JaredMilne JaredMilne:
The cancellation of Energy East is painful for me, for several reasons. Foremost among them is trying to see both sides of debate.
On the one hand, people have good reason to be concerned about the impacts of pipeline spills on their own livelihoods. Such problems impact them not only on an economic but also a personal level, as their livelihoods can be strongly tied to their own personal identities. Case in point-Indigenous people and their connections to the land.
But on the other hand, a lot of other people depend on O&G development for their own livelihoods, which are not helped by Energy East's cancellation. This applies not just in the West, but also in places like New Brunswick, where Brian Gallant was advocating for it. More than that, though, the taxes and royalties generated by O&G jobs are critical for infrastructure & social supports.
I fully agree with honouring Treaty rights and obligations, and ending underfunding of Indig. communities...but how we get the money for that without O&G is something I can't figure out. Same thing with cleaner energy-economists have cited need for government involvement in helping it develop, but we need $ in here and now to pay for it. And even leaving aside energy, O&G will still be necessary for heating, manufacturing and other purposes. Even Charlie Angus pointed out we will always need oil somehow.
I see both sides, and part of the pain for me comes from seeing the angry rhetoric flying back and forth. The other part comes from rying to figure out how to address all these issues-I'm trying, and I'm failing.
There's nothing I hate more than that.
No point in being a centrist anymore, not in an era of tribalist revanchism, total ideological war, and zero-sum victories where one side wins all and the other loses all.
As for Albertans it's just a reminder of where we stand in Canada, something we forgot for eight years as Harper papered over the cracks that separated us from Quebec supremacism over the entire country. It is literally US vs THEM, and it always will be. There is no middle ground to be had, and despite an illusory period of relative domestic political peace there probably never was.
This is who we are. The adult thing to do is to simply recognize that Canada is no different than any other state where people who don't like each other got crammed into the same living space together. The only thing that marks us as being different is that we don't engage in wild acts of violence against each other the same way they do in Africa or the Balkans. Ditch the myths about Canada regardless, this heroin-like baby-food goo that the government, the media, and the education system feeds to us with their endless "aw, shucks, ain't we just the nicest people in the whole wide world!" bullshit routine. They're toxic mind-warping fairy tales that are unfitting for anyone above the age of twelve to consume.
CKA Super Elite 
CKA Uber 
