The ongoing elections.

The ongoing Elections.

The political climate across North America is changing. South America has rejected out of hand the extreme approach to “Globalization” and “equal and open free trade”. In Alberta the population is struggling to find a centre.

Center under Mr. Stelmach will be far too extreme for most but, he still must be accountable to the extreme right wing of the conservative party now heading for the Alliance party. We can hope this will severely split the right vote for the next election.

Every political party will have to face and respond to this issue of Globalization. Regardless of what they want, they will not be able to simply ignore it. Most parties can find much to talk about in the political theatre thus dodging the tough issues and their direction on them.

We, on the other hand, will have the choice of picking which level of privatization we want. We will not have the choice of none. For my part, essential services such as electrical power, water transport and treatment, highways and bridges should remain under the ownership of Government. Curious how Government can legislate the Nurses as essential services and give away the power generation and transmission in this province.

Things like our Workers’ Compensation, Health care, Water treatment and Canada Pension plans, public parks are seen as artificial subsidy by US and other foreign industries who lobby to turn it all over to them. Stumpage fees and the softwood dispute is part of this war.

Harper and the Fraser Institute can be counted on to go the extreme, hard and fast. Recent changes in the CPP should be a wake up call. China is beating the US in most trade deals. I suggest this is why Harper found it necessary to blunder into China politics.

Mr. Stephen Deon, the new Liberal leader is a fresh face and an excellent track record. He has tap danced his way around Globalization issues by saying “We will do what is necessary to keep us in the world market” or, words to that effect. Mr. Paul Martin his predecessor was all for a private public health care system on it’s way to becoming totally private after an “adjustment” period. No mention of keeping universality.

Understand that Health care as we know it now is sustainable. And, many of the alarmist’s stories are being debunked.

Our Health Care system has suffered a series of manipulations designed to stress it to the point of break. Universality is the word to look for in the debate. With DNA testing now fast, cheap and easy it will follow that people with any number of hereditary ailments and immune problems will fall out of coverage unless universality is guarded. Insurance will not be available, private or public. Alberta; the Calgary Health Centre has completed it’s list of what is to be cut, moving forward with it as I pen this note.

It will be interesting to hear from Mr. Stelmach.

All of this in order to Sheppard in totally private systems, conservative style. It is now necessary for people to see lawyers after they talk to Doctors. It is no longer safe for you to deal with insurance companies yourself despite the friendly face they put forward.

The Governments are trying to bring in legislation so the they will not be responsible for failures caused.

At the base of free trade and globalization is rule by industry. The insurance companies want to take over our health insurance, Canada Pension Plan and any other social net that may exist in variance across provinces.

The Agri Food industries want to take over our crops, and our water. The Conservatives pretty much gave all the control of our water to this group already. And, on water; the dwindling resource is a huge market opportunity. Very little of the ground water rights or allotments are owned by municipalities. Under the conservative scheme they are all sold off or given away to the private sector.

Very recently the town of Devon in Alberta gave up much of its water allotment, a fact kept from the citizens of that town. There is no mention of what they got for return or, who got the allotment. My guess would be EPCOR, a private company.

With 10 years left of some glaciers our water and water quality will deteriorate rapidly so the transport of water in pipelines becomes the next great opportunity.

We will face Federal and Provincial elections very soon and, its up to use to get the correct questions to the forum.

John Clark
cyberclark@shaw.ca