Alberta was booming. People from everywhere were waiting in line to move here, and in 1988 Alberta became a world-famous destination.

Sadly, later on, the leadership changed, and we focused the Alberta economy on oil alone, letting all else recede and decline. Foreign interests moved in, intending to make quick money and ignoring the well-being of the province and its people.

Imagine Alberta without the rural population. Miles and miles of export-grade farm commodities undisturbed by farms, villages, hamlets, towns, and small cities. Some areas are fully devoted to mining and others systematically stripped of forests. Seasonal workers in camps using large machines to harvest and mine, supply cheap labour, and are sent back to their home countries when the work is done. No need for schools, hospitals, and other infrastructure, only what is needed to make profits remains.

Alberta without rural communities wouldn’t have to worry about how rural people vote or about what will happen to older farmers when their working life is done. No school buses on the roads, few restaurants or religious communities, and no call for services. The whole rich province could be run from a central location in the most efficient way with one aim; make most money for the investors who financed the venture.

The cities would have the human resources but competition for jobs would eliminate the need to pay high wages or provide incentives other than pay. People would work and fly to other places to live, as they do now in Fort McMurray. Without the rural population, the cities would not need to serve so many people and would be focused on profit-making from the sales of resources. No need for the RCMP and no call for art. Only efficiency and austerity.

How would one go about creating such a utopian business? It could be easier than expected. Alberta is rich in resources and extracting or profiting from them is now no longer very labour intensive. Those who wish to cash in have a problem with large rural communities demanding services, having environmental concerns, and influencing politics away from easy profit-making. What would be an easy way to speed up the slow trickle of people moving away from the country? A solution is obvious. Life in the country could be made less attractive or even impossible. Corporations can use a sizeable amount of money to elect governments more loyal to revenues and less to the voting public. A government devoted to austerity will naturally lean towards spending less where the population is not dense.

Avoid developing labour-intensive industries in rural communities. Discourage health care professionals from serving in the countryside by removing incentives and reducing pay. Close hospitals and other medical facilities. Reduce the quality of education so the young generation will look for opportunities in cities. Reduce the number of teachers and support staff. Short change Seniors care or not support places for them to live. Reduce government services forcing people to go further for their needs. Reduce the quality of policing by forcing small communities to pay for it and offering cheaper less qualified options. Welcome temporary workers from poor countries at peak seasons and send them back at slow times. We had regulations that enhanced life in rural places and governments can remove them.

Next, a government can remember the empire’s motto of divide and rule. A simple change in regulations can divide the rural population and set them up against each other. Remove a rule that protected water for farms and wave a couple of hundred short-lived jobs in front of declining towns folks and you have them fighting each other. Farmers can’t give up fresh water and mines can promise to keep the water clean “if possible” knowing that it’s not. After all, they will be long gone when the problems they caused will show up. Just like cleaning “Orphaned wells” the socialist solution of “the public will pay” will be the only one.

I saw on the news a woman on the floor of emergency in a hospital (In Ontario) where all the beds were taken. She died shortly after. I don’t want this to happen here in rural Alberta, but it will if we don’t fight for our rights now while we can. I am afraid government policies or removal of such could end the way of life we enjoyed for over a hundred years. We built the province and we want to keep it for ourselves, not for “international corporations” that come and go.

People around me are confused, thinking that fighting for freedom means fighting not to wear masks. I wish it was that easy. The actual fight is the fight for our way of life. We look across the border and see millions of bankruptcies related to medical expenses. People working eighty hours a week to keep food on the table. We drive through barren lands viewing poor farms and see cities crumbling back to the ground. The people can’t trust their electoral system and many of them envy our way of life. What we have in Alberta is worth fighting for.

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.