We all remember being told that the vaccines would grant us immunity, don’t we? Plenty of simplified pictorials and condescending cartoons told us so. “And now you’re immune!” People proudly declared that they took the shot to protect other people, adopting Facebook badges that smugly boasted “You’re Welcome!”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may be using Indigenous Canadians as human props to get their votes, and the votes of Canadians for whom better treatment of Indigenous people is important.
…for all that is being said about Alberta today, infected Albertans have so far survived COVID-19 at three times the rate of Quebeckers, and nearly at twice the rate of the average Canadian.
It is not people declining vaccination who are putting us in the gravest danger. It’s those who, perhaps fewer in numbers, continue to dream of, and push for, a global eradication of SARS-CoV-2. They drive the policies that subject us to lockdown cycles. They are far more dangerous than the virus itself.
Summer arrived and the inmates of Alberta’s province-wide quarantine camp soon received back from your government a few of their rights in the form of temporary privileges, though you did not call them that in your Open for Summer program. Autumn is barely upon us and those privileges are already being withdrawn.
The conservative movement is fractured, to say the least. Brokerage, pragmatism, regionalism and old party cleavages have left the conservative intellect lost in the proverbial forest. Let’s heed the lessons of the past and not blame the usual suspects should the CPC fail to deliver voter growth in the next election.
People will disagree with public officials and their decisions. In a democratic arrangement, there is an expectation that people will address their differences respectfully, and even in friendship. Frederick Haultain, the founder of Alberta and Saskatchewan, was notorious for his kind and respectful ways. Unlike our contemporary crop of leaders, he never insulted even his most vicious or slandering opponents.
For generations now, successive federal governments have made promises without delivering. For all the inflated rhetoric, even the present federal government has been incapable of permanently delivering potable water to so many Indigenous children. Worse still, not that long ago, Prime Minister Trudeau openly mocked Aboriginal women at a Liberal Party fundraiser in Toronto when the women demanded clean water for their children. Expressions of solidarity, vacuous electoral promises and virtue-signalling schemes will not deliver the outcomes that Indigenous Canadians need, just as handing out large amounts of unaccountable monies over decades has failed.
There are two strong reasons for the costs of increased usage of the Kananaskis wilderness areas to be shouldered by the healthcare budget. It is a health matter. Physical activity and social interaction are salutary for Albertans coping with the economic and psychological hardships imposed by their government. Second, a pricing mechanism is wrong because the excess use did not issue from regular market demand. Claiming “medical advice,” the government has locked Albertans down and continues to restrict most options for essential social and physical activities. The excess costs associated with wilderness usage should therefore be medical costs.
Canadians need to reject the political scheme of a Great Reset and any other grand scheme that seek to transform the country. The post-COVID-19 recovery needs to grow the economy. It is time to free our entrepreneurs of the mercantilistic shackles and unleash their power to create, grow and hire.
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