In other news: Huawei has been running ads on Canadian television promoting their brand for 5G network infrastructure...? They have to know how terribly shameless and transparent that is, right? It reminds me of Boeing trying to lift its brand image with equally shameless ad buys after trying to screw over Bombardier. And it's such a waste of money, just like Boeing's attempt was.
Alberta is my main gripe, but yah I'll lump SK into them as well as I'm not convinced they're not any different than AB. But when I refer to the west it's alberta. No one thinks "well BC is west so we must be referring to them as well." AB IS the west. SK just wants to become them.
You say that "the west" means Alberta when you say it, but you keep saying that seemingly only when it's convenient to dodge criticism, then go back to lumping SK into your definition at every other opportunity. You've not been terribly consistent on this, so you'll forgive me if I'm not exactly taking you at your word.
SK wants to be Alberta? Maybe over the past 10 years or so under the Wall/Moe government, but historically, it's been very much an arms-length relationship between the two, with industry more focused in agriculture, potash and uranium, with potash especially being our cash-cow industry and mineral mining more generally, since no one can compete with SK in potash (#1 exporter in the world) and we have a solid grip on North American uranium. Not to say that there hasn't been oil and gas since the 60s, but it's really only when the PCs or Sask Party are in power that there's a major surge there and it's not actually something we export all that much of compared to Alberta; one of the biggest O&G producers here, Federated Co-operatives, refines and sells within the province. O&G exports from SK are less than 10% of all of Canada's exported O&G, usually hovering around 5-6%, with the massive majority of it being exported to Minnesota and the northeastern US. The Sask Party being pro-pipeline is them wanting to horn in on Alberta's export opportunities, despite not having the capacity to really matter much in the grand scheme.
Our opinions on Albertans here in SK haven't been much different than they were anywhere else in the country for years. And signs indicate a return to that arms-length relationship, thanks to contention arising from
broken promises of the merger of PotashCorp and Agrium into Nutrien, among other reasons, like how frequently Alberta decided it had a bone to pick with Wall.
It's important not to mistake one political party's industrial ambitions with that the province or its people. Because that's a dangerous precedent to set.
And actually, BC is frequently included in "the west", but typically with an acknowledgement that the urban coastal region and the island operate in their own political sphere. Rural and suburban mainland BC voters tend to follow similar voting patterns and vote more right of center as other regions of the western Canadian provinces would.
Never mind that Manitoba is entirely missing from the discussion in how they factor into "Western Canada".
Lastly, there's a reason Wall resigned and it's because he and his party knew that his reckless spending leading to austerity budgets would kill them if he was still the face of the party. And even with the resignation damage control, the Sask Party is bleeding all of its urban support, with every urban by-election going NDP since the last election. It'll just take a
very small number of rural ridings to topple them, at this point. And Moe, even more than Wall before him, pinned his entire political future on a high-stakes staring contest with the feds and hoping they get the feds to blink first. When he and Ford both get put in their place for wasting the courts' time and their respective taxpayers' money on this fool's errand, Moe's popularity and the popularity of his party will likely sink enough for the NDP to have a real chance to pick up the few rural seats they need to win the next election. But you've already proven a few times that you won't let facts get in the way of your personal narrative, so I suppose I just wasted my time explaining all of that. Hopefully someone got something out of it.
It is a measure of wealth of a given jurisdiction. It's not my problem if your subnational government does not spend that wealth wisely when your premiers are acting all "resistant" to a federal government that just happens to be liberal. Have fun with your prosperity cheques.
Wealth is not 100% in the control of the province and absolutely does not indicate the wealth of a provincial government. There are several factors that make GDP a highly misleading statistic and politicians are disinterested in moving away from it because it is great obfuscation when accused of hurting the population with their policies or when government coffers aren't so hot. "But the economy is good... never mind that GDP doesn't specify who it's good FOR, the economy is good!"
And quit sniping at people just because you're mad you got called out on a bad take, dude. I didn't want what we got from the last provincial election and I'd appreciate that you stop talking like I did, much like I don't hold you to account for the most incompetent conservative premier since Ralph Klein, Mike Harris or Grant Devine.
And since you seem exceptionally keen on throwing shade at people for where they live for some unfathomable reason, I ended up back in Saskatchewan because Vancouver was so expensive that I blew through my savings when I lost my job once and then got laid off a year later from another job while I was building my savings back up from nothing. So after 10 years in BC, I returned to my family home to help my aging parents and have them help me in return, while benefiting from rock-bottom cost of living that nowhere other than the Maritimes can adequately match.
But yeah, I totally "chose" all of that.
I'd recommend that this line of dialogue you're choosing isn't worth continuing, if only due to how exceptionally insulting and divisive it is for no discernibly good reason.
