SUITS AND BOOTS: We are a federation, but right now that aspect of our country, and of our economy, seems to be forgotten

The following message from Jeanne of Victoria (a former Alberta resident), was sent to Suits and Boots.  They have approved the reprinting of it here:

I used to live in Alberta. I now live in Victoria BC, land of retired civil servants, but my family and friends still live in Alberta.

Bill C-69 matters to me because I know it is wrong to eliminate the livelihood of some people in Canada, to benefit the narrow ideology of a few ... especially at a time when a majority government can push through what it wants.

If there is a purpose to the Canadian Senate, it is now to give a sober, second look at a flawed bill and send it back. This is what I ask, and here is why.  We are a federation, but right now that aspect of our country, and of our economy, seems to be forgotten.

 

When I was living in Alberta, our family earned a livelihood in a part of the province where gas and oil development was one source for a healthy economy -- side by side with agricultural.  Family still work there in agriculture.

Those who worked directly in oil, gas and agricultural earned their money, and then bought our construction services. We made enough money to send our children to university, and eventually to retire here to Victoria, the land where income comes from government earnings, tourism, and taxes from house sales.

No need for primary industry because Victoria relies on cruise ships, and family money often earned elsewhere.

Last year, I went down to the Victoria harbour to see the largest cruise ship to ever dock in BC. This is in a harbour which last year welcomed 250 cruise ships, between April and September, with some 600,000 passengers.

Environmental problems ... pollution ... threat to sea life ... fuel spills?  But cruising sounds gentle; and tar sands sounds harsh.

Two years ago, I visited friends in Newfoundland. I saw and commented on all of the beautiful new homes, often sitting beside an old, weather-beaten one. I was told of the many in Newfoundland, who had left to work in Alberta, returned with their earnings to their home province and built these homes for the families they supported there. 

Recently I returned to Alberta to visit family and friends. I commented on the level of health care, hospitals, recreation centres and schools -- all the result of an economy that is now under attack from Bill C-69. This Bill has clauses that are meant to restrict, and likely eliminate, resource development.

I said how unfair Bill C-69 was to some retired friends here, after I came back to Victoria. The other four people in the conversation said the people of Alberta deserved their now slowed economy – deserved it because they had misspent the money from the ‘good years’.

Their questions to me was, “Well are those facilities, rec centres, and hospitals sustainable?”.  And my answer to them was, “They will be if they are allowed, in that province, to do what people elsewhere want to do -- earn a living for themselves and their families?”

I was appalled at the narrowness of their belief.

We are a federation ... a federation of provinces.

To destroy the environment in one, impacts all; to destroy the economy in one, impacts all!