Alberta Forward

 

The results of the leadership review of the United Conservative Party of Alberta came out. While receiving 51%+ Premier Jason Kenney decided that he would step down and allow for a new leader to take the party forward.

First let us consider that everybody makes mistakes, but some mistakes are more consequential than others. Second, we must understand that to be a leader one needs to have followers. In my opinion Kenney failed under both these criteria. Kenny came back from Ottawa to rescue a dying party and unite the conservatives under a new banner, however there were many sore losers who were still members of the party and never accepted his leadership. Then came Covid which was never his fault, but in my view is where he went wrong ; he accepted the advice of bureaucrats as the basis for too many of his policies. As a Christian, he allowed the arrests of pastors, and worshipers, and never had the opening and closing of the economy and citizens lives under control. He further never really protected Alberta from a dictatorial Federal government and for political purposes never used the ‘separation’ strategy, so adeptly used by Quebec over the years, as a tool to get what Alberta deserves. On the plus side, he revived the economy, but allowed bracket creep in our taxation system, he was lucky because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that resulted in higher oil prices and allowed for a balanced budget. In my view he served Alberta   as best he could and for that we should thank him. But now is the time to really look at ourselves in the mirror and demand that the UCP gets its act together and choose a real leader and prevent the coming back of a Notley government. So how de we do that is the real question.

I have never espoused the Harvard moto that Leaders are not born, they are made. This is a marketing tool to sell university applications and promote their degrees. Given some of the graduates who entered politics we can see that they are wrong ( Nenshi, Buttigieg among others) come to mind. As mentioned before to be a great leader one needs followers. Therefore, any candidate for the UCP leadership must first decided who will follow him/her and how to recruit them. Followers and supporters must decide what they want in a leader and what are the future plans for Alberta. Do we want a government that will get back to small ‘c’ conservative roots or one that still want to add the ‘progressive’ moniker to its future strategy? Forget the social policies that divide us, the Federal laws are settled on these issues. Focus on economic growth, a role for parents in the lives and education of their children, a strong strategy to get what Alberta deserves from the Federal Government. We must have a leader who will compromise on process but never compromise on principles. Those principles that they must defend are those that are espoused and demanded by Albertans. Not those that will allow the leader to play a personal role at a higher political level. We must have a leader who will not sacrifice the tax payers’ money on frivolous law suits that gets us nowhere, given that the current Supreme Court will side with the Liberal government who appointed the judges. We need a leader who will take a page from Quebec leaders who have been very successful at extracting whatever they wanted from the Federal government. To do so we must be able and willing to re-examine our status in the federation and not cower to the whims and desires of federalists Liberal and Laurentians vastly supported by the mainstream media.

 Having given my personal opinion. It is left to Albertans, and this case conservative ones to choose a new leader. I implore the faithful to make sure who they choose because there are some candidates, in my opinion, who will be entering the race for personal reasons and not for Albertans future in mind. We must put our differences aside and ensure that who we choose can take us to form the next government. We have a great opportunity to choose and elect a leader who could we be a partner with a new conservative federal government, and also a Republican Congress, even a new Republican President within the next three years. There is a strong tide of conservatism coming. The world is changing fast, there will be many challenges at home and abroad that will affect us. The next leader of the UCP must be one able to protect Albertans by listening to them and more importantly as Premier must be able to ensure that He or She does appoint the right followers in the caucus and on any committees formed to help advise the government. There must be competence as the basis for choosing these people not cronyism. I may sound negative at times but I am optimistic that Albertans will make the ‘Right’ choice this time.

Marcel Latouche

Former President and CEO

The Institute for Public Sector Accountability.

The Chasm Dividing Us

 

While the mainstream media laments a so-called rise in right-wing populist movements, too often we ignore that in the past two decades we have seen a rise in socialist dogma, verging on communism infiltrate our discourse. Recently the Covid pandemic has provided politicians with more power to restrict our freedoms, and cancel culture is on the rise to silence us. Why and how has this happened?

Political polarization has become the norm in most of the free world. The Liberal elite has been allowed to use tactics that have divided us rather than unite us. The constant use of identity rhetoric in every leftist policy has contributed to more conflict in politics. It is regrettable that today the aspirations of former generations are discarded without thought. What once drove the aspirations of ordinary people to achieve greatness has slowly been replaced by a sense of entitlement and the politics of envy. In the western free world, it seems that we have forgotten the following mottos that everyone wanted to be part of their lives; from France Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: these words are regarded as the most famous slogan of the French Revolution. In the United States: "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" is a well-known phrase in the United States Declaration of Independence and in Canada the True North strong and free"

Equality: the state of being equal especially in status, rights and opportunities was always a goal for citizens of the world. Once equality was the one thing that politicians would fight for. It was at the basis of intellectual, economic, and social growth. Success and growth were based on the equality of opportunity. Although, for many years some people were not allowed to be part of the success, over the years we have seen many gains made by minorities. Civil rights have allowed a greater participation by vast numbers of people. Martin Luther King and many others made it possible for many changes in society and provided access to education and thus economic growth for many. Other improvements have also increased the participation of minorities in the political and economic decision process.

While it is always desired that we move forward and improve on what we have achieved, it seems that the left has gradually but surely moved away from the state of equality towards what they call equity. Their policies of divisiveness use Equity: the quality of being fair and impartial to divide and conquer. It is always easy to make policies that uses taxpayers’ money to buy adulation and therefore votes. Increasingly the Liberal elite uses Equity to promote many of their policies based on identity politics. Furthermore, identity politics is being used to erode many of our constitutional freedoms. In the name of equity, the left has decided that some should be more equal than others. To gain votes and gain power the left has decided to cater to certain groups rather that treating citizens equally. It started with affirmative action, to allow for more participation by minorities. Then it grew into dividing the population into groups that even segregate minorities into different segments. For example, in higher education systems, some Ivy League Universities discriminate between Blacks and Asians when considering admission in certain programs. Martin Luther King said that ‘we should consider the character not the color of one’s skin’ but today this is ignored, and everything seems to be based on gender, skin colour, ethnicity and political ideology.,

 

We discriminate between gender and race for the sake of equity. The white race is being demonized for all the ills that afflict society. The so-called white privilege is used to discriminate in virtually every part of society today. The irony is that these policies are usually made by white Liberal elites like Biden and Trudeau. The worse part of this discriminatory trend is that the mainstream Liberal media is on board with this trend. The media has decided that these divisive policies should be supported blindly. Too often there is no more independent editorial thinking, The media today, echoes political mantras of the left as most of the media except for a very few, just embrace these woke polices of the left. Watching, listening, and reading the mass media today is in many cases like ingesting the same soup without any different flavour. The media today just use the same, words, phrases and sentences to report on events of importance. They now sing from the same page, because many of them are supported by government grants or are regulated by governments. Echoes of the Soviet Union or China’s Politburo?

The election of Donald Trump as United States President, shook the geopolitical world. The liberal elite has still not recovered. However, in many ways Trump was able to awaken citizens from their torpor and has given some the conviction that the radical move by the left should be challenged. There is no intention to advocate for violent revolution, but rather to awaken people to the fact that their freedoms are gradually being taken away, and that it is time that challenges to the increased power of governments and corporations be mounted. The unfortunate murder of George Floyd, a petty criminal, by a rogue police officer, created a perfect storm for the left to use equity and woke policies to acquire more power.  During the summer of 2020, the world witnessed the rise of Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Antifa. Riots, arson, looting and death was the result of a ‘summer of love’ as defined by the left. Democrats want to prosecute parents for standing up for the children’s rights and oppose the teaching of Marxist racist dogma like Critical Race Theory in schools. The defund the police movement also promoted the closure of prisons as  crime rates in mostly Democrat held cities in the U.S is rising at an alarming rate. Attorneys General supported by George Soros refuse to prosecute crimes because they believe in social justice based on equity. The result is the poor and mostly blacks and minorities  are the victims of these crimes, including murder, but for political reasons leftist politicians continue to ignore the failure of their policies of division.

Many politicians of the left saw these so-called ‘peaceful protests’ as means to gain power and win the next Presidential elections. Many politicians and corporations paid for the legal fees of rioters and looters. Corporations allowed themselves to be blackmailed by BLM and paid millions of dollars. Ignored is the fact that BLM is a Marxist organization, and in the aftermath of the 2020 riots it accumulated millions that were used by some members of the organizations to acquire personal real estate, while the real victims have never seen a penny of that million-dollar rainfall. Recently BLM purchased the former Canadian Communist party headquarters in Ontario. By contrast, the Freedom Convoy protesting the Covid mandates has its Go Fund Me millions being stopped and being investigated. Whether you believe that the January 6 was an insurrection or not, except for a very few rogue extremists, The Freedom Convoy is nowhere similar as there is no violence from either side (authorities or protesters). Unfortunately, there were some rogue members in these convoy, who tarnished the original intent of the protest. While the Liberal media has a different take on left and right protest, it was an opportunity for the Black Faced hypocrite Prime Minister of Canada to state “Today in the House, Members of Parliament unanimously condemn the antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, homophobia, and transphobia that we have seen on display in Ottawa over the past number of days. Together, let's keep working to make Canada more inclusive.”

These Truck Protests are a result of two years of government Covid mandates around the world. The world came to a virtual standstill for two years as businesses were closed and people told to ‘Go home and Stay home’. It is now apparent that all these lockdowns may have been futile as researchers from Johns Hopkins University concluded that lockdowns like the kind imposed in early 2020 only reduced COVID mortality by 0.2% While the costs to society were huge, the effectiveness of lockdowns was marginal at best. The mental stress, especially on children not allowed to go to school, and people being forced to wear a mask in public has taken a toll on peoples’ patience.

There is one fact that is being ignored in the mass media, and Liberal minds- that because of Covid politicians at all levels found a way to acquire powers that verge on authoritarianism. As we get closer to the pandemic becoming endemic, these same politicians want to cling to these powers and do not want to free the citizens. Usually Canadians follow, but this time the Canadian Freedom Convoy is being mirrored in other countries.  It is no wonder that protests are gathering force around the world. The people of the world are starting to understand that their freedoms are at stake, even though an uninformed few are still supporting these mandates. Violence is never condoned in any circumstances, but the real issue is that we cannot blame the right and support the left because we believe in a certain ideology. Equality and not equity should be the benchmark for of our decisions. As the acceptance of Cancel Culture’ grows, we are close to losing our freedom of speech.  The law should be blind and applied equally, if it is not, we are on the verge of accepting dictatorship and lose our freedoms,

 

Economics and/or Politics

 

As the world desperately tries to get out of the grips of the Covid Pandemic, there is something very insidious happening. Politicians increasingly believe they are economists, and economists are gradually embracing political views which affect the understanding of economics.

Prior to the pandemic, the world was in an economic growth era. Despite Trump’s use of trade barriers on China, the economy in the United States was roaring. The stock market was soaring to historic heights, while the greatest beneficiaries were Blacks and Hispanics who saw never heard of employment levels. The ability to exploit its oil and gas resources saw the U.S become a net exporter of oil, thus reducing the price of oil and gas on the world market. A new trade deal between the U.S. Canada and Mexico also helped the economy of the three countries. All these favorable economic factors were suddenly destroyed by the pandemic. Massive injection of cash into the economy was needed to finance health programs and the creation of vaccines. Furthermore, additional expenditures were used to support the millions of people who were forced to stop work and stay at home. In effect the whole economic model was turned upside down. Monetary and fiscal policies took a backseat and expenditures became the norm and money printing came to the fore as never before.

Then came the 2020 elections and a senile President Biden was elected. The hate for Trump saw Biden reverse Trump’s executive orders, and the United States entered a new era of policies based on ‘new economic’ concepts closely resembling communism rather than Liberalism, let alone Conservatism. Supported by a cabal of socialist Democrats in Congress, Biden proceeded to make some decisions which are today hurting the North American, and as result the world economy. Massive spending to pay workers to stay at home, the complete reduction of oil and gas exploration and therefore production in the U.S, coupled with other strange foreign policies turned the economy into an environment rarely seen before.

We are now in a full-blown recession, but which is being labelled as the greatest recovery of all times. The ‘Build Back Better’ policy of the Biden administration is being supported apparently by many Nobel Economic Prize winners, but when analyzed one must ask whether these economists are politicians or do, they still embrace their economic philosophies. These are some of the facts: We have millions (U.S 10m) of job openings yet we have millions unemployed (U.S 8.6m).These numbers are mirrored in other western countries. So, in effect we have more job openings than workers willing to work because they are being paid to stay at home. As a result, wages are rising because companies must do so to attract workers. With less oil being produced, Biden ask Saudi Arabia to produce more, still not enough, so the price of gas at the pump has risen. In addition, a supply chain problem has arisen, ships stuck at ports because there are no workers and truck drivers to transport goods. Now we have too much money chasing to few goods. Classical case for rampant inflation.

However socialist politicians and some economists claim that the inflation is ‘transitory’, so they continue to print money which reduces the value of the currency. While claiming that wages are increasing, they forget to acknowledge that a reduction in purchasing power of the dollar and rising prices due to inflation is in effect a reduction in real earnings.

What we see happening in the United States is also repeating itself, at different levels, in other Western countries. The latest COP26 climate change conference is going to make things worse, Taxes, increasing fees on carbon are going to further increase prices as much of what the world consumes is derived from oil. If this continues, inflation will not be ‘transitory’ as claimed by both politicians and economists. To bring some sanity to the problem we shall inevitably see a rise in interest rates, hopefully not to the levels of the Carter era. The current policies of the current crop of industrialized world leaders cannot be good for the economy. Printing money to subsidize socialist policies is a sure recipe for economic catastrophe. But what is worse is that too many economists are supporting these idiotic policies made by politicians who have no idea but one goal- getting re-elected, and so the world pays for their follies.