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Doing
what's right
Commentary by Jeff Burgar
for South Peace News
What’s the difference between 700 Alberta grizzly
bears and 700,000 people living in Edmonton?
The people in Edmonton each get $6,000 each
(calculated by Alberta’s 2010 highway budget of
$5.8 billion roughly divided by metro Edmonton
population) so they can get to work, go to a movie
or buy a bag of groceries 10 minutes faster.
Our grizzly bears, since there are so few of them,
get posted on an endangered species list.
Does that sound like a good deal?
Possibly, the list might save the bears from extinction
in Alberta. But since it took years to even
admit to a problem, don’t hold your breath.
As a citizen in rural Alberta, this is just one item
on a long list of arguments that make the case that
so called “representation by population” as it is defined,
just does not work. Rural Alberta, and specifically
northern rural Alberta, gets the short end of
the stick every day of every week.
The problem, in a nutshell, is our grizzly bears,
caribou, rivers, streams, trees, croplands and even
sawmills, pipelines and roads, don’t get a vote.
Worse, they barely have anyone to represent them.
The only people speaking for the 700 grizzlies in
need are MLAs you can count on one hand.
Then there are well-meaning environment and
conservation groups. These groups, while they
come from all corners of the world, including right
here in Alberta, barely have enough resources to
deal effectively with five or six problems, never
mind the 5,000 or 6,000 issues. Did you get that –
500,000 or 600,000 issues around the world! This is
bad enough. It’s going to keep getting worse.
“Rep by pop” has, as its logical conclusion down
the road, the vast, vast majority of Canadians living
in a few mega-centres. Vancouver. The Golden
Triangle including Toronto and Hamilton. The Edmonton-
Calgary corridor. Not much else.
The reason is simple. Politicians vote to look after
their people. If that means taking from those
with fewer votes to look after their own, that’s
what will happen. Grab as many resources of the
land as you can, from cattle to grain to minerals to
trees. Feed them all into the vote machines called
cities.
It’s simple, and sad. Every year that goes by, every
time election boundaries are rezoned, more
power goes to the cities. It’s obvious in the long
run those grizzlies and caribou - and yes - even
those pipelines and sawmills, logging companies
and service businesses, don’t have a chance.
And at this rate, neither does rural Alberta. One
way or another, rape of the land will continue.
When push comes to shove, somebody in Toronto
or Vancouver will swing the big stick.
Let’s remember an important item. This is not a
conservation issue. This is an economic issue. It
involves everybody who earns a living in rural Alberta.
It involves everybody who expects good
roads, decent medical service, education for their
children and a safe place in which to live, work,
and grow old.
Do you want that, or do you want to be like one
of those 700 grizzlies?
More next week.
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