Re: Letter: Flying against facts and common sense
I found the letter to be confusing, and twisting the facts. Previously the writer asked if it was OK for members of Kenney's government to hobnob with the KKK. I said he should bring his evidence forward.
Then he said that it wasn't illegal, but should be called out, but never says which politician is hobnobbing with which KKK member. I want names, dates, and evidence of what was said.
Instead, he calls Kenney an autocrat for not letting someone who might have hobnobbed with white supremacists run for the UCP.
I think it's bad to ruin a person's career, without more evidence than he visited a website. It sounds like the writer thinks it's bad for Kenney kick out a possible white supremacist, but equally bad not to kick out others.
He asks why Kenney lets oil companies get away with unpaid taxes. Mountain View County has about $2,060,000 in unpaid taxes. Of which $1,649,700.71 has been written off because the company is bankrupt or no longer exists.
The reason for this is because Trudeau shut down Northern Gateway pipeline in 2015, then encouraged protesters to make it impractical to build more.
This made Alberta oil worth $25 less than West Texas Intermediate (WTI), so when WTI fell to $20, we had to pay people to take our oil. The price climbed back up a little, but not enough, so NDP premier Notley had to shut in oil, bankrupting the small companies that didn't own refineries.
Kenney can't force a bankrupt company to pay.
Once Line 3 was debottle-necked, more oil left Canada, lowering the differential with WTI. Oil prices rose and Notley’s cut backs ended.
An orphan well is one where the owner has gone bankrupt, often because of a lack of pipelines. Some wells are shut in, when production levels and price after differential make them unprofitable.
That well can be re-opened, if oil prices go up, or if pipelines are built, lowering the differential. Money was put into a fund to look after orphan wells, but never in anyone's wildest dreams, did anyone predict Trudeau, Obama and Biden cancelling pipelines and bankrupting so many companies. So if you want to blame someone for the orphan wells, you can blame the people who blocked the pipelines.
The writer says we have a problem with private businesses running seniors housing facilities. That this caused a lot of deaths, and we need to get the government to step in.
I agree that it was poorly run, but the highest death rates were in government-run senior centres, especially in Quebec. Clearly the government is worse at this than the private sector.
Private schools are the deal of a lifetime for taxpayers. We pay half as much to educate a student.
If we shut down private schools, then we have to pay twice as much to educate those kids. Or, more likely we keep total funding the same, and try and educate more kids on the same dollars.
Bob Wilson,
Calgary
