An Op Ed published in the Calgary Herald from Buffalo Project Board Members Dallas Howe, Stan Grad and Bill Turnbull:
If you’re a western Canadian, someone employed in or around the energy sector, or maybe someone concerned about the long-standing tax bill that Alberta has paid for the rest of the country’s program spending largesse, then I hope you had something better to do than watch the Liberal speech from the throne.
If you did watch it, perhaps with the faint hope that the needs of Alberta or Saskatchewan would be addressed, you have likely been left more than just disappointed. You might feel hopeless.
In any functioning federation, if the economic engine and the largest industry in the country had received a triple whammy of low commodity prices, lack of transport capacity and COVID, there would be concerted and aggressive action to help put that industry back on its feet.
It’s only logical — all the other aspirational goals of any developed country can only proceed if there is money to pay for them.
But Canada is not a functioning federation. In fact, since the drop in oil prices in 2014, the federal government has put its foot on the throat of Canada’s largest industry with regulations that are not only regionally disparate, but obviously targeted, and intended to destroy.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE: