Opinion
U. N. allows landlocked countries access to tidewater by road, rail or pack mules.
The U.N. convention has that land-locked countries have access to tide water. Yes by road, rail or pack mule. So if Alberta was to separate would we subsidize pack mules to haul our oil to the coast.
We have the roads and the rail already, so separating from Canada would leave pack mules as our last obligated option.
After the previous federal government failed to build a pipeline with an Albertan, Prime Minister Harper in charge. A Quebecois, Prime Minister Trudeau, had the federal government buy a pipeline for Alberta to have greater access to tidewater.
After years of talks and court cases the pipeline is progressing, even though it is believed that a huge number of Canadians, outside of Alberta, wish it wouldn’t. If Alberta was to separate why would Canadians proceed with a pipeline for Alberta to ship oil to other countries.
We can continue being part of Canada, work to finish the pipelines, expand rail service for oil shipping to Thunder Bay for tanker shipping to refineries in New Brunswick.
“Desperation” is oozing out of the pores of Alberta like many dying one industry towns only in a faster rate. How many communities disappeared when their single industry collapsed, and they never tried to diversify? How many gold rushes, coal mines, forestry, fishing, manufacturing, tobacco and trapping centres have disappeared while others morphed into more diversified centres?
There was a time when my investments in energy gave me a great return and now other investments out perform those. Our Premier wants control of our pensions and I hope that never happens. C.P.P. is a great investment tool with a history of great returns. The Alberta pension has a less than stellar history but the last few years have seen positive returns. My biggest fears would be having this premier throw all pension funds into the energy sector.
Perhaps he will invest in pack mules when he becomes Prime Minister and President of the Republic of Alberta? It appears to me, that seems to be his goal, isn’t it?
The province is suffering the death from a thousand cuts and that will be blamed on past provincial government and current federal government, not the current provincial government and the past federal government, which the Premier was a big part of.
If the Premier invests in pack mules would the farmers reap the rewards by growing the feed? Probably not.
Where are the adults anyways?
Jørund ‘Viktoria’ Alme, a Norwegian man who believes he is a paralyzed woman
From LifeSiteNews
Those who challenge the view that a person can identify as an amputee despite being healthy must also challenge the assertion that one can simply identify as the opposite sex.
Almost ten years ago, I wrote a column in this space on the phenomenon of the so-called “transabled” – people who identify as amputees or suffer from a mental illness that causes them to loathe one of their healthy limbs. In 2022, a high-profile (alleged) example of this emerged when a 53-year-old healthy, non-disabled Norwegian man began identifying as a woman paralyzed from the waist down and took to a wheelchair to give media interviews.
Those who found his claims to be somewhat suspect were in a bit of a bind – which of his assertions, after all, is more ridiculous – that he is a woman, or that he is paralyzed? Our culture has accepted that he can claim to be a woman, and that we must all nod solemnly in response. “How brave of her,” we must all say in unison as his loyal wife pushes him away from the cameras in his wheelchair. “No, not the wife. The other one.”
A grimmer but no less disturbing profile was published recently by the National Post titled “Quebec man has two healthy fingers amputated to relieve ‘body integrity dysphoria.’” It’s a sad story; the young man said he had “intrusive thoughts about his left hand’s fourth and fifth fingers, the sensation they weren’t his, that they didn’t belong to his body” since he was a child and would even have nightmares about them. He fantasized about cutting them off himself. From the Post:
Instead, a surgeon at his local hospital agreed to an elective amputation in what is being called the first described case of ‘digits amputation’ for body integrity dysphoria, or BID, a rare and complex condition characterized by an intense desire to amputate a perfectly healthy body part, such as an arm or a leg. The Quebec case involved an ambidextrous 20-year-old whose attempts at ‘non-invasive’ relief, including cognitive behavioural therapy, Prozac-like antidepressants and exposure therapy, only increased his distress.
What is significant about this case is the way it was described by Dr. Nadia Nadeau of the department of psychiatry at Université Laval in a case study published in the journal Clinical Case Reports. Nadeau describes the young man’s mental and emotional distress, and notes that this distress apparently ceased after the “elective amputation” and that “he was able to pursue the life he envisioned as a complete human being without those two fingers bothering him.” One month post surgery, he had no regrets.
The particularly significant conclusion came towards the end of the report. According to Nadeau: “He is now living a life free from distressing preoccupations about his fingers, with all his symptoms related to BID resolved. The amputation enabled him to live in alignment with his perceived identity.” This, of course, is precisely the argument used by transgender activists making the case for sex change surgeries, cross-sex hormones, and puberty blockers – that these “treatments” will help the recipient “live in alignment with his perceived identity.” Although they wouldn’t call it a “perceived” identity – they’d call it his real identity. This perceived identity, however, was considered real enough that a surgeon removed two of his fingers.
The justifications for these “treatments” that include bodily mutilation are similar, as well. The Post noted that “Nadeau’s patient, after doing some research, ‘related his condition to gender dysphoria’… People with BID often feel their physical body doesn’t align with the image of the body they have in their minds.”
Furthermore, although “cutting off healthy, functioning body parts for psychological distress raises ethical concerns, BID sufferers sometimes resort to self-mutilation or ‘black-market’ amputations, risking their lives.”
A similar argument is made for “transgender care”: if extreme medical intervention does make the mentally ill person’s body resemble the image of reality in their minds, they might harm themselves. That’s the catch-22, of course. Isn’t surgical mutilation also harm, by definition? Not if you redefine it – that’s why trans activists no longer refer to sex change surgeries, but “gender-affirming care.” According to Nadeau: “Recognizing and addressing the unique needs of (BID) patients can lead to a future where they can live with more dignity, respect and optimal well-being.”
Who can disagree with a campaign to increase understanding and dignity for the mentally ill? I wonder, however, what the limiting principle is here. If a young man who believes himself to be a woman can get himself legally castrated by a surgeon, why can’t a man who believes he is an amputee have a leg removed? Or an arm? If we have accepted that people’s self-perceptions are more important than actual reality, where does it stop?
From the Fraser Institute
By Ben Eisen, Milagros Palacios and Lawrence Schembri
Canada’s inflation-adjusted per-person annual economic growth rate (0.7 per cent) is meaningfully worse than the G7 average (1.0 per cent) over this same period. The gap with the U.S. (1.2 per cent) is even larger. Only Italy performed worse than Canada.
Growth in gross domestic product (GDP), the total value of all goods and services produced in the economy annually, is one of the most frequently cited indicators of Canada’s economic performance. Journalists, politicians and analysts often compare various measures of Canada’s total GDP growth to other countries, or to Canada’s past performance, to assess the health of the economy and living standards. However, this statistic is misleading as a measure of living standards when population growth rates vary greatly across countries or over time.
Federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, for example, recently boasted that Canada had experienced the “strongest economic growth in the G7” in 2022. Although the Trudeau government often uses international comparisons on aggregate GDP growth as evidence of economic success, it’s not the first to do so. In 2015, then-prime minister Stephen Harper said Canada’s GDP growth was “head and shoulders above all our G7 partners over the long term.”
Unfortunately, such statements do more to obscure public understanding of Canada’s economic performance than enlighten it. In reality, aggregate GDP growth statistics are not driven by productivity improvements and do not reflect rising living standards. Instead, they’re primarily the result of differences in population and labour force growth. In other words, they aren’t primarily the result of Canadians becoming better at producing goods and services (i.e. productivity) and thus generating more income for their families. Instead, they primarily reflect the fact that there are simply more people working, which increases the total amount of goods and services produced but doesn’t necessarily translate into increased living standards.
Let’s look at the numbers. Canada’s annual average GDP growth (with no adjustment for population) from 2000 to 2023 was the second-highest in the G7 at 1.8 per cent, just behind the United States at 1.9 per cent. That sounds good, until you make a simple adjustment for population changes by comparing GDP per person. Then a completely different story emerges.
Canada’s inflation-adjusted per-person annual economic growth rate (0.7 per cent) is meaningfully worse than the G7 average (1.0 per cent) over this same period. The gap with the U.S. (1.2 per cent) is even larger. Only Italy performed worse than Canada.
Why the inversion of results from good to bad? Because Canada has had by far the fastest population growth rate in the G7, growing at an annualized rate of 1.1 per cent—more than twice the annual population growth rate of the G7 as a whole at 0.5 per cent. In aggregate, Canada’s population increased by 29.8 per cent during this time period compared to just 11.5 per cent in the entire G7.
Clearly, aggregate GDP growth is a poor tool for international comparisons. It’s also not a good way to assess changes in Canada’s performance over time because Canada’s rate of population growth has not been constant. Starting in 2016, sharply higher rates of immigration have led to a pronounced increase in population growth. This increase has effectively partially obscured historically weak economic growth per person over the same period.
Specifically, from 2015 to 2023, under the Trudeau government, inflation-adjusted per-person economic growth averaged just 0.3 per cent. For historical perspective, per-person economic growth was 0.8 per cent annually under Brian Mulroney, 2.4 per cent under Jean Chrétien and 2.0 per cent under Paul Martin.
Due to Canada’s sharp increase in population growth in recent years, aggregate GDP growth is a misleading indicator for comparing economic growth performance across countries or time periods. Canada is not leading the G7, or doing well in historical terms, when it comes to economic growth measures that make simple adjustments for our rapidly growing population. In reality, we’ve become a growth laggard and our living standards have largely stagnated for the better part of a decade.
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