What Matters to You – Contrast and Comparison

It has been quite eventful the past couple of weeks for Alberta and for our fancy-sock-wearing federal government prime minister. He and his woke, shut-down-the-energy-sector, Kool-Aid-drinking cabinet ministers have been on an embarrassing and reputationally damaging runway. For those offended by this statement, skip the rest of this column because your feelings are in for a rough ride.

Alberta and Saskatchewan are welcoming the ties with India

A brief while back, I wrote about expanding our economic reach as a province. At the time, I had recently met with the Consulate General of India over the course of four days, and we spoke about strengthening ties, not only with the region but as nations.
We spoke about family ties and connecting our nations, not only relying on the bottom line but on morals and ethics. India was just on the cusp of landing their spacecraft on the moon and now has successfully done so.

Alberta, along with Saskatchewan, is helping India with issues such as food security, agrifood development, energy security, infrastructure development, and steel manufacturing, to name a few. A long-lasting relationship that could span several generations easily, with conversations starting with signing a memorandum of understanding between Alberta and Indian states. We even started making arrangements to meet with the trade delegation attending the oil show in Calgary. We made fantastic strides over the course of four days.

Trudeau shattered relations with the fourth-largest economy in the blink of an eye

Enter Trudeau: for what could have been seen as just another embarrassing costume parade gone wrong. He went from embarrassing to just downright insulting the fourth-largest economy in the world. India is the most populous country and the largest democracy on our planet. The narcissism and hypocrisy demonstrated by Trudeau was not lost on many of the citizens of India, nor the media. You see, the media in India are not recipients of any “funding” or “grants” from the Canadian government, and, as such, when Trudeau started scolding India on their record on civil protest—they shot back hard.
Again, the family connections we have between our countries come into play. Many folks from India have family here who are part of our trucking industry. That’s right, the same industry that took their civil protest to Ottawa, where Trudeau couldn’t ignore them. The harshest and most resonating comment I heard from the media summed up what Trudeau did: they called him an “insignificant man from an insignificant country.” Well done, JT!

You just eroded years of work with your trip that lasted less than a week!

24th World Petroleum Congress

Meanwhile, back in Calgary, we successfully hosted the world at a global energy conference. In walks the federal Minister of Energy, who leads off with his chin. He explains how Canada is going to be ramping down energy production for several reasons, including weakening global demand.  You see, at this global conference, a vast number of people don’t get their news feed from the Canadian media. They know full well that global demand is increasing stronger than ever.

The detailed analysis of the costs, benefits and structure of a potential Alberta Pension Plan (APP) Report has been released

Shots were fired on the real value of the Canada Pension Plan that belongs to Albertans. Keeping our commitment to the fair deal panel and armed with the most recent data available, inclusive of the actual CPP framework, Albertans now know that up to 53 percent of the entire pension plan could belong to them. That’s a hefty chunk of the pie, considering that we only account for 15 percent of all the folks contributing to the plan by population!
Stuttering, stammering, and with the propaganda machine getting wound up, the Trudeau-NDP alliance partners came out swinging with a big “is not”! I’ve been happy to inform them, and their chain-letter-writing-supporters that numbers don’t lie, and neither does the report, so make sure that you read it for yourself. It’s a big deal for Albertans to be informed of the truth!
I referred to the ramifications of taking control of our pension plan being equal to the “Golden Rule,” as in, “he who has the gold makes the rules”! I for one am tired of the federal government making up the rules for Albertans using our own gold!

Trudeau’s glorious week: between reducing the relations with India to an all-time low and taking two full days to apologize for honoring a former SS member by the Speaker of the House

Not satisfied with setting back relations with India and being seen as an absolute insulting hypocrite, the federal government in the last few days further insulted others and embarrassed our whole country internationally. Trudeau and his group, who have been so ready to point fingers at Canadians who are not of his political party affiliation, now find themselves at the centre of a full-scale international incident.

In case you have not heard, the federal government decided to honour a WW2 veteran who was a member of an SS division. Let that sink in. Not the regular German army. The SS. Perhaps if the federal coalition government wasn’t so “woke,” and they didn’t go out of their way to erase history, distort and warp it for their own reasons, they would have perhaps known who this man was. The Speaker of the House took it on the chin, while Trudeau took days to apologize or show any real remorse. Wow.

Trudeau’s policies targeting Saskatchewan and Alberta wellbeing

As I indicated at the start of this column, if you are a Trudeau fan, your feelings were going to get hurt. I am frankly done with that entire group. The policies that the federal government is coming out with under the ministers who are hell bent on their ideological bubbles—to be implemented at the expense of regular Canadians—are simply ludicrous.

It is abundantly apparent that they are going out of their way to target Saskatchewan and Alberta. We will be pulling every lever at our disposal, and working collaboratively with our provincial partners to make the confederation work as it was designed too. We can’t allow this prime minister, or the ministers he has to run us into the ground. We have international leaders who want to work with us, who know that fancy socks are not a reflection of our region. We are a welcome contradiction of what has been portrayed on the world stage by our prime minister. We need to ensure that we continue to show up, speak up, and stand up for ourselves. Let’s hope that these last three weeks of debacles are the final nail in the coffin for the federal Liberals, and that our fellow Canadians down east see him for what he truly is. We simply can’t afford to have him or his ideologies driving our country any further towards the cliff. It will take years of work to repair our reputation and heal our country.

As always, I am grateful for the feedback and the candor. The only way we can keep moving forward is if we continue to keep working together, and our province is worth it.

Let’s make sure Alberta stays Strong and Free.

Sincerely,

Shane Getson

Usefull links:

https://www.albertapensionplan.ca/

https://www.albertapensionplan.ca/the-report

Download the report here!