[Newsbot]

Title: Alberta premier asks public sector for collaboration amid talk of general strike
Category: Provincial Politics
Posted By: DrCaleb
Date: 2019-12-02 05:34:22
Canadian

[DrCaleb]

$1:

Kenney was more serious in his news conference on Sunday, saying he wanted to have a collaborative, not confrontational, relationship with public sector unions, suggesting that job loss numbers could be mitigated if negotiators moderated their salary expectations.

If he doesn't want confrontation, perhaps he should not be giving ultimatums such as 'take job losses or a pay cut', and instead live up to his campaign promises of not reducing front line workers and not affecting health care delivery for Albertans.

[Thanos]

This is not going to go well. I'd say it won't "end well" either but unfortunately this kind of bullshit never ends. Skips a couple of years once in a while but inevitably comes back roaring.

[DrCaleb]

I just don't get his strategy. He obviously isn't doing Alberta any good, as 7000 jobs makes little difference to the debt. But the confidence business will lose in Alberta will be very much hit the bottom line. Cenovus saw the writing on the wall and GTFO.

[llama66]

Collaboration FOR a strike or AGAINST a strike? (asking for a friend)

[uwish]

hack and slash!

[Thanos]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

I just don't get his strategy. He obviously isn't doing Alberta any good, as 7000 jobs makes little difference to the debt. But the confidence business will lose in Alberta will be very much hit the bottom line. Cenovus saw the writing on the wall and GTFO.

There's no strategy except for the standard Us vs Them that Kenney's traded in during his entire career. Creating enmity is the entire point of the exercise and all the harsh pronouncements. He's turned into a northern Trump far quicker than anyone anticipated. And, thanks to the huge numbers of hurting and desperate people, he's fooling as many people as Trump did per capita. "We tanked the province for good this time, but at least those libtards got it first!" is probably basically what they're thinking.

Turns out that in Alberta some people enjoy seeing those in the public sector lose their jobs as much as others in the rest Canada like seeing Albertans lose O&G jobs. The horrid comments in the papers and on Twitter have been terrible, completely without any sort of empathy. Sad commentary on people, and this country in general, if nothing else.

[CharlesAnthony]

JasonKenney JasonKenney:

" ... when we're in the fifth year of economic decline ..."

If he goes off-script like that again, his career is toast.

[DrCaleb]

llama66 llama66:

Collaboration FOR a strike or AGAINST a strike? (asking for a friend)

Collaboration whether they want layoffs, or more than a 5% wage cut. They can pick.

But he'll be ok, as MLAs have had a 30% pay raise, and a 5% cut in the time that the swivel service has had no raise.

[DrCaleb]

Sort of related

Brian Jean Brian Jean:

If TMX is finally built it will send a further 590,000 bpd to Vancouver. That helps, but only a little.

It's a dirty little secret that most of the new TMX oil will be sold to U.S. west coast refineries. Very little of it will go to China, Japan, Korea or India, despite the fact that all of them want it. At most TMX will sell a few hundred thousand barrels a day to Asia.

You see, Vancouver's shallow port can't accommodate modern supertankers.

Most oil gets shipped in two million-plus barrel supertankers, but Vancouver can only handle 800 thousand barrel ships, and those can only be three-quarters filled before they bottom out.

The cost advantages of transporting Alberta oil in efficient supertankers will never happen via Vancouver. And that means TMX alone won't lead to a growing Alberta energy industry.

. . .

It's time our politicians were honest with Albertans and Canadians.

TMX is a start, but it isn't enough.

We need to work on a solution that gets Alberta a customer, other than the Americans, for two million barrels a day of oil.

That customer should be the rest of Canada.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/ ... -1.5375934

[bootlegga]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

$1:

Kenney was more serious in his news conference on Sunday, saying he wanted to have a collaborative, not confrontational, relationship with public sector unions, suggesting that job loss numbers could be mitigated if negotiators moderated their salary expectations.

If he doesn't want confrontation, perhaps he should not be giving ultimatums such as 'take job losses or a pay cut', and instead live up to his campaign promises of not reducing front line workers and not affecting health care delivery for Albertans.

[Thanos]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

Sort of related

Brian Jean Brian Jean:

That customer should be the rest of Canada.

Never gonna happen for all the reasons that have been talked about a million times before. It's a pointless endeavour.

[Sunnyways]

Kenney’s natural impulse is to make these difficult situations worse.

[JaredMilne]

Thanos Thanos:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

Sort of related

Brian Jean Brian Jean:

That customer should be the rest of Canada.

Never gonna happen for all the reasons that have been talked about a million times before. It's a pointless endeavour.

Actually, to some extent it already has happened, in that the portion of oil going to Quebec refineries from the ROC has more than quintupled over five years.

Thanos Thanos:

There's no strategy except for the standard Us vs Them that Kenney's traded in during his entire career. Creating enmity is the entire point of the exercise and all the harsh pronouncements. He's turned into a northern Trump far quicker than anyone anticipated. And, thanks to the huge numbers of hurting and desperate people, he's fooling as many people as Trump did per capita. "We tanked the province for good this time, but at least those libtards got it first!" is probably basically what they're thinking.

Turns out that in Alberta some people enjoy seeing those in the public sector lose their jobs as much as others in the rest Canada like seeing Albertans lose O&G jobs. The horrid comments in the papers and on Twitter have been terrible, completely without any sort of empathy. Sad commentary on people, and this country in general, if nothing else.

That's one of the reasons I quit Twitter at the start of the year. My sanity couldn't take it.

Unfortunately, that same 'us vs. them' attitude is prevalent on all sides of the debate. Dare to have concerns about pipeline spills or emissions, and not support building them, and you're a modern-day Maoist. Dare to want to know how we'll satisfy our heating needs, not to mention transportation to far-off communities, if we kill the fossil fuel industry and you're a real-life Captain Planet villain.

Unfortunately, that stems from so many different groups in Canada feeling like the latest incident is simply the latest in a long line of ways they've been crapped on. Native pipeline activists getting dragged away by cops is simply another example of the rest of us treating them as disposable garbage. Carbon pricing is just the latest policy that benefits the East and leaves Alberta holding the bag. Threats of intervention to overturn Quebec's Bill 21 are another example of the ROC saying Quebec can't determine the rules for people to fit into its society, while the ROC can set as many rules as it wants.

I wish I knew how to get around it. I wish I knew how to fix it.

I'm wishing a lot of things these days.

[Thanos]

In an end point to this discussion someone shot themselves on the steps of the legislature this afternoon:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton ... -1.5381641

This is the point we're at now.