This page contains my own personal opinions about the political situation in Alberta. Feel free to disagree.

In the past five years or so, Albertans have seen huge cutbacks to public services, such as health care and education. Our government has told us many times that these cuts were absolutely necessary to get our huge deficit under control.

However, this is bullshit. Pure, unmitigated crap.

Our government, led by Ralph Klein, has been lying to us. Health care costs had not (as Ralph said they had) doubled in the past 10 years, nor had they tripled in the past ten years, nor were they "skyrocketing". According to Alberta government's own statistics, health care costs had stayed almost absolutely steady for the ten years before Klein took power (once corrected for population increase and inflation).

While it is true that we had a huge deficit and still have a huge debt, this is not because we spent huge amounts of health care, education, road maintenance, justice, or environmental protection. Alberta spent less on any of those items than many other provinces. However, we have been spending huge (and I mean obscenely huge) amounts of money on subsidies for private businesses. Klein promised to "get the government out of the business of doing business"- eight days after he took office he gave $100 000 000 of our hard-earned tax dollars to his favourite corporation (Bovar).

In most countries, both citizens and corporations pay taxes to the government so that the government can pay for things like roads, courts, education, and other essential services. In Alberta, citizens and small businesses pay taxes to the government, and the government pays a tribute to the large corporations for the chance to collect campaign contributions when election time comes.

While it is true that Klein has reduced the amount of subsidies given to corporations, he has also drastically reduced the amount of taxes they pay, so the net flow of money from the province to the businessmen has not decreased in the slightest. We forked out 5.2 BILLION dollars over the past ten years, receiving nothing in return. And Klein tells us we don't have the money for proper hospitals.

Klein assured us many times that he was not going to allow private American-style health care into Alberta, but he still encouraged Hotel de Health to set up shop here. They've rented out several closed hospitals to American health care firms, who wish to take advantage of the provincial cuts to health care to make a nice fat profit. Obviously, it's better for the Albertan economy (as far as Ralph is concerned) to spend immense amounts to buy health care from Americans than to spend merely large amounts to provide it for ourselves. This way, of course, the Americans will have more money and can buy more of our oil and lumber. And when we run out of oil, Ralph will be there to sell the province to the Americans, unless he's moved on to federal politics, in which case he'll try to sell the entire country.

Klein is currently trying to convince the federal government that the provinces should not have to follow federal guidelines on health care (I mean, who do the feds think we are?  Canadians?) or on the environment.  Despite the deaths due to the cuts in health care, or the birth defects due to the pollution in the Peace country, Ralph insists that these aren't problems, and that he is doing a wonderful job.  It's just too bad there are so many idiots gullible enough to believe him.