Last week, we spent some time discussing the future of the Saskatchewan Roughriders.
Now, dear diary, let’s talk about the future for the rest of us, and, no, I am not going to belabour the results of the American presidential election. Let’s just say that when Sunny Ways meets Hazy Daze, there could be some Crazy Waves.
Let’s focus on our own homeland, just for fun. We can save the world on Thursday, my fellow Canadians. Today, we must selfishly focus on ourselves.
Personally, I don’t like the growing imbalance we have in our country that was clearly illustrated when Sunny Ways said he and his henchmen and women were going to impose a carbon tax/ levy/ fee (or whatever he cared to call it), on all of us.
Again, the disparity in our country was spelled out. Ontario rules, Quebec pouts and gets its way, Alberta screams because it no longer gets to call any shots, and B.C. shrugs its shoulders and, pretty well ignores the rest of us. Manitoba and Saskatchewan are left to seethe and simmer in their own juices, and the Maritimes get the last laugh, because they elected nothing but Liberals in the last federal election. Acting as a coalition, they can no longer be ignored.
Welcome to the new reality for our province, now run federally by Ralph Goodale and that guy who works for him.
We have agriculture products, but we can’t move them until the two railways decide they want to move them.
We have oil, but a shortage of pipelines to get them to where the market counts.
We have potash, but the price sunk and nobody else cares about the price of potash (except the potash companies and Saskatchewan). Bombardier must be saved 18 times, if necessary, because we don’t want Quebec to pout. As for those generic potash companies … well, they’re owned by foreigners now, aren’t they? Same for the coal and oil companies.
Beef industries?
That is to laugh.
Fast foodies get their meat from the U.S. and Australia. Live cattle here … boxed beef from there. How does that happen?
The response is, Don’t know. Don’t care.
Refugees and newcomers? Most don’t know agriculture the way we run it here. They know customer service, computers and clothing industries. They don’t have agrarian, mining or drilling backgrounds.
Canada’s population as of this past summer was 36.3 million, up by nearly 140,000 from the April check off by Statistics Canada.
Year over year, we’re bringing in about 321,000 immigrants, while our total population increases by 438,000. So we know where our growth is coming from. We are seeing the largest influx of immigrants since the 1910s when Eastern Canada decided it was time to populate Western Canada after assigning us certain borders to make sure that no newly created province could ever counter the power base that was already in place in, what was then known as, Central Canada.
Alberta came close to posing that threat about 100 years later. But they got that knocked out of them in a hurry.
B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan might do it. But again, the centralists were smart enough back then to make sure our provincial boundaries, loyalties and political structures would guarantee them the sustainable power base, by means of finances, politics and population.
So, do we accept the fate handed to us by others, or do we dig in and just do what we need to do for our own good and for the good of our province and let Sunny Ways and Hazy Daze fight it out?
