$1:
Alienation is fuelling a new, bigger Alberta agenda: 'We wasted the last 20 years'
The writers of the “Alberta agenda,” seven prominent Alberta conservatives and academics, listed five ways the province could wrest certain powers away from Ottawa. Among the suggestions were a provincial police force to replace the RCMP and an Alberta-only pension plan.
Klein was no Ottawa-hugging liberal. Once, as mayor of Calgary in the 1980s, he warned of “creeps” and “bums” flocking in from Eastern Canada. Still, he rejected the proposals. “The sense of defeatism that underlies the notion of building a ‘firewall’ around this province is unnecessary,” Klein responded. “Albertans are strong Canadians…. We have much to offer other Canadians, and in turn, there are lessons we can learn from other Canadians.”
Ted Morton, a University of Calgary political science professor, was one of the authors of the Alberta agenda, and would go on later to become the province’s finance minister. He doesn’t believe the sentiment that inspired that letter, the feeling of alienation towards Ottawa, has gone away.
“The disillusionment with the status quo is deeper and wider than it was 20 years ago. And it’s also better articulated and better funded than it was 20 years ago,” Morton said. “I think there’s a deep sense that what my generation of reformers, in the small-r sense, tried — the Reform Party with Preston Manning, Senate reform, getting Stephen Harper elected prime minister — in the end, none of that has worked.”
Twenty years later, some of the agenda’s ideas are starting to influence Alberta government policy, the result of the work of the United Conservative government’s “ Fair Deal Panel ,” which canvassed the province in 2019–20 to hear out Albertans’ feelings of discontent toward a federal government that many feel treats the province unfairly, perhaps even more so now than at the time of the Alberta agenda.
The panel, when it reported in 2020, made 25 recommendations. Some went further than the Alberta agenda, suggesting Alberta push, for example, for “resource corridors” across the country, and that the province take legal action against damaging federal legislation. It suggested the province hold a referendum on equalization . And, taking cues from 2001, the fair-deal panel also revived calls for a provincial police force, provincial pension plan and for Alberta to collect its own income tax, the way Quebec does (something the government notes requires “significant further analysis”).
“It does seem like they’re old solutions, but like, the fact that they’re still around is emblematic of the fact that the problems are very similar, and that the solutions haven’t been undertaken,” said Josh Andrus, executive director of Project Confederation, which builds grassroots support for fair-deal-style measures. He says his new generation of conservative Albertans is experiencing “the same undercurrent of frustration” as previous ones.
https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/ ... t-20-yearsAnd now we know where the 'need' for Alberta specific police force came from. If Ted Morton likes it, then it's bad for Alberta.
CKA Moderator 
CKA Moderator 
