Garth Pritchard snapped this photo of one of the signs popping up all over Alberta (they have no snow left because a chinook roared across the prairies earlier this week and melted everything). The signs summoning Albertans to a demonstration outside the Alberta legislature, a first as far as anybody can recall. They’re heading to the capital to demand NDP premier Rachel Notley’s impeachment under one of Alberta’s arcane laws.
And they say this isn’t a distinct society?
Everything’s going to hell here. If it hasn’t already. Someone in the know tells us 367 oilpatch enterprises have already declared bankruptcy with a lot more to follow. Those aren’t personal bankruptcies.
The stories are pouring in about Albertans wooed to the U.S. oil-producing states with the promise of a green card and a house. They’re all being fired because they’re more expendable that their U.S. counterparts. No green card, no house and nothing left to come home to. “They’re absolutely raping their Canadian employees,” Garth says.
Meanwhile, the Trudeau government remains hopelessly out of step with what’s happening in Alberta. A federal minister and his provincial NDP counterpart were in Manning, Alberta, way the hell and gone up in the Peace River.
“They tried to bamboozle locals into some kind of a carbon tax,” Pritchard says. “Carbon tax? There’s nothing left up here,” an oilman told them. Most of the oil companies are insolvent. They’ve gone through every penny they had put away for a rainy day and there’s nothing left and these guys are talking about a carbon tax?
The CBC is pretty well all people get out here and their national broadcaster, true to form, is wall to wall about Ghomeshi’s chaotic trial. “Who gives a good goddam whether he hit her or she gave him a hand job,” Garth bellows. “What people want to know out here is whether it’s true Montreal mayor Denis Coderre is demanding a billion bucks for Bombardier in exchange for his approval of the TransCanada pipeline.”
That and the $9.8 billion Quebec will get in transfer payments in 2016. Alberta gets nothing because Alberta is a have province, even with all these layoffs and bankruptcies and Ottawa’s projected deficit is now pegged at $50 billion.
When the roustabouts in their dirty, about-to-be-repo’d pickups hit Edmonton March 8, I wonder whether Notley and her former federal NDP staff will have the guts to tell them that.
thousandlashesdotca 
Hey Jim..say hello to Garth for me..just a small response concerning Alberta. Where were these guys when we were paying an arm and a leg for gas in the east and they were paying half price. And all the years of paying 0 taxes in Alberta..Saw a guy in Texas who was crying poverty..he was making upwards of two hundred and fifty grand..Spent it all on red neck toys..sympathy..BS. So nice in PEI…lol
Pat Patterson
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$9.2bn divided by 7.5 Million people paying %5 federal tax at the cash register = pennies of return on our investment. I spend a lot more than $120 in federal tax every year, that’s half of what I lose to the fed from one paycheck out of 26.
Of course, Alberta has no PST, so they want to put their hands in the Federal coffers being entitled and mistaken that the Fed hasn’t been subsidizing their oil for the last decade. Perhaps that anger might be better directed at the CEO’s who shuttered the businesses in question because they didn’t want to operate at a loss for a few years and give back to their communities.
But go ahead, blame Quebec and Canada if it makes you feel better.
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Just tellin you what they’re saying in Alberta, no need to get defensive.
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Just wanted to rebuff, tired of hearing that moaning from over there.
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On second thought you make a good point. I’m an Albertan by birth and I think there’s a programmed societal tendency to accept Alberta’s boom-and-bust way of seeing the world. One must never forget that Alberta is the birthplace of both Social Credit and Reform. Very confused psychologically.
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I nearly lost my cookies when I saw a CAPP spokesman on CBC saying they were going to demand a bailout from the government, after cutting hundreds of jobs. That’s who I’d be angry at.
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