Mr. Leugner, somehow you continue to invite conflict in almost every letter that I’ve seen you write. Those who do not conform to your ideology are consistently belittled, patronized and /or are called a “socialist” as though this unspecified person is the cause for all of the world’s economic woes. I hesitated to write this letter because of the vitriolic rebuttal by you that others have faced in the past.
What is also a concern for me in your writing is how freely you use political rhetoric as attacks on what could otherwise be considered legitimate points of debate. I find it less than useful to dismiss a difference of opinion by labeling that opinion as ‘socialist’ when other facts and opinions are worth considering and/or a more constructive discussion is possible.
You seem to have learned the skill of selecting small bits of history to represent extremely selective viewpoints and singular conclusions. The historical facts would be far more enlightening to me if it was not littered with statements that I think most people would take offense to or, at the very least, would find unwarranted.
In your article titled, Don't blame the Conservatives for Alberta's energy mess, I struggled to get past what I saw were obvious gaps in your arguments. On the one hand you clearly lay the blame of today’s oil crisis on decisions that happened over 50 years ago, which seem like an extreme amount of time to still be blaming one Federal government.
While Mr. Harper was in government the Conservatives controlled both Federal and Provincial levels of government. Mr. Harper even betrayed a political promise of Senate reform by increasing the size of the Senate to ensure that his PC government controlled all levels of government. You spend an entire letter blaming Mr. Trudeau and his “socialist allies” for the current situation even though Mr. Harper had overwhelming political power to reconfigure Canada’s oil and gas infrastructure.
In fairness, you did state in one sentence that “every national government” is to blame.
For those reading your letter, however, the inclusion of this statement is at odds with the overall message.
You also insist that the PC party that ruled Alberta in one unbroken stretch for over 40 years; even longer if you consider the other previous conservative party, the Social Credit party, that was in power from 1935, bears no responsibility for the current situation. Yet you somehow blame the entire problem on the current NDP government, a party that didn’t take power until 2015. Surely a party that prided itself on being business friendly/the economic engine of Canada/the only true source of support for the oil and gas industry could have built more pipelines, refineries etc. while they were in power?
As part of this debate, I think that a legitimate question needs to be asked; what else is reasonable to expect Ms. Notley to do that she hasn’t already done in response to the current crisis? I admit this is a simplistic question to ask but I don’t believe its validity is lessened by this admission.
Given that your letter is focused on political history, it is oddly silent to the factors that brought the current NDP into power; PC actions of entitlement/patronage, mismanaged and irresponsible spending and losing touch with its constituents. All of these issues seem to be forgotten in your wish to blame the ‘socialist’ governments for our current problems.
Finally, you state that Mr. Trudeau has cancelled two pipeline projects in both the east and West. I find it hard to support this statement when I seem to remember that it was push back from the East that halted the ‘Energy East’ pipeline even though Mr. Harper was in power and that it was the courts, not Mr. Trudeau, that halted the Kinder Morgan Pipeline to the West.
I’m willing to even state that Mr. Trudeau likely jeopardized the Kinder Morgan Pipeline because he rushed the process. However, it would be extremist to the grosses degree to imply that Mr. Trudeau was complicit in/responsible for a court decision that seems to be the real cause of why the Kinder Morgan pipeline has not started to be built yet.
I want to thank Mr. Leugner for his passion on this subject.
I would not ask the reader to please resist the temptation to pigeon hole me into being for or against any one political party. I am passionate about my beliefs, chief among these being the power of government to affect our lives, both in a positive and negative way, but I hold political views that are across the whole political spectrum and to think of me as being only affiliated with only one political party would be inaccurate.
Dan Cunin
