Premier Stops to Smell the Roses and Steps in more Doo-Doo

Premier Ed, his new tag, is a new man and he is on a new mission. He has a new way of reaching out and touching Albertans via the social media and networking circuit. He can’t trust our media to get his message out and across to Albertans so he is going to do it himself.

The twerps are tweeting and if you want the answers to all those tough questions facing Albertans in energy, healthcare, education, free speech, property rights and seniors issues, just tweet the twerps and you will get your fair share of bird feed. Same old tired uninformed responses to the same old tough questions facing Albertans.

And now the competitiveness review report that we have all been so desperately waiting for is off, according to Premier Ed, until the end of January at the earliest. But don’t worry, Ed is on it and Ed has seen the light. How about an observation and a prediction? The PC’s are in deep doo-doo, they are self destructing and there is no way Premier Ed and many of his PC MLA sidekicks are going to make it past the next election. And the PC's have no one to blame but themselves. He's the man with 77% support. It gets hard to find a new crew when the ship is listing and plunging into the abyss. The PC's are being systemically dismantled across Alberta. The crew is abandoning ship. The captain and ships officers are cracking open another bottle of rum. Is anyone watching out for the rocks?

But in Ed’s world, it has nothing to do with him or his red and dead Tory policies, slashed seniors benefits, the New Royalty Framework, overspending, under-achieving, over-regulating, the ripping up of contracts, Bill 50, Section 3 or the creation of total uncertainty in Alberta regarding energy policy and investment and government back tracking and tinkering with the royalty regime.

It has nothing to do with out of control spending and running record deficits. It has nothing to do with the Stelmach PC's ill fated trek to the left or the pork barrel politics that Albertans have come to loathe. It has nothing to do with the abandonment of true conservative values and principles. It has nothing to do with a complete and total breakdown of the democratic process within the PC party. It has nothing to do with top down, ill advised, poorly researched and implemented policy that alienates Albertans. It has nothing to do with the Stelmach PC's and the government? How stupid does he think we are.

Bill 50 was the last straw for rural Albertans. The H1N1 rollout was a deep look inside the government at a time of crisis. The NRF is a disaster. Section 3 remains. Seniors benefits have not been restored. Healthcare delivery is getting worse, not better.

No one could have predicted what was going to happen in the global economy and no one predicted the collapse of commodity prices or pointed out the risk of unsustainable double digit spending increases? No one in the government that is. They were repeatedly warned by many, many Albertans. Hold it, I correct myself. There were some people in the government that seemed to understand including the last 3 Finance Ministers who publically stated that what they were about to spend was unsustainable. They said this as they signed the cheques. The New Royalty Framework (NRF) is still the right policy for Albertans, according to Premier Ed and his faithful companions Mel, Iris, Ron and Allison and all our PC MLA's.

The NRF is the problem, this Premier and PC MLA's are the problem and they must be replaced and the NRF must be cancelled and a new competitive, predictable, equitable, profitable and sustainable royalty regime must emerge. But the Wildrose should not be rolling that plan out until the writ is dropped. Void of any ideas of their own, the Stelmach Tories will try and steal those policies in a desperate attempt to cling to power.

I was doing my laundry the other day and cling frees work great.

I wish I had something like that for this Premier and government. My goal is to rid this Province of red and dead Tories clinging to positions of influence and power and restore Alberta as the leading economy in Canada. We are a resource based economy, our livelihoods depend on the extraction of these resources and we better restore the balance needed for us all to prosper.

Ask our employers and business leaders and those unemployed and under-employed if this poorly conceived and poorly thought out energy policy has been a success or a complete and utter failure and a betrayal of Albertans and the Alberta way.

So after the systemic damage is done and the house has burned to the ground, Premier Ed arrives with a squirt gun to put out the fire.

What does the average Albertan want? A job for one. A promising future for our families and profitable businesses. Careers for our kids within the Province. Excellent care for our treasured seniors. Less and more competent and efficient government, lower taxes, less intrusion in our lives, an end to growing government, over-regulation and costly red tape; healthcare under regional and expert control and a decentralized government that gets the hell out of our way and listens to us and respects us.

Albertans, I suspect, want less government that respects seniors, free speech, property rights, our number one industry and all businesses and the expertise of the experts in this great Province.

The Premier and government have done nothing to instil confidence in the Alberta electorate and they are directly responsible for the lions share of the damage to Alberta's economy. Instead Premier Ed has alienated every Albertan in some way with every policy initiative they have rolled out. It is one disaster after another, mistake after mistake and Albertans are fed up, have had enough and are actively doing something about it.

His attack on the Wildrose is hollow. He asks for Wildrose policies as he distracts attention from his own utter failures. He underestimates the intelligence of Albertans and the resolve to get it right.

Wildrose and leader Danielle Smith have already had a major effect on Alberta politics. They are providing Albertans an effective intelligent, articulate voice and opposition and Wildrose is forcing the Stelmach PC's to stop dead in their tracks and try to retrace their steps. Ahh but global warming is but a myth in these parts and the snow storm has covered all their tracks and they are disoriented and without a compass and will not find their way home. Not this time. What to do, what to do.

So Ed will makes things much clearer if he could just bypass the local media and reach out directly to Albertans. And so we waited with baited breath for the re-packaging of the message in terms we could all understand.

How about an example of Premier Ed’s new clear, concise, direct approach, and I quote;

“Did anybody, any of these gurus anticipate what was going to happen (with shale gas) when we were going through the royalty review? Not one”

“If they would have, they would have made their presentation on shale gas. Never heard about it. Now, all of a sudden.......it’s very easy to predict the past. Anybody can do that. Tell me about the future”

And this gem;

“It will be moving from conventional to unconventional and what is it going to take? That doesn’t mean we won’t be looking at the conventional gas side. On conventional oil, there are some areas there on the regulatory side and on the production side, on the investment side, that we will look at”

I guess they haven’t got around to that in the many months this competitiveness review has been ongoing. Hope you got the gist of that.

Want another gem? From December 17 edition of the Calgary Herald and an article written by Jason Fekete.

“We’ve got to be careful here because there are those who hold senior positions that may be making comments and taking positions, and then there’s the voter out there as well. That’s the balance. My job here is to make sure we have good investment, a good environment for investment”

That clears it all up. Thank God the Premier can bypass the local media and get a clear concise message out to Albertans, although it is taped or recorded or precisely quoted and noone understands a word he said.

We can all sleep well now with visions of sugar plums dancing in our heads.

Merry Christmas Alberta