Melanie 4 MLA

People think that I think my husband is the best because he makes a fine chocolate cake.

I will tell you why he is the best.

After a night of door knocking for hours; after coming home to find exhausted grandparents babysitting (THANK YOU MOM AND DAD) an active almost-four-year-old and a screaming baby; after dealing with said almost-four-year-old desperately clamouring for his attention while holding said screaming baby so that I can have a ridiculously hot shower to get rid of the chill from standing on cold cement; after putting said almost-four-year-old to bed and handing screaming baby to me; THEN he makes me kick ass chocolate cake.

That is why I think he is the best.

A friend of mine just had a beautiful little girl recently and decided to vent her frustration and boredom of new motherhood on her facebook by stating that she wanted to go back to work soon.  There were a few helpful comments, but then there was a surprising comment from someone telling her that if she was not willing to sacrifice everything for her child, then she should not have bothered to have children.  Needless to say, this bothered me, and anyone who knows me, knows that I can’t keep my mouth shut, so I had to say something to her.

Working mothers unite!!  Don’t take any crap from people telling you (directly or indirectly) that working moms break up the family or that staying in the home is the natural state of being!  I am constantly surprised at this sentimental ideal of the mom staying home to bake bread and clean all day while hubby works and kids are off at school.  Give me a break.  Moms have always worked, whether they were washerwomen, farm wives, writers, or queens.  We didn’t always have modern electronic conveniences at our fingertips, making housework something that can be finished in an hour or two.

I do not have a problem with moms who choose to stay at home.  And I know that a lot of stay-at-home moms do not have a problem with moms who go to work.  This post isn’t to divide and conquer.  The point is to just give a shout out to those mothers who choose to go back to work and to say why I have/will make that decision (I am currently on maternity leave).

To say that staying at home with my girls makes me stir crazy is an understatement.  I love them both more than life itself, and I love hanging out with them, but doing the full-time-at-home-mommy thing doesn’t cut it for me.  I feel like my brain dies a little.  I feel useless.  I feel like I’m not pursuing my passion in life.

As a working mom, I do not feel like I’m neglecting or doing harm to my daughters in any way.  In fact, I think the opposite.  As a teacher and as someone who is currently running for MLA, I am providing them with a strong female role model in their own house.  They can aspire to be whatever they want to be and know that it truly is possible, because their mom is doing it.

My eldest daughter has been given the opportunity to develop strong social skills by going to daycare.  She is flexible and friendly, plus, she has been able to enjoy experiences that she would otherwise have avoided if she stayed home with me.  Also, she has been able to learn leadership skills and can’t wait to teach her little sister everything that she knows.

Through all of this, they are better human beings and I am a better mom because I love my job and because I am pursuing a passion for politics.  They will one day have the opportunity to make this choice and will know they have my full support either way.

Mothers Unite!

The Keystone XL pipeline is on hold for now and it is a good thing.

Obviously.

American landowners can breathe a temporary sigh of relief for a couple of more years.  Hopefully, the appeal will include a plan to route the pipeline through areas that will not impede on someone’s home and livelihood, while at the same time, not trample the environment.

The environmentalists will certainly make sure their voices continue to be heard on this topic, to the dismay of all governments involved.

It is a lot to expect of tar sands companies.  And we should expect it…and more.  This is a chance to have the dialogues that should have occurred years ago when the pipeline proposal was first brought up.  For whatever reason, perhaps the media did not pick it up, or no one cared at the time, no uproar happened then.  Now that the pipeline is breathing down our necks, we are all up in arms about the environmental impact and the possible loss of jobs.

Every single one of us needs to force our voices to be heard by both the government and the tar sands companies.  What they need to understand is this: the oil being brought out of the ground is from Alberta and belongs to Albertans.  Build the refineries here and send the refined product to the USA.  Stelmach once said that, “I’ve always said shipping raw bitumen out of our province is comparable to selling the top soil on a farm.”  Yet, shipping raw bitumen is precisely what we are doing.  Sure, building a pipeline will create a lot of jobs, but many of those jobs are temporary.  Build the refineries here and thousands of permanent jobs will be created.

Also, Albertans care about the environment.  We like to preserve our natural landscapes.  We want our children’s children’s children to know and experience nature.

Which swings us to the Northern Gateway pipeline.  Of course, all of the focus is now on making sure that is being built.  It is being built through beautiful, preserved land, through an Aboriginal reserve, then the plan is to ship it in an area that bans oil tankers due to the large number of oil spills that will occur (hello?  Rocky coast anyone??).  There are a number of things that I don’t understand about this one.  Let me start with the one thing that I DO understand: we want to diversify and sell to Asian markets.  That makes sense because we cannot just continue to depend on the USA for support.

What I want to know is why they have decided with the worst possible route for this pipeline.  There are existing pipeline routes that they could build along, which would reduce the environmental destruction.  And why on earth using the existing rail line has not been fully considered.

There are many questions that need to be answered; we need to demand these answers.  If we are not satisfied with these answers, then we need to find a better way for this to happen.  Pipelines will be built, but it is up to us to decide where, when, and what is pumped through them.

We are potentially heading into a fall election and what have the Alberta Liberals done?  Elected Raj Sherman, the ousted PC MLA from Edmonton-Meadowlark, as their new leader.  At this point, I have to stop and wonder if they are hoping that the bright lights of the media continue to shine on Dr. Sherman long enough to give the Liberals a major boost in the polls or if they have simply stopped caring about the state of the party altogether and just picked the prettiest candidate.

Raj gained media attention in November of 2010 when he criticized his government for emergency room wait times and was in the centre of the cancer cover-up scandal.  Since Stelmach does not take that kind of crap (you know, the kind that allows MLAs to do their jobs for their constituents), Sherman was then forced to sit as an Independent.  This sudden surge in popularity with the press for sticking up for the little guy convinced other major Alberta parties to cater to him in hopes of swinging that spotlight their way.

The Liberals won his heart though….or did they?  When Dr. Sherman decided to run for politics initially, he did not choose the Liberal party.  It was more along the lines of, “my friends won’t let me hang around with them anymore, so you will have to do”.  Since he was able to cling to his media popularity, he scored the top position in that party without even officially being a member of the party’s caucus!

Will this strategy work in the Liberals’ favour?  Perhaps if media attention is the only way to win an election.  If it doesn’t, the Liberals can only blame themselves.  With only 8640 out of 28 985 eligible voters casting a ballot, it only proves Alberta author Marty Chan’s point, “In Alberta, you get what you don’t vote for.”

Picking Raj Sherman for leader is like picking Tide for your laundry detergent.  You know it could give you a rash, but you have seen enough commercials about it that you bought it because you know the name so well.

Welcome back to school, students!  A new year, a new beginning.

Welcome back to larger classroom sizes, less teachers, less support staff, crumbling infrastructure, more emphasis on “standardization”, …need I go on?

Welcome back to being kicked in the teeth one more year by our shining PC government in Alberta, who have decided on your behalf that tar sand companies are far, far more important than education.  How did I come to this conclusion?  Well, I followed the money trail, folks.

In February 2011, The Parkland Institute commented on the Alberta’s government’s newest budget, pointing out that “Despite the rapidly increasing price of crude oil internationally, Alberta Budget 2011 is actually projecting higher revenues from gambling and liquor than from conventional oil royalties. This is almost entirely the result of the government’s decision to make permanent the royalty breaks put in place last year, regardless of the rapidly growing profits in the industry. Despite projecting significantly higher oil prices for the coming year, resource revenues are projected to increase only slightly.”

Also contributing to Alberta’s deficit are the “drilling incentives” that is costing the government $1.66 billion, yet has shown little benefit to Alberta’s economy in terms of job creation or increased revenues for our coffers.

On top of everything else, our government has a Sustainability Fund, which has approximately $40 billion saved, yet they have refused repeatedly to use that money to fund education.  They have yet to give us a reason why.

Parents have to wonder what their children are going back to.  We have heard in the media that the government has built a few more schools (since they have cut teaching positions, I’m not sure who is running the school) and every classroom is to have a Smartboard.  Wow.  Sounds like we are pretty technologically savvy, eh?  The problem with education cuts is that administrators have to chose where the money goes and where they are going to get the extra funds to keep the entire building from falling down around them.  For example, we can brag that every classroom has a Smartboard.  However, since administrators have decided to cut tech support, they are not actually working.  Brilliant.

Enjoy your first day back at school.  Just don’t forget to pay your outrageous school fees.

“It’ll be a great day when education gets all the money it wants and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy bombers.”  ~Author unknown, quoted in You Said a Mouthful edited by Ronald D. Fuchs

Sources:

http://parklandinstitute.ca/media/comments/tories_gross_fiscal_mismanagement_sells_albertans_short/

The article below is by Warren Buffett from the New York Times.  It is a lovely message to the American government, saying that they need not worry about taxing the super-rich.  Sadly, he was pretty much ignored and the super-rich continue to become the super-super-rich while the lower and middle class struggle on and carry the heaviest tax burden.

I bring up this on-going issue because both our federal and provincial (Alberta) governments seem to think that giving tax breaks to the super-rich are a great idea and have somehow been able to sell this idea to the general public (along the lines of “job creation” – which we have yet to see).  The point is not to stop the super-rich from becoming super-rich, but to recognize that everyone must share the burden of financing our government, rather than expecting everyone but the rich to do so.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html

I received an email from Stephane Dion today, who was sounding quite concerned about a revelation regarding a current NDP leader.

Apparently, Nycole Turmel used to be Bloc Quebecois and is currently a member of Quebec Solidaire.  This appears to mean that our country’s unification is at stake.

When I first read this email, my first reaction was, “So?”.  My second reaction was, “Everyone is surprised?”.  Because, really, are we surprised that a politically active person in Quebec was formerly a member of the Bloc Quebecois?  And that that person still supports separation?  Frankly, I am not surprised at all.

I’m not sure if anyone noticed this, but in the last federal election, the Bloc Quebecois was decimated by its voters who decided to vote NDP instead this time around.  Was it Jack’s alluring speeches?  Possibly.  Was it because all of the separatists have decided that they love Canada and want to remain united with the rest of Canada?  Probably not.  The vote for the NDP was the best example of the citizens of a particular region coming together to use their vote to say, “You have done a crappy job Bloc Quebecois.  We are going to see if the NDP will fight for Quebec values in government better than you.”  If only every province or riding felt so passionate to give their voice for change!!!

The reality is that English Canada does not fully understand, nor do we fully respect French Canada.  We assume that they are like us, except that they stubbornly stick to the French language for reasons unknown.  We are afraid of these separatists and think that their goal is to destroy our beautiful country.  I don’t think that destruction is their goal.  I think that preserving their French culture is their goal.

On that note, let us leave it at this: Nycole Turmel was elected democratically and part of the beauty of the democratic system is that we have a multi-voiced government representing our varying values across the country, including the values we do not necessarily understand.