A Conservative spin on the Avro Aero

A good story retold with fillers   There was not a fleet of Avro Aeros made.  There was indeed a single porotype and, it was the only supersonic aircraft in the world.

John Diefenbaker ordered the prototype destroyed and all the designs were given to the US forever killing the chances of a Canadian Aero Industry.   The article shows pictures, good pictures of the Aero and different aspects of building it.   The link in this paragraph shows a 1/3 model flying as Americans demonstrate their "ownership"

It remains, however, Diefenbaker was a traitor in every sense of the word.  The story put out by this Global media is simply that of a spin doctor in an attempt to clear  Diefenbaker's name.

A good read and view of photos.

This Albertan regards ‘Western alienation’ as manipulation by local elites

By Alvin FinkelContributor

Thu., Dec. 19, 2019timer3 min. read

Ask 10 Albertans why our province cratered into recession in 1982 and nine will likely blame Pierre Trudeau’s National Energy Program. In fact, an international economic recession sank oil prices, making further oilsands development impractical. But intertwined elites of oil interests, conservative parties, and conservative media inculcated the Big Lie that “the Ottawa government” authored “our” recession.

Many big lies underlie today’s “Western alienation.” Once based on legitimate grievances, Prairie complaints have always been manipulated by regional elites to disguise internal problems as creations of “Easterners.” That allows elites to absolve themselves regarding local poverty.

This “Western alienation” shtick allows Alberta Premier Jason Kenney to distract Albertans from the massive destruction of public services and unions coupled with a surreptitious economic and political policy shift. Having failed to attract new, private investments for fossil fuels, he is raiding public sector pensions and demanding provincial control over the Canada Pension Plan in Alberta to expand funds available for petroleum investments.

Kenney wages war on two fronts — against the federal government and Canadian environmentalists on one hand, and public employees and their pensions on the other. The two wars have the common aim of reviving Alberta’s main industry as awareness of the destructiveness of fossil fuels suppresses demand.

One big lie is that equalization policies are turning Alberta into a poverty-stricken wasteland. StatsCan figures for 2017 show Alberta GDP per capita is 25 per cent greater than the Canadian pre-tax average. Our poor are as poor as any other province’s poor. But that’s because our politicians, with the partial exception of Rachel Notley’s NDP government, haven’t given a rat’s ass about the poor, not because the federal government has fleeced us.

We have no sales tax. If we had Quebec’s 10 per cent sales tax, we would have large surpluses today rather than the deficit that Kenney blames on the NDP and the federal government. Kenney is exacerbating Alberta’s revenue problem by abandoning the carbon tax and decreasing corporate taxes from 12 per cent to 8 per cent. That has pleased oil companies but most have announced that they will invest this gift outside Alberta.

A related big lie is that Alberta’s public spending is unsustainable. Kenney plans to reduce the proportion of Alberta’s GDP that goes to provincial services to 13.8 per cent by 2022-23, replicating 1997-98, when Klein’s cuts had been fully absorbed. The Royal Bank reports that per capita government expenses in Alberta in 2018-19 represented 16.3 per cent of GDP. It was 24.2 per cent in Quebec, 19.7 per cent in British Columbia, and 18.8 per cent in Ontario. Alberta does spend more dollars on public wages than other provinces, but that is because wages across the board are much higher.

Kenney is distracting Albertans from his gutting of services by putting an array of supposed enemies of Alberta on trial. They include environmentalists, the federal government, the Quebec and British Columbia governments, banks unwilling to lend money to oil investors, and European politicians who have allegedly been brainwashed by green leftists.

He has established a $30 million war room to expose an alleged conspiracy by foreign-funded environmentalists to strand Alberta oil through lack of pipelines. He has also established a “Fair Deal” panel meant to limit Alberta’s relations with the rest of Canada by provincializing the Canada Pension Plan, firing the RCMP, and taking control over firearms legislation.

Kenney’s cuts have reduced his popularity in opinion polls. While public servants reacted with shock when Ralph Klein made his lightning cuts, the Alberta trade union movement has done much over the years to prepare its members for the possibility of a “reKlein” government.

Increasingly, Albertans are questioning the claim that federal policies restrain Alberta, as opposed to a changing world economic order created by the climate crisis. Many feel more alienated from our premier and Big Oil than from Ottawa.

The Notley government took initiatives to diversify Alberta’s economy that Kenney has killed. But we had a glimpse of a way forward and federal-provincial co-operation to get that back on track would make more sense than a phoney war against the federal government.

Kenny's meetings with the Alberta Insurance industry

After saying they were going to reduce auto insurance they decided to hit another industry under stress; that of the Condo owner.   They are talking a 50,000 dollar deductible on Condo claims and an opportunity to buy insurance to cover whatever the individual's portion is.   A new insurance product.  It is so easy to hate these guys! Keep in mind we still carry a 30% Premium on our home and condo insurance courtesy of High River and Fort McMurray.

The Conservatives have always had an incestuous relationship with the Insurance Companies.  Ralph Klein and Jim Prentice both enjoyed a 3% of gross revenues of the insurance industry as a kick-back into the Conservative coffers.

Kenny is following Klein’s patterns; this we know for sure!  You can expect your insurance rates to go up 3% plus.

 

The insurance industry meets on a regular basis with the Conservatives.  One outstanding example of this relationship is High River annual flooding.  People were encouraged to buy more insurance after every annual flood.  Notley took the sensible tact and changed the course of the river.

We still have 30% on our insurance premiums to make up for the last major flood down there.

You can expect no different from Kenny.   If anything our rates are overcharged by  30%  now.

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Well, folks; looks like I saved you several hundred dollars!   The Conservatives now claiming they are researching ways to reduce your car insurance.  As if!

Conservative blunders causing much dissent - This from Disqus.

S'funny, Karl, I was thinking the same thing, only I came to a completely different conclusion. It's time to excise the cancer of CHP/Reform from the Body Conservative. I think they've just about had long enough in the wilderness to realize that it's not serving them to retain anybody with even a whiff of brimstone and scripture about them. The Night of the Long Knives and all that, you know; re-enactments of the Crucifixion in about 150 ridings across the country.

Regardless of the accidental alignment of parts of Conservative policy platforms with the theocratic maunderings of Presto's Reform party, there is a little-to-no symbiosis between the thinking of either group.

Old-style conservativism valued heritage and tradition certainly but tempered that with an organic symbiosis of every individual in society, one with the other; that valued the contributions of each, while acknowledging the interdependence of each on the other so as to create a more perfect society. This is the root of conservative thinking that rejects the "nanny-state" so often (wrongly) assigned to liberals and Liberals. It's a valuable concept and one that bears serious debate in all our major national policy disagreements. Conservatism also highly respected and valued authority, both of people and institutions, which makes puzzling the call of the last couple of decades to reject the authority of Parliament as well as that of the judiciary, perhaps the key-value differentiating us from both "lower animals" and other less evolved nations on the planet. Yes, I'm kidding, but only partly.

CHP/Reform.... nay, call it what it is: Theocracy - is a poorly-organized and inconsistent set of beliefs about the way the world works based on texts from a number of ancient religions, most of which conflict with each other, especially around how society should be organized, resources apportioned, and justice performed. While claiming heritage as a value, in truth the only heritage claimed is a recent Judeo-Christian interpretation arising some 250 years ago that empowered the evangelical church to engage in civil rule, mandate conformity, and establish justice based on masculine notions of tribal pride. This interpretation carries no weight among those who own a red-letter Bible as its various precepts conflict with every single one of the quotations of Jesus.

Yet somehow this set of beliefs has come to be the dominant consensus among those who claim the theocratic authority to be supreme in the land. The organic symbiosis valued by Conservatives is entirely missing in such a society - conformity of thought word and deed is expected in every respect, and "interdependence" is pretty much restricted to depending on the sky god instead of your neighbour. That's not to negate the many acts of charity performed by evangelicals - in many ways, they strive to live out personal examples of selfless sacrifice, but these are not mostly sponsored by their churches, which remain country clubs for them and their kids, to hide away from impure society. More to the point, evangelicals also promote an unhealthy disrespect for authority, in particular, Parliament and the judiciary, and their foul utterances have unleashed venomous disrespect among ordinary Canadians who do not even share their beliefs, but see their rejection of authority as one without personal cost and emotionally satisfying to boot.

I'd love to do an essay on this, but I'm must here to respond to your article, Karl - a good one - as it's incomplete. Social conservatism, as you've defined it, includes the theocratic as well as the conservative. Let social conservatives be free to choose to march in pride parades or not as they feel led, and let the theocratic conservatives be free to rail against those who march in them.... but for God's sake, let them do it from separate bedrooms in the house of our nation!

John Clark zalm •
I had still, another re-read of your essay and, again find it excellent. I'm going to repost on https://albertathedetails.b... The US Republicans moved into Canada under the name of the UFA in 1909. Charters etc. from the US have simply renamed from American to Canadian or Canada. Recently, Kenny tried to justify some of his moves as being in Convention with Conservative standards set down in 1909.

Conservatives and our failed education system.

I listened today to CBC radio program which interviewed a number of young men between the ages generally of 18 to 26 years who were out of work and couldn't find work even though they were aggressively looking.

During the Klein years, Alberta took independent advise that said they would not grow "big" industry because they couldn't graduate enough people!

To counter this perceived threat they dummed down the school system and cut funding to the universities but, it didn't end there.  High school took the hardest hit.  Really dummed down and no support is given for university entrance.  My kids tried to take calculus but were told there is no one in our local school who knew how to teach it.

But, it went further.  Trade schools dropped their entrance requirements to 70% graduation mark to get into a trade school.  Girls who aspired to become physicians were told by the councillor they would be better off if they looked towards nursing!

Some of these young people today were complaining they were not properly prepared for the world, others, now restricted to broken career choice. 

Meanwhile, the Conservatives put out adds all over the world, heavier in the US than other places for degree positions.   They deliberately robbed Alberta kids of their futures.  There are some 17000 unemployed now and the Conservatives appear to be doing the same thing all over again!