… we should ideally have heard?
(c) 2019, Davd.
This is the acceptance speech i wanted to hear, written yesterday evening when Alberta’s polls were still open*. It is about general policy, and this being a men’s website, it emphasizes men’s health and well-being.
Voters of Alberta, thank you!
It was your decision, not mine and not this party’s, that we will form the next Provincial Government.
I have, our whole Party team has, listened to your comments on politics, economics, ecological concerns, and human relations generally during this campaign. There is much that no Government can control, economically and ecologically — but there is much we can do and we mean to get to work.
Economic growth has been a big theme in Alberta’s history since that first oil well came into production at Leduc. It cannot be as big in the next 60 years as it was in the last 60 — the land area of Alberta has stayed almost exactly the same, we have taken the easiest and best of the fossil resources, and the provincial economy has gone from growing like a child to growing like a mushroom to where I sometimes have been reminded of bubble gum. You know what happens when you try to blow the bubble too big.
We need not live worse than we have, if we emphasize frugality and social efficiency and go for those aspects of economic growth that can be frugal and efficient. Bureaucracy is not in a position to grow frugally and efficiently, not overall. This government will make our bureaucracies smaller and more efficient. We will put some volunteers from the campaign and some volunteers we met on the campaign, to work finding errors in the bureaucratic rules, and bringing forward draft corrections for us to put into law.
For instance, the previous government mandated — forced on schools that did not want them — something called “Gay-Straight Alliances” to prevent or reduce bullying. People do not get bullied because they are gay, they get bullied because they are wimps. Find me a two-metre-tall, well muscled homosexual man, and he will not be a bully’s victim. Now I know that “wimp appreciation clubs” is not the best title for what I have in mind, but I can say that Einstein was a wimp and he well deserved appreciation. We will find an improvement on “Gay-Straight Alliances” and we will make being homosexual something you can be and do if nobody else suffers for it, somewhat like drinking whisky.
For instance, Service Dogs have privileges, including acceptance when renting apartments, whether Management likes it or not. But the bureaucracy has ruled that when a Service Dog reaches the age of ten years, it loses its privileges. There are two things wrong with that: First, Service Dogs are expensive to train, in time and money, and hundreds of thousands of people in Alberta can benefit from canine companionship and support without that expensive training. One way or another, we need more canine-friendly housing, especially for seniors and veterans.
Second, many, many dogs are healthy and valuable well past their tenth birthdays. To put down a healthy, faithful, valuable canine friend at age ten is evil; and evicting somebody who is faithful to his or her dog because of that dog’s age, is evil. This government will probably make some mistakes, but we will not do evil.
For instance, there are hundreds of special programs for women, and very few for men… yet men die younger on average, suffer more violence, die more often by suicide. Many worthwhile women’s programs can be continued by the charitable sector. Many worthwhile men’s programs can be facilitated by the same charitable sector. I have seen men live as brothers in monasteries; why cannot that fellowship and social efficiency be enjoyed by men whose first work in life is something other than religious ritual?
I plan to rename the Women’s Ministry, with more hope than certainty, the Ministry for Gender Co-operation. I know women who call themselves Feminists and do not believe in nor practice misandry; but I have read enough about the subject of “gender-based-analysis” and gender politics, to know that overall, Feminism has been more misandric than egalitarian. This government will be egalitarian. Specifically, our policy will be to assure equal opportunity for all who function in the public sphere, the policy asserted by Susan Pinker in her book The Sexual Paradox.
I will name as the Gender Co-operation Minister’s #1 assignment, to make that ministry unnecessary by the end of our mandate. Creator meant for men and women to co-operate; Feminism named itself evil by and to the extent it promoted gender conflict, and I have enough hope in human nature to seriously try to restore Creator’s purpose and let the nature we ought to have, take its course.
I plan to look at ways that Alberta’s contributions to others’ well-being are either reciprocated, or paid for. Wild geese eat a lot of Alberta’s crops, and then fly south where they are targets for US hunters. I’m not sure how to collect for those migratory birds, but I have some eager young students who will be working on it. Donald Trump, let’s be fair, reasonable, and logical, eh?
The Energy East pipeline was a Canadian national unity project if ever there was one. If the kind of oil planned for shipment through it was dangerously corrosive, and I have heard arguments on both sides; then a pre-refinery or upgrader could have been built at Alberta’s end of the pipeline, with some of that equalization transfer money Ottawa has taken from us since that Leduc well. I am totally convinced it would have cost a mere fraction. Justin Trudeau, let’s be fair, reasonable, and logical, eh?
These are not fat and easy times. Alberta’s is not a fat and easy style. We are practical, we are pragmatic, we are willing to work for the satisfaction of a job well done and the subsistence we get from the sum of those good jobs. I am ready to listen to good ideas from those who campaigned with me and those who competed with us in the campaign. We all live here. We just had a vote, not a war.
Let’s go to work.
Notes:
* I sent a draft to the Webmaster then, to document I did not know when I wrote it, what the winner said nor even who won.
