Several editorials over the past few weeks have
discussed how low the energy has felt around this election race.
After the writ was dropped, much was made over the fact that for the first time
in many years, a large number of voters would be going into this campaign
undecided as to who they would vote for. Three weeks in, the
“undecided” segment of the population remains undecided, and all
parties are concerned about the potential impact of a low turnout at the polls.
It’s not really difficult to understand why many voters are feeling too
overwhelmed to fully engage in the political process. Sometimes just
living in this
While the hum of this election goes on around us, we are re focusing on paying
our bills, and looking after our families.
The danger of an overwhelmed electorate is that it’s easy for big decisions to
sneak through without the right questions being asked until it’s too
late. We’re witnessing that right now, in the discussions about royalty
rates that have made up such a large part of the discourse this election.
A hodgepodge of deals were made several decades ago, and only after Albertans
lost over a billion dollars in oil and gas revenue did the Conservative
government, who made the deals in the first place, even initiate their flawed
plan to re-evaluate the system.
This same government is now making hundreds of billions of dollars worth of
similarly bad deals across the province, by way of privatizing public assets.
And – just like with lost oil and gas revenues – the true cost of these deals
might not be known for generations, because these are private business
arrangements. This keeps citizens unable
to learn the logistic and financial details that have been agreed to on their
behalf.
What we do know is this: the Stelmach government has signed on to allow private
financing and major maintenance of 32 schools in
When CUPE issued a report that demonstrated that these things, the government
declined to even read it.
Maybe they feel they can count on a beleaguered populace to not make them
accountable for this plan. Maybe they felt like parents are so desperate for
new schools they won’t care that they are getting fewer of them for more money
and less transparency. Maybe they feel that – much like the architects
of the early royalty arrangements – they’ll have long retired before they can
be taken to task for what they’ve done.
It would be nice if they were proven wrong. Because if their gamble pays off,
and they’re able to keep voters from asking too many questions about these
deals, they might just get themselves re-elected.
It will be our kids who pay for this.
They’ll be attending schools that rely on overseas businesses to keep
the heaters working. They’ll be footing the tax bill that ensures
private profit.
And in several elections, they’ll be where we are
now. Shaking their heads at a missed opportunity for public investment,
and wondering how it was that big business was able to take control of
something that should have belonged to all Albertans in the first place.