Letters to the Editor, Dec. 15: ‘Recalls just a political ploy’

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Recalls union initiative

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With 20 UCP members now petitioned for recall, this is looking more and more like Alberta unions working to overthrow the duly-elected UCP provincial government. The petitioners are claiming UCP members are disconnected with their constituents, and that is the main reason for the push to recall. However, in each case, the use of the notwithstanding clause sending teachers and students back to school is also mentioned as a reason for the recall. This amounts to nothing more than the unions, their members, and union-friendly supporters vying to oust the UCP (who dared to put the education of children ahead of the monetary demands of the ATA and its members), and to hopefully bring in NDP who will joyfully give the unions every dollar they demand. Keep this in mind if you are a taxpayer who is not in a union. The NDP will look after their huge vote bank, whereas the UCP wants to look after all Albertans. So for Heather VanSnick, who says Danielle Smith is no longer fit to be premier, I suggest she review all the good Smith and her UCP are doing. Quit being so bitter. And as for all the other disgruntled petitioners, remember the UCP proposed raises and efforts to relieve the burdens teachers face at work, but the ATA wouldn’t budge an inch on their demands. Getting kids back in class should have been everybody’s priority, not holding out for bigger paycheques. The unions no longer deserve your support, unless you receive your direction from them. Recalls were never meant to be for purely political reasons.

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KEN PELLAND

(It has gotten out of hand)

‘I saw it first’

We are still chasing ghosts. The ‘I saw it first makes it mine’ has become an incredible cash cow for lawyers, devastating Canadian taxpayers, without ever attempting to determine just who or what that elusive ‘I’ am, let alone when. Settlers are people who were and still are moving with groups of others to live in areas of the globe that still are sparsely populated and unoccupied, looking for a better quality of life. Some of these groups have populated Canada intermittently over the last 13,000 years, including pre- and post-colonial arrivals. Some staying longer than others. By now they have all perished. Today’s Indigenous people are descendants from one or more of these groups, mixing and mating with pre- and post-colonial migrants and immigrants who continue to populate Canada. Some of the original bloodlines have become paper thin, many only definable using DNA technologies. We all have traces of that ancestral hereditary blood in our veins, dating back to the original arrivals. As blood-lines become thinner with each generation, settlements for abuse – neglect – and land should be pro-rated according to Aboriginal blood content. When that becomes less than that magic 1/16th – or 6%, claimants will have 15 times more non-Indigenous blood in their veins, and be considered extinct, while they retain the same rights, opportunities and responsibilities as all other Canadians. ‘I saw it first’ is a meaningless, pointless, and irrelevant claim. We are all settlers, and the land and resources belong to all of us to share and use, regardless of when we arrived, and where in the world we came from.

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ANDY THOMSEN, Kelowna, B.C.

(We’re all Canadians to some degree and we’d best find a way to co-exist)

Boomers lost the plot

As I read the paper I often wonder where this country would be right now if the Conservative Party led by Pierre Poilievre would have won on April 28 and not the Liberal Party led by Justin Trudeau’s economic advisor Mark Carney. A leader so void of courage he has other people to say no for him. And then there is the aging Baby Boomer demographic who voted for the continuation of this clown show. Some ‘it’s all about me’ Baby Boomers only thought of themselves. An article by Paul Begala in EsquireMagazine, 3 March 2017, wrote of the Baby Boomers: “The Baby Boomers are the most self-centred, self-seeking, self-interested, self absorbed, self-indulgent, self-aggrandizing generation in American history.” The same can be said about some Canadian boomers, they were taken in by Liberal fearmongering that their wealth and position was in jeopardy by Donald Trump. Again, some boomers only thought of themselves and today and not of others and tomorrow. Ten years of Liberal ineptitude, incompetence, increased sovereign debt obligations and ill-conceived policies that are crushing today’s youth in regards to a bright future, home ownership, and a well-paying job meant nothing to them as long as no-one takes a slice of their pie. I wonder how Mike Myers and the other boomers are feeling right now knowing Carney snowed them. Carney has turned his back on everything he based his campaign on in the spring of 2025.

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JEFFREY ANDERSON

(Boomers weren’t the only ones spooked by Trump’s 51st State talk or taken in by Carney’s ‘elbow up’ nonsense)

No concern for the west

CBC is ringing the alarm bell that Ottawa needs to consider the possibility of a Quebec election. CBC recently reported the PQ has a 20-point lead in the polls and how the Prime Minister urgently must start listening to Quebec and helping Quebec much more than in the past. Albertans are watching this gushing ‘concern’ from CBC and shake their heads at the hypocrisy! Right now, Alberta by all measures is further down the road to Independence and has received zero concern from the CBC. As a matter of fact, the CBC seems as recently as this week, to be leading the attacks on Alberta, by attacking our proposed pipeline, attacking the party the majority of Albertans elected as the government and attacking our premier. No concern at CBC that Canada is not listening to Alberta! CBC should change their name to ECBC (Eastern Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) because as far as the ECBC is concerned the West can wither and die.

CHRIS ROBERTSON, Stony Plain

(We don’t mind a critical eye being aimed out west, but it would be appreciated if it were to work in the other direction as well)

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