Hello Chestermere! First of all I would like to congratulate the organizers of the water festival this past weekend! It was an incredible time, and we enjoyed seeing so many of our friends out enjoying all the festivities! I hope you were able to take in some of the incredible music! I was also honoured to attend and participate at the Chinese Children’s Orchestra concert hosted by the Calgary Chinese Community Service Association. This wonderful group of young musicians and their parents travelled from China to come and perform traditional Chinese music on their traditional instruments. It was such a privilege to hear them perform, and I would like to thank them for including me in this amazing event! I was also a judge for the Miss Asia competition, which was an empowering and incredible experience. These young women have such great confidence and poise and I was so proud to meet them. These women are going to be some of our future leaders, engineers, choreographers, and many other wonderful things. Congratulations to all who participated!
I would like to take a little walk with you through history. As you probably know Suncor is seeing some big numbers in their second quarter cash flow earnings due largely to higher prices for crude. Venezuela’s production is down due to crisis on many fronts, but Nigeria and Saudi Arabia are producing that loss and the US is around 10 million barrels per day and that is going up everyday. Oil prices are on the rise due to many things, but partially because OPEC is keeping to its reduction of production. When commodity prices fall, we fall into recession. Many politicians over their lifetimes will speak about the rollercoaster ride of oil and gas, and that is why policy matters. Pierre Trudeau came into power when were at a high point in our commodity prices. Can you imagine, coming into power with that kind of money? Well Pierre Trudeau was sure good at spending it, in fact it took him just 10 years from 1969-1979 (National Post –David Frum, March 23, 2011), to triple federal spending. It took 30 years to turn around that disaster. This led to an increase in taxes, incredibly high interest rates and nothing to show for it. He did not believe in the free market, or a free enterprise society. As Mr. Frum puts it
“Pierre Trudeau was a spending fool. He was not alone in that, in the 1970s. But here’s where he was alone. No contemporary leader of an advanced industrial economy – not even the German Social Democrat Helmut Schmidt or the British socialist James Callaghan – had so little understanding as Pierre Trudeau of the private market economy. “Little understanding?” I should have said: “active animosity.”
Trudeau believed in a state-led economy, and the longer he lasted in office, the more statist he became. The Foreign Investment Review Agency was succeeded by Petro-Canada. Petro-Canada was succeeded by wage and price controls. Wage and price controls were succeeded by the single worst economic decision of Canada’s 20thcentury: the National Energy Program.”
This over-regulation, turning away from free markets, state-led economy led directly to the recessions that followed in the early 80’s. There was no “tightening of the belt”. Fast-forward to our present situation, and his son Mr. Justin Trudeau seems to want to follow in his dad’s footsteps. We have as a nation, just purchased a pipeline for $4.5 billion dollars and we will have to spend another $7 billion to make it work, money that would have originally been supplied by the private sector. The Federal government keeps saying that they have no intention of keeping it, but have no buyers, as most buyers see the problem of getting to tide water as, well… a serious problem….an “unquantifiable risk”. Did we not learn anything from his Dad at all? Do we not remember what happened with Petro-Canada?(It is owned by Suncor now). When has government ever shown that it can run a business? Both of the Trudeaus had the privilege of taking a country that is incredibly resilient, business oriented, prosperous and diversified and they have handcuffed industry, made policy decisions that discourage private sector investment which is the lifeblood of this country and this province, and have an obvious indifference for the magnificent people of this country and our prosperity. There is a lack of love and respect for our national well-being, and for our federation. This is evident in policy set by both father and son. Policy matters. There seems to be an inability to create strong economic policy, foreign policy (especially with our neighbours to the south), and we have our own Governments’ attack on our national well being and our morale. I have to believe that no one goes into politics, whether federal or provincial, with the intention to make things worse. I have to believe that most people want what is best for their constituents and their country when they have the privilege of being elected. But when the son repeats the mistakes of the father when given the same privilege, decades apart, we have to ask ourselves, are we going to be more engaged in the process this time? Are we going to stand up for ourselves, and inspire the next generation to be self reliant and industrious? I hope so, because that is the reason I am here. I’m here for those next precious generations that will pay off our debt, and whose futures are being mortgaged by our present Governments, both provincially in Alberta and federally. As always we love to hear from you.
