The provincial election in Alberta, which will be all over with by the time you read this, may not impact us as voters and residents of Saskatchewan, but it will play a role in how political issues will be dealt with from this point on, including in the upcoming federal election in October.
It may also serve as a sort of preview for Saskatchewan’s own provincial election to come next year, although the players are decidedly different in this province.
At the federal level, there are many issues that impact the West, in particular the energy sector and the agriculture sector.
On the oil-and-gas side of the economy, the issue of the lack of pipelines was in the forefront of the Alberta election, and one may be sure that the issue will be brought up in the federal election too. It isn’t just an Alberta issue, as the media and politicians there seemed to portray it — this has an impact on the entire oil and gas industry in the West, and the Liberals need to be held to account for how and why the promised Trans Mountain Pipeline has still not gone anywhere.
They also need to be held accountable for bills that will make the building of pipelines nearly impossible, not to mention banning any oil tankers to the northern B.C. coast, which are needed if the oil industry is going to be able to get crude petroleum out to markets beyond the United States.
This is being compounded by a regressive and punitive carbon tax, a cash grab by the federal government that will provide no benefits to the environment, which was after all the alleged purpose of bringing in “carbon pricing” in the first place.
For the agriculture industry, the federal government needs to be taking on the issue of how unfairly canola producers are being treated, and the huge impact the trade ban by China is having on producers.
The Liberals have done almost nothing whatsoever to mitigate this situation, which compounds the problems that will arise from the trade agreement with the United States. The impact on the dairy producers, as just one example, could be truly bad if things unfold the way Trump would have trade go. (As an aside, the Liberals are also not really doing much to mitigate the totally unfair tariffs on steel and aluminum from Canada, and this has to be dealt with.)
There is much that needs to be dealt with for the sake of the economy of this country
