Red Rose Country

Political Animal 27 Comments

Fred Kerr;

Several pundits have scoffed that O’Leary is the Canadian Donald Trump. Some insist Alberta’s woes are entirely the result of low oil prices and accuse O’Leary of being outrageous for the sake of getting on TV, to promote his mutual funds and perhaps his political aspirations.
We should acknowledge that O’Leary may stand to benefit from a public fight with Notley, but does that mean that he’s wrong about her government’s competence?

Plus, there’s a poll!

27 Replies to “Red Rose Country”

  2. Based on the comments at this link and many others, I am convinced that the core demographic supporting Ms. Notley is people who cannot spell.

  3. “It’s just bad policy.”
    No, it’s worse than that. Far worse. It’s called bankruptcy or not being able to pay one’s bills.
    This is what socialists do. They spend and spend until the money runs out and then blame the people who were providing the money in the first place for running out of money (or simply leaving the jurisdiction).
    Then the people who are dependent on government – government employees, entitlement recipients – get really, REALLY angry that no money is coming into their mailbox.
    Since the socialist government blames the people who were providing the money in the first place, the dependent ones go after the providers instead of the ones who created the problem in the first place (i.e., the socialists in government).
    A lovely and charming combination of chaos, anarchy, and death ensues.

  4. Kevin O’Leary is a lot more articulate than many politicians. I heard him on the Roy Green (radio) show yesterday and he made some very good points. He understands the economy, and doesn’t worry about sparing hurt feelings. I hope people listen and understand.

  5. 4 years is all she has to create an unbeatable voting bloc of government workers, welfare cases, and friends of the party in government funded ‘community groups’, ‘green’ corporate favourites, etc.
    It worked in Ontario, the USA, all the European countries, etc.

  6. Sadly, you are probably correct. Even worse, PM Butts and Shiny Pony will do their level best to emulate the same for all of Canada.
    bill@deleted, it is the same in Saskatchewan.

  7. Yep… 47 thousand new “government” workers and counting… The NDP aren’t just going to destroy the economy of the Province for the next four years, they’re going to make sure it stays destroyed.

  8. I’ve lived in B. C., Saskatchewan, and Alberta. I can now shamefully claim that I’ve been a resident of each of those provinces when they had NDP governments.
    I was in Grade 12 when Dave Barret became premier in B. C. I wasn’t surprised when he got booted out just over 3 years later.
    I was in Saskatchewan when Alan Blakeney’s NDP got turfed. By then, the voters got fed up with having to pay for every money-losing scheme the government came up with. For example, Eldorado Nuclear had its own 737 flying to Uranium City about twice a week out of Saskatoon, often nearly empty. The only reason UC stayed in existence for as long as it did was because the government in Regina kept throwing money at it.
    And now we have NDP (Agent Orange as some wag dubbed it–on this website, I believe) doing its best to destroy Alberta.
    I’m inclined to agree with Ezra Levant. Rachel Notley isn’t incompetent. She knows what she’s doing and she is hoping to wipe the oil industry in this province out of existence. I’m sure that’s one reason that the provincial government is delaying its royalty review. By pushing it off, it hopes that investment money will go elsewhere, leaving the business in this province to wither and die.
    In each of those provinces, the NDP knew it would be unpopular and that it was in office on borrowed time. That’s why in B. C. and Saskatchewan they made sure that whatever was put in place would be stuck so deep that whichever party succeeded them would find that removing it would be too expensive and take too long to be worth bothering with (e. g., provincial auto insurance).
    2019 can’t come soon enough, but there will be a lot of doors on empty buildings swinging in the wind by then.

  10. Was it Notley who said the oil should be left in the ground or was it one of the Butt run Liberal Cabal candidates?

  11. Nice article. Not mentioned is that the CEOs of Alberta’s oil & gas companies have been trying to raise money off-shore because Calgary is tapped out. As oil prices rebound it will be to the benefit of increased foreign ownership, one of the unintended consequences of poor stewardship. Rich investors living in US dollars or Euros can invest in a depressed Canadian oil market with an extra 40% off due to the Canadian dollar. Go Notley!

  12. And all you folks eschew the non-violent methods of cleansing government. I note that more than one has stated that Notley and Trudeau will ensure a voting block of government workers who will continually vote for the Socialist parties (how else can one explain the “phenomenon” of a Wynne Ontario?). How exactly does one get this country back without literally killing all those who’ve made it what it is today?

  13. Alberta spends more per capita than any other provincial government and has done so for decades. This was established under PC governments, not NDP. While I highly doubt the NDP will change this spending level the difference is that revenue comes no where close to spending in this oil crisis. The fall back solution is always debt and will be again. The vast majority of citizens do not have a problem with this spending. The ultimate fallout is not understood and easily ignored.
    QE has become the fiscal instrument of choice around the world and is being used by progressives and by so-called fiscal conservatives. People with any awareness are like deer in head lights. They know there is a problem but do not know which way to jump.

  14. Alberta spends more per capita than any other provincial government and has done so for decades. This was established under PC governments, not NDP. While I highly doubt the NDP will change this spending level the difference is that revenue comes no where close to spending in this oil crisis. The fall back solution is always debt and will be again. The vast majority of citizens do not have a problem with this spending. The ultimate fallout is not understood and easily ignored.
    QE has become the fiscal instrument of choice around the world and is being used by progressives and by so-called fiscal conservatives. People with any awareness are like deer in head lights. They know there is a problem but do not know which way to jump.

  15. Steve from Rockwood >
    “As oil prices rebound it will be to the benefit of increased foreign ownership………..”
    Well yea, that is what the Progressive Globalists like Notley & Germany’s Merkel are all about.
    Notley probably losses sleep at night because she can’t physically march 1,000,000 Islamic “refugees” across the Atlantic.

  16. CT- Agreed.
    AB has had the highest spending per capita in the country for decades which relates to the largest civil service in the land. Highest paid teachers etc etc. Nothing new here. Alberta has been as socialist as any of the aforementioned NDP premiers Barret, Blakney et al. Having Notley at the controls is just an extension of what we previously had.
    As for the Premiers qualifications. If a company the size of AB was looking for a CEO and Rachael Notley submitted her CV applying, she would not get to the first stage of the interview process. O’Leary is right – she is unqualified.

  18. The oil price in Canadian dollars is $30 / .70 = $43 or thereabouts. When King Ralph paid off the deficit, much of the time the oil price was a lot less. The only reason the economy is seriously in the crapper relates to future expectations. Notley raised corporate tax 20%, is raising personal tax, is raising royalties, and adding a carbon tax.
    Some oil companies look at downturns as opportunities to explore at much lower costs because available men and equipment will work for as little as half as much as a few years ago. This isn’t happening in Alberta because, even with half price oil, the oil companies aren’t convinced they will receive a competitive return in Alberta. South Sudan anyone?

  19. Although Alberta’s problems commenced with nose-diving oil prices, there is no question that matters are being made significantly worse by the “regime uncertainty” created by the interventionist ideology of the new NDP government. These kinds of uncertainties are not that easily dislodged despite the assurances emanating from Notley’s mouth. In the final analysis, it is not risk that investors and business fear, it is regime uncertainty.
    Uncertainty is not the same as risk. The latter can be calculated. The former refers to random events, or as Nassim Taleb would say, “black swans”. “Regime uncertainty” is a term coined by the economic historian Robert Higgs in his prolific writings about the causes of the Great Depression. He argues that what would have been a minor recession turned into the prolonged “Great Depression” as a result of the public policy orgies engaged in by FDR. Contrary to the popular Keynesian myth that the depression came to an end as a result of the massive government spending of Word War II, Higgs argues that the depression only ended some years after World War II when the government of the day brought in a whole new slate of less intrusive policy makers from the business sector, thus adding more policy certainty to the landscape.
    BTW: Rumour has it that that Husky Oil is on the verge of shutting down its entire Alberta oil sands project to focus on its Saskatchewan assets.
    Segue: Our neighbours to the west have their own regime uncertainty problems with respect to Native Land Claims. It isn’t the claims themselves, it is the uncertainty over who really owns the land. This issue needs to be settled once and for all. It really doesn’t matter so much who owns the land but it is vital that someone does. I suspect native opposition to most developments would rapidly dissipate, even if it turns out they own all the land. Even environmentalists would change their tune on this once natives own the land. On this note, I personally believe that the most important factor in the solution of the so-called “native issue” is to give natives the same property rights on their land as the rest of us have. But first we must establish precisely what their land claims are.

  20. .
    Careful with O’Leary … he is a psychopath … he has no conscience … he will run anybody over to get their money .. he doesn’t care about anything except money and he has stated so many times.
    I wish we had our own version of Trump here in Canada … but it sure aint O’Leary
    .

  21. Arnie Madsen >
    “he is a psychopath…..”
    They’re all psychopaths! But I’d rather have a psychopath that get’s the economic job done for Canada than a mentally ill dreamer with delicate feelings.
    A high volume of CEO’s to Brain Surgeons are psychopaths. They don’t let their emotions get in the way of doing a good job.

  26. The economy can absorb lower oil prices and lost jobs, we’ve been there many times before; but big government statists cannot recover from the taxes they assumed they would receive in their coercive, confiscatory march towards the anarchic, progressive and neo-Marxist ideas of budgets balancing themselves, taxation & regulation creating jobs and thug hugging for pacifism, as the anointed ones appropriate Canadians’ hard work and prosperity for their own invalid and selfish ends. Citizens seem to just now be getting the idea career politicians, with no record of success anywhere else, are in it for themselves and have no trouble turning elections into charades of the truth, IOW lying to them, enabled by their unethical statist media allies.

  27. We should acknowledge that O’Leary may stand to benefit from a public fight with Notley, but does that mean that he’s wrong about her government’s competence?

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