To Albertans: Please Grow up and Join the Rest of Canada

Albertans, I feel your pain. That’s not just an expression. I really do. You see, I come from a logging family in BC. I put myself through university on my skill with a chainsaw and came out with a Master’s degree and no student loans. Those were the Good Old Days. The logging industry was king, and everybody was raking it in.

Then Came Reality

And then we realized that the “sustainable cut” that we had been harvesting was not sustainable. We had been listening to the wrong people. The big companies that were making a killing and spreading the crumbs down to the people of the province had fed us a line we were glad to swallow. So, for the last forty years, we have been downsizing our cut, downsizing our cut, until the Pine Bark Beetle slammed the lid on it, and now we have even more mills closing. Sound familiar?

Who Else?

But we aren’t the only Canadians to experience the downfall of a “bottomless” resource. You know all those Newfies  making fifty bucks an hour in the Oil Patch? They come from former fishing towns that used to haul in cod by the boatload. Then the catch disappeared, and now there’s literally no one in those towns that makes anything near fifty bucks an hour. They have an unemployment rate of 12%. Yes, that’s twice as many people without jobs as you have.

If you read your history, there was a time when Ontario and Quebec suddenly realized that they had logged off all their trees, and that industry crashed. But they coped. How? By diversifying. They had a huge population of immigrants willing and able to work in factories. So they developed their manufacturing. Keep that in mind.

The Canadian Experience

So it’s pretty typical that a Canadian province that develops its economy around the easiest resource to harvest will someday hit the wall when that resource, for whatever reason, is no longer able to support them. They may rant and rave and blame everyone else, especially the federal government who won’t listen to their pain, but sooner or later they have to face reality; the Good Old Days are over. The easy money is gone.

Quebec and Ontario began long ago to pursue diverse objectives, The Maritimes have not been able to change, and have been suffering for a hundred years. B.C. has been reworking its economy for fifty.

And Alberta?

It seems to me you Albertans, and especially your leaders whom you elected to fix your problems, have spent most of your energy trying to turn back the clock. Trying to go back to the time when you could harvest oil and sit back and haul in the big wages and the easy tax money, to be spent however anyone liked.

And I’m sorry, folks, (and I mean that. I’ve been there, done that, and I sympathize) but it ain’t gonna happen. We don’t know whether the pipeline will get built or not, but it doesn’t matter. No, I know what you’re thinking, but it really doesn’t matter. If the pipeline gets built, the money you make from it now is only a loan, and your children and grandchildren will have to pay it back double and with compound interest when the real crash hits.

Western Separatism

Your leaders, and many of you, are blaming the Easterners, who “never listen.” But there’s a difference this time. You’ve noticed it, but I doubt if you’ve thought about the reasons. In the old days, when you said, “Western Separatism” there was a strong echo of the same sentiment from across the Rockies. Why isn’t B. C. supporting you this time? Well, sure, part of it is because you want to make your money and lay the risk on us. But more of it is because B. C. has been there, done that, and now understands how the Rest Of Canada thinks.

What Does the ROC See?

Well, it’s sort of like watching a spoilt teenage brother throwing a temper tantrum because he really, really NEEDS the car for a really, really important date, and his father has just told him, “Sorry, son, but I need the car for work.”

Now, we know that the car has usually been available. But tonight it isn’t, and that’s that. Having it better than anybody else for a long time is a major cause of that sense of entitlement that we all complain about in the younger generation. We are just as susceptible to it as they are.

What the ROC sees, my unhappy friends, is a province with a 6% unemployment rate yelling at everyone else because their economy is hurting so much, and it’s everyone else’s fault, and why aren’t we rallying around and helping?

Back to the Good Old Days

I heard a “normal citizen” being interviewed on CBC last week. He moaned to Peter Mansbridge that he was worried about the world his children would experience, because “life as we know it is being destroyed.” Well of course it is. It already has been. The Rest of Canada has been through this, and some of us are finding it hard to sympathize with you folks in general, even though we know it’s hitting you hard personally, because of the way some of you are handling it.

The Bottom Line

This is your chance, Alberta. You have a strong province, a great infrastructure, a fine education system, and a trained and trainable workforce. All that’s missing is the motivation. No matter what happens to the pipeline, look to the future. Retrain, research, retool, diversify. Look for those other strengths you have been ignoring because you didn’t need them.

Please, quitcherbitchin’ and join the Rest Of Canada. We’ll be glad to have you.

PS. Sorry about the picture. I does rather overstate the point, but the kid was so cute I couldn’t resist.

 

 

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