Re: Letter: Policing future a very complex issue
The writer says that a “vibrant” provincial police force will be so much better than the “tired, old RCMP."
He doesn’t explain how that is going to happen, but maybe he should look to America, where there are more than 18,000 police forces in operation (local, state, and federal) to see how they are managing the gun violence, with over 4,000 mass shootings in the past 10 years since the Sandy Hook massacre, the huge increase in opiate deaths, the escalating gang violence, the corruption in the private health-care system and in the private nursing home care system, and the growing violence against women, Asians, Blacks, Jews, Muslims, Hispanics/Latinos, gays, immigrants, etcetera.
The writer is also opposed to us serfs/peasants having the power to decide on these issues via plebiscites. Yeah. Let the autocrats tell us what to do. Democracy is so messy since debating and voting take up so much time and effort.
Autocracy (dictatorships) operate so much faster. Just look at Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, Franco’s Spain, Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, or Putin’s Russia. Why waste time allowing the people to vote when, “We the autocrats know what’s best for society.”
I guess the author doesn’t care that the majority of municipal governments oppose such a provincial police and so do most of the citizens of this province. But, hey! Who cares, eh?
Our illustrious premier and her cabinet have decided not to allow the public to vote on a provincial police force, on funding private schools and on private energy companies, on gun legislation, on the new elementary schools curriculum, which most school boards and teachers oppose, health savings accounts, privatization of our health-care system, a provincial pension fund to supplement CPP and OAS, just like it did with the teachers’ pension fund, usurping national park money, firing the chief medical officer for the province and the board of directors for AHS, and instructing various provincial government agencies to ignore federal laws and regulations. Gee, our new government looks and operates like some of the “red states” in the U.S. such as Texas, Florida, Idaho, etcetera.
We’ll just go our own way, eh? Maybe we will install “Jim Crow Laws” to suppress citizens from voting. Maybe we will ignore equal rights for our citizens. Who cares about the equal rights for women, Jews, Muslims, Indigenous peoples, Blacks, Asian, immigrants, etc., eh? Let’s remove any discussion of racism and bigotry (“woke”) in our school curriculums, like we see in many “red states”. How about censoring books in our libraries and in our schools, like we see in many “red states”?
We have seen how our illustrious leaders in Alberta have guided us through the COVID-19 pandemic (NOT!), and we’re now seeing how well they are managing now our public health-care system now with the current pandemic of flu, respiratory viruses, and the new strains of COVID-19 – our politicians deliberately undermine the health-care system and then blame it for its failures.
Is that why so many of our health care providers (doctors, nurses, etc.) are quitting or leaving the province?
With the sovereignty bill, our leader and her cabinet (“yes men and women”) will decide what’s best for us. We (the people) will not be given the opportunity to vote on such matters.
By the way, there is a vaccine (a cure) for such autocratic behaviour. It’s called the secret ballot. Use it in the next provincial election because these issues are too important to be left up to our politicians.
George Thatcher,
Olds
