Poor, poor Alberta

Poor Alberta has been Canada's whipping boy (or "bitch") for long enough, according to Premier Big Ed Stelmach. "All we're asking for is respect," Ed whimpered, apparently forgetting that respect is earned not given, claiming that Alberta "can't carry the country" just before asking the Feds for more money for health care. Looks like Canada's richest province can't quite take care of it's own citizens any more. Rich food, cigarettes and liquor are taking their toll it would seem and now the Albertan provincial government wants to change how they deliver the Canada Health Act to their citizens. They have some interesting ideas ('interesting' as in the Chinese curse of "may you live in interesting times") whereby there is talk of individual Albertans choosing what services they want to buy health insurance for and which they don't. On the face of it this is totally reasonable. Planning on having a heart attack or stroke? Just buy insurance for those. Not planning on cancer? Don't buy insurance for that. Maybe you think you will be getting skin-cancer and not lung-cancer, so you buy skin-cancer insurance and don't bother with lung-cancer insurance. Yup, sounds good to me. Good old frontier thinking, right? Live how you want to live and if you choose wrong, well you can always sell the house and cash in the kids college funds, right?

It sounds like the same old "get rid of the system that works and go for a United States style system" that some are so fond of. Of course it does make sense to go to a system for the rich and get away from that socialist stuff where everybody is take care of. What kind of country is it that makes sure that all of it's citizens have health care? Why, our friends to the south (the United States) don't worry about that sort of stuff so why should we? So hey, Government of Canada, you just send a pile of money Alberta's way, along with some tissues, and it's not their fault that the price of oil isn't quite as high as they would like since they were smart enough to build their province on a bunch of oil and nobody else was. It's like Big Ed says, Alberta has been "screwed" by the federal government long enough and it's time for the sugar to flow the other way. Yeah!

Anyway... Humouroceros

PS: Hey Alberta; not everybody is against you so blow your noses and get back to work.