WILAGROW...just for you!

[ivbinconned]

SPECIAL REPORT

Conservative MLA committee spurns the "Alberta Agenda"

If you thought last month's federal election was a kick in the teeth, brace yourself for another one.

According to Alberta newspapers, "government sources" leaked the news on Tuesday that the MLA Committee on Strengthening Alberta's Role in Confederation has decided the province should not take over Alberta's share of the Canada Pension Plan. The reasons given were the usual misleading myths about high costs and the need for federal permission to do it. All of which has been disproved.

The committee has also (reportedly) killed the idea of Alberta collecting its own provincial personal income tax.

And though the door may be left open to further discussion, it has recommended against the formation of an Alberta equivalent to the Ontario and Quebec provincial police.

The fact that this information was "leaked" rather than announced suggests that the Klein government is softening up Albertans for a big disappointment. Once again, Klein's increasingly aimless cabinet sees no need to actually do something difficult, because it assumes it will win the next election without doing anything.

These three points -- pensions, tax collection and police -- make up the Alberta Agenda, because all three can be done legally without Ottawa's permission. Their implementation would send a loud message to the federal government, and studies have shown they would provide Albertans with better service at less cost.

They were widely supported by Albertans when the MLA committee canvassed public opinion at hearings across the province in January and February.

The Citizens Centre will find out as soon as possible if the committee based its negative conclusions on reason or just Red Tory prejudice. Once the MLA committee report is published, we will launch an aggressive response.

More pointless talk with the Martin Liberals

Instead of the Alberta Agenda, the MLA committee has recommended a list of other proposals Alberta can make to the federal government in areas where Ottawa has full control (most likely Senate reform, grain export marketing, gun control, reforming the CPP).

Decades of discussion with Ottawa on these subjects have yielded nothing.

But before Premier Klein shows the list to Albertans, he told reporters he will submit it to Liberal Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan.

We should not accept failure

In its 11 yeas of existence, the Klein government has never won a single fight with Ottawa. Not on gun control, not on carbon emissions, not on medicare, not on species at risk, not on grain marketing, not on anything.

Not only has it never won, it has never seriously tried. It talks all the time about defending the province, but hardly lifts a finger to do it. Farmers go to jail for selling wheat, unregistered gun owners get convicted for owning guns, Ottawa loots billions of dollars from the province, and the Klein government simply watches it happen, like a cow watching a truck drive by on the highway.

It's time for Albertans to demand real leadership.

Alberta is heading into an election this fall or winter, and then (by all expectations) Ralph Klein will retire.

We must make the Alberta Agenda the main issue in this election, and then the main issue in the leadership race.

The main issue being, will Alberta forever allow itself to be plundered and bullied by the federal government?

Alberta is a unique province with a unique spirit -- positive, competitive, adventurous, innovative, fair-minded and constructive.

The Alberta Agenda is the new manifestation of that spirit. Alberta can lead Canada in promising new directions, as it did when Klein showed other Canadian governments how to balance a budget a decade ago.

Let's keep that spirit alive.

If you'd like to share your thoughts with Premier Klein, e-mail premier@gov.ab.ca



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Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy
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[wilagro]

Ivbinconned: Great news. Just proves that some Albertans are not hoodwinked rubes. We are after all a part of Canada, and not a bunch of separatists wanting to go our own way. We are NOT like Quebec where they buck everything connected with federalism. The Canada Pension Plan was designed so that no matter where we worked, the "plan" was there for us and was truly portable.

I am sure that if Alberta ran the "plan", it would come up short, much like the performance of our "Heritage Trust Fund" in the past number of years.

[cowman]

Well, I'll make no apologies for being an Alberta separatist! I kind of thought it was funny that Klein commissioned this deal about going around and asking Alberta what they wanted? When just about every group that talked at this commission said we need to take back these responsibilities, Klein was giving interviews where he was basically saying these people were a bunch of idiots for wanting something different than the old way! Showed his hand early and showed it often!
The wonderful Canada pension plan! As far as I can see they can keep it...they just claw it back anyway!
Unfortunately Ralph Klein could get elected here no matter what he did? Why if he turned back into a drunk again and started abusing the bums, Albertans would still vote for him! Ralph is a slick politician who knows how to play the crowd and stir up the rednecks! I imagine when the election is called he'll get real belligerent with Ottawa...of course it will all be a show and he'll never really do anything to his buddies in Ottawa? That's just how the game is played?

[ivbinconned]

"We are NOT like Quebec where they buck everything connected with federalism."??

Really! Did you just get here? You have blind spots that is for sure.

Accepting 8 billion a year via the feds, from Alberta, so they can lavishly support their ag sector isn"t exactly what I would call "bucking" federalisim.

The word scam and sting and CON-federation come to mind.

[ivbinconned]

In the National Post this week, a little known leader of a little known party issued a rallying cry for Alberta, one that shouldn't be dismissed out of hand.

Bruce Hutton, interim leader of the Separation Party of Alberta, wrote: "For a Canadian nationalist, last week's federal election results will prove devastating. For an Alberta separatist, the results were the best thing that could happen in 40 years." Judging by the flood of commentary in this paper, many Albertans have taken the repudiation of the Conservative party personally.

As if that weren't enough, Conservative leader Stephen Harper emerged from his week of rest to generate the headline: "Harper to Steer Party to Centre." If true, Hutton may have received a boost that could take his movement from fringe to mainstream.

The Progressive Conservatives already tried this tack, and in attempting to become centrist enough to win the East, they only succeeded in alienating the West. Let's face it: Torontonians rejected Harper's Conservatives, but embraced socialist NDP Leader Jack Layton. Albertans aren't the ones who are extreme -- Torontonians are.

Just how does a federal party "moderate" itself enough to bridge the divide between a riding such as Wetaskiwin, where the Tories won 74 per cent of the vote, and Toronto-Danforth (where they won six per cent), or Quebec (where they won no seats at all)? While the big brains in Harper's inner circle attempt to work that one out, Alberta's separatist movement intends to capitalize on the chance to advance its cause.

How worried should the rest of the nation be? Probably more than they are.

On June 9, 2004, the Separation Party of Alberta announced it had achieved official party status and intends to run a full slate of candidates in the provincial election. This will be the first test of the movement's strength. (As Green Party leader Jim Harris showed in the federal election, running candidates in every riding is a fast-track to credibility.)

And as we learned from Quebec's sovereignty drive, these movements can gel and advance extraordinarily quickly, given the right political climate.

Rene Levesque wrote the essay -- For an Independent Quebec -- in the July 1976 edition of Foreign Affairs magazine, on the eve of the election that would install his Parti Quebecois in power for the first time.

He described the conditions that led to the rise of his sovereigntist movement, primarily the second-class status of the French in Quebec and Ottawa's stifling control: "More than half of our public revenue and most of the decisions that count were and are in outside hands, in a federal establishment which was basically instituted not by or for us, but by others and, always first and foremost, for their own purposes."

Through the '60s, Quebec had a "dialogue of the deaf" with Ottawa, similar to what Alberta has with the federal Liberals: insistent on greater autonomy but ineffectual in achieving it. For most of its history, Quebec also had the occasional stirring of nationalist sentiment, like Alberta's Western Canada Concept.

Levesque became the catalyst that pulled it all together. He quit the provincial Liberals in 1967 after the party rejected his call to embrace sovereignty. Once political independence appeared, not as a dream, Levesque writes, but as a project, it very quickly become a serious one. "This developed by leaps and bounds from easily ridiculed marginal groups, to semi-organized political factions, and finally to a full-fledged national party in 1967-68."

In the Parti Quebecois' first election of 1970, it won 24 per cent of the popular vote and seven seats; in 1973, it won 30 per cent of the popular vote and six seats; in 1976 it formed a government.

Alberta separatists are still a marginalized and easily ridiculed lot, and no Levesque-style leader has emerged to pull the factions together.

However, Albertans have become the new second-class Canadians, handily demonized by the ruling Ottawa elite whenever it helps to win elections; called on to provide $11 billion more each year to the general revenue kitty than it gets back in federal services; ignored on key issues such as defence, family values, the gun registry, the Kyoto accord, health-care privatization, property rights, parliamentary reform, debt repayment, political pork-barrelling -- and this is not an exhaustive list.

Hutton may not be wrong to be so optimistic.

_________________
"Without justice, what are kingdoms but great robberies?"- St. Augustine
"If you have not suffered enough, it is your god given right to suffer some more."- William Aberhart, Alberta Premier 1935-43
"A wise man's heart directs him toward the right, but the foolish man's heart directs him toward the left. " -Ecclesiastes 10:2

[cowman]

The emergence of the "new" Conservative party in the last federal election, and their failure to capture any seats in the big urban Ontario ridings, should have sent a very clear message to the west? The message was this: No way are you ever going to get in and no way will we ever accept a leader from the west!
Which is perfect! If you are a separatist! Surely westerners, and especially Albertans, will some day realize "Hey, this isn't working"!
When that day comes hopefully we'll have a leader, with vision, stand up and take us out of here.
It is very comforting to know that this fall when Klein calls the election I'll have someone to vote for, instead of those three federal lap dogs...PC, Liberal, NDP! In fact I will join the party, work for my local candidate, even donate a few bucks! Worked hard for WCC before they were taken over by the loonies. Thought that was our chance...maybe this time?
Hoping for a free and seperate west within my lifetime?