What Matters to You – Projects – Politics & Podcasting

Proje-Holic!

I must confess an addiction problem: I’m addicted to projects.

 I, Shane Getson, am a “Proje-Holic”. 

Upon reflection, I realized that it started at a young age: my new addiction started being cultivated by an uncle of mine who was only ten years older than me. He was working for a company called Western Casson as a crane operator and learning so much about the industry and how it worked. I remember one Christmas gathering when he came back home from a shift that seemed to have lasted forever and described to me a world that was extremely exciting and full of opportunity. As it turned out, he too was a “Proje-Holic” and apparently, so were both of my grandfathers from days gone by. Evidently, I come by this quite honestly.

Projects to me, especially major projects, are highly addictive. There are far too many variables for two projects to be the same, even remotely. Linear projects were the most addictive; they could not be contained behind a fence or a single property line and they could literally bind nations together, stretching across provincial, state, and country borders. 

To my pleasant surprise, I met more “Proje-Holics” in politics. They were the community builders, the volunteers, the regular folks. They wanted to make sure we took our province back and corrected the direction it was heading down under that “new style” of management. It sure stirred the soul to meet new people, many of whom were strangers to each other, coming together for a project that was bigger than the individual to make our province a better place.

I believe that most folks are tired of politics right now; it has been a rough ride for everyone over the last few years. We are tired of the overreach, half-hatched plans launched on us by the big urban jungles and folks on the other end of the country, tired of them changing our way of life without consultation. We have a provincial general election that will take place this spring, with one side fighting back against the federal government’s continued overreach and the other side laying prostrate, propping up that same government that is trying to sink us. 

I also believe that folks have more on tap… when they realize what is at stake, we will indeed rally together to deal with the common challenges, park the 10 percent of issues we disagree on, and take care of the task at hand. We cannot afford to lose ground, fall backward, and have our provincial leaders be back in bed with the Liberal Government.

1.  Buy a membership in the provincial party of your choice, one that is blue would be a good choice in my humble opinion.
   1. 1  Note: You need to be a member to vote for your local nomination contestant. There will be a mini-election only for party members to pick their candidate to run in the spring election
2. Become an active member of your local constituency association by engaging with and helping where you can. This is a volunteer board; they have directors and executive positions. There are sub-committees that do a ton of things to help our community and make sure that the local candidate is good to go for the election.
3. Talk to people, find out what matters to them, get that information back to the board, your candidate and/or the MLA. It’s about ensuring we get the best ideas and know the issues so we can come up with solutions together.
4. Help develop party policy. This “policy” becomes the platform the party candidates will run on. At this stage, about 90 % of the platform commitments made by the UCP in the 2019 election have been enacted. Those policies came from the membership.

 It’s literally that simple, join the team and take on the project of growing Alberta for future generations, all while keeping it safe from harm by those that would see it weakened and diminished.

Currently, the projects I’m involved with are larger than our own backyard, but we play an integral part in their overall success. Economic Corridors will strengthen our ties with our provincial and territorial partners in the Northwest and get our products out to the deep seaports. These projects will have an impact going forward for multiple generations. 

I will also be taking to the airwaves on my own podcast called “What Matters to You”.

The general themes and topics will involve freedom, business, politics, places to see/things to do locally, aviation, guns & gear. Our first guest is Shaun Newman of the Shaun Newman Podcast. I’ve been on his show several times, along with over 300 other guests. I was thrilled to know that The Blake Richards Band has allowed us to use their hit single “Rollin’ Coal” as the theme music for the show. Again, we have good folks coming together to do what they can to help us “Hold the Line” and make sure we keep our province “Strong and Free”.

I’ll be out in the community as much as I can over the next month as we will not be sitting in session until the latter part of February. I’ll be hitting as many community events, meetings, and cafés as I can along the way. If I don’t see you, I’ll leave questionnaires behind with the business owners and managers that will permit me to; these are based on the key items we will address once we go back into session. I want to get your direct feedback about what matters to you, to find out if we are on track, if we have missed anything, and to make sure we get all the good ideas we can to make things right going forward. I hope to get your feedback, and I thank you in advance for your help.

Sincerely,

Shane Getson