What Matters to You – Speaking Up is Standing Up

When the former Finance Minister recently introduced me to an audience as a “man who doesn’t spook easy,” he talked about how I engaged, took on the tough jobs, and wasn’t afraid to stand my ground or stand up for others. I appreciated the introduction, and those who have known me for a while said he was on point with the intro. So, when I tell you I’m seeing a few things out there that are making me more than a little nervous, it’s not because I’m the “Chicken Little” type.

Liberal/NDP policies reflect arrogance & ignorance

The Liberal/NDP policies that have been coming into effect over the last eight years, and most recently their clean energy standards, are downright worrisome. I’ve gone from thinking that they are simply out of touch to that they are hell-bent on implementing an ideology that does not reconcile with reality. Arrogance and ignorance are downright scary when there is power behind it, with apparent collaborators to support it. When I hear shadows of “re-education” requirements because the rest of us can’t see their vision, warning alarms go off. Workarounds to the Constitution, not to mention the habitual constitutional overreach to bend the rest of the “non-believers” to their will, is downright spooky.

In Alberta and Saskatchewan we know where our energy comes from

The issue with Alberta and Saskatchewan is that we are used to speaking up and knowing where our energy and food come from. Moreover, we know full well what it takes to move the products we produce to market and know the resources at our disposal. You see, most of our families are not that far removed from the land nor from the infrastructure that is required to—quite literally – keep the lights on. We also know what a prairie winter looks like, what it takes to keep warm, and what we have at our disposal to be used to ensure our energy supply is reliable. -35C or colder for several weeks isn’t a far-off story. It’s called February out here in the West.

We still have our Canadian Constitutional rights and we are going to use them

The Canadian Constitution clearly states that the legislation and control of resources and power generation clearly fall within the control of the provinces. So, when the current Federal Environmental minister of CN-Tower-climbing-protest-fame wants to ram through a production cap and rush us into a zero-carbon output scenario for 2035, regardless of the cost or the technical ability to comply without having energy failures, exorbitant prices, or collapsing an economy, we must ensure we do more than just speak up. We need to stand up with provincial partners and put a full stop to this lunacy. We are not going along with this dangerous policy; we can work out solutions to the technical challenges by 2050 and use the resources we have at our disposal.

Liberal federal ministers are preaching that “many need to be re-educated”, including Conservative politicians, so that we will go along with their dangerous policies

The irony is not lost on us when that same minister who is so very cozy with the Communist Party of China, who sits as number 2 on their own environmental board for a country many consider the largest polluter on the planet, gives them a pass on anything remotely similar until 2070. It’s the same party and country that our current PM openly admires because they can implement policy without all that democracy stuff getting in the way. When the former environmental minister from the Liberal party pontificates how the rest of us need to be “re-educated” because we are not drinking their Kool-Aid: is it déjà vu, or simply hearing the words of the past echo in the present, when many other communist and socialist based groups garnered control of countries, and rammed through their policies with beliefs that the next two generations will love them for their ideological utopia. History has yet to reveal that utopia. The death toll proves it has failed miserably in every country.

Better jail than this ill-conceived plan

The other provinces have crown corporations that produce their power, paraphrasing the words of the Saskatchewan Premier, simply put, he said the feds can take him to jail if they want, they are not going along with this ill-conceived plan.  So where does that put us in the Strong and Free province?  What will we have to do to protect Albertans from this latest attack from “our own” federal government?  Well, we may have to swing that Sovereignty within a United Canada Act, and we will, of course, continue at the bargaining table in good faith, but we sure as heck won’t have the environmental-activist-turned-minister have us freeze in the dark while his Communist Party of China buddies get a pass for an additional 35 years.  Standing up so far has been speaking up, and when we work together in collaboration with the other provinces, it seems to have worked for most of our history as a country… until now.  This latest attempt to break the west pointed right at us, well, it’s not going to fly. This is Alberta, after all, and we tend to push back hard when cornered.

We should learn from these negative examples

Here are some of the steps taken by previous administrations in other countries to control a population and minimize their ability to stand up to the “progress” of the new order. Tank the economy, drive up inflation, and cause food and energy security issues. Hinder or limit the ability of people to communicate, control the media, vilify a segment of the population, turn the general population on each other by fracturing them into segmented groups, and limit people’s ability to travel. Remove the ability of the general population to have access to means to defend themselves and ensure those who speak out are penalized or jailed. They also need to cause social disorder to help accelerate the process where the population willingly “gives control” over to the government to make everything safe again.

Personally, now and forever, I will stand up and speak up to keep Alberta strong and free!

Sincerely,

Shane Getson