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Provincial: Flowers are a bloomin;
Commentary by Jeff Burgar
for South Peace News
There’s a “ten inch pipeline flowing south, and a garden hose flowing north.’’
The often quoted phrase refers to the resource riches of the north half of Alberta. We cut trees, drill for oil and gas, grow food, catch fish and ship it all south.
From northern Alberta, our production goes through many stages. Some stages and processes are local, adding value.
Most processes are somewhere south, adding the most value. This is value that lines the pockets and makes life better for the people who live in the south.
The resources feed people, house them, build their schools and power their lives.
We get back? Promises of a new hospital. Promises that one day roads like Killer 63 to Fort McMurray will be widened. Finished meat and cereal that costs ten or twenty times what the raw food sold for. In some places like High Prairie, we get to pay just about the highest gasoline prices in the province.
For the most part, we whine and cry about all this. Then we accept it and move on to another day.
The next time you are in Calgary, take a close look at the pavement on those big freeways. Then take a close look at the stuff between the bricks of those big new buildings in the suburbs, and downtown.
That isn’t tar holding the gravel together on the Deerfoot Trail. That isn’t mortar between the bricks. Make no mistake. What holds much together in Calgary is the sweat, tears and blood of Northern Albertans.
So, when true blue Northern Albertans hear about a new political party shaking the benches in the Legislature, it’s time to listen up boys and girls.
Here we have the Wildrose Alliance. Wildrose is selling most everything Northern Alberta wants to buy. Grassroots inputs. Conservative, right wing values. Policies that are supposed to get rigs drilling again. People ticked off with Ed Stelmach. People ticked off with Ron Liepert. People fed up with tired old Progressive Conservative people, and the same old same old, “Wait until next year.’’
There’s lots of that, for sure. Not surprisingly, Wildrose is getting support.
There is one small problem. Wildrose is, so far, a southern Alberta political party. Not only is it southern Alberta, it’s Calgary.
It’s no secret Wildrose is the new political home for many Calgary bigshots. They originally wanted Jim Dinning as our new Premier.
They still want the levers of power to be pulled in Calgary. Nowhere in Alberta are there as many disgruntled, unhappy, wanna be “leaders’’ as in Calgary.
The question is, should our Progressive Conservatives get a chance to pull up their socks? Or should we jump ship to Liberals, the ND, or Wildrose?
It all depends on what they promise in that garden hose coming back, doesn’t it?
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