At least Rodney Dangerfield was funny

A new show polls 60% of Albertans surveyed believe their province doesn't get the respect it deserves from Canada.

In reporting the poll results, CBC viewers and listeners have been treated to testimony from roughnecks and ranchers about how hard it is to get oil out of the ground and cattle to the stockyards. Yes, these people do hard work, but that's not how respect is earned, that's how money is earned. This page was in Calgary at the beginning of the 'Klein Revolution'. As much as people want to say the boom is the result of sound fiscal management and hard work, this page remembers the Tories took away a lot of work from people in the name of 'sound' fiscal management. Did the CBC ask anyone who works (or used to work) in a government office, school, hospital, provincial park, college, city hall or liquor store how much respect they received with their pink slip or their pay cut in the 90's?

Just a few years ago, when Alberta was considering changes to the province's electoral boundaries, there was more than one 'Progressive' Conservative MLA who stated that one's franchise should be relative to the property one owns. In the same vein, Alberta's right-wing activists have been trying to export this neo-feudalistic ideology to neighbouring provinces, be it under-the-table donations to the Saskatchewan Party, or dispatching one-time Ralph Klein guru Rod Love to ride shotgun with Gordon Campbell and the BC Liberals. The results have been mixed, largely because of non-Albertans distaste for something that has been a political staple of Alberta life for decades: bullsh*t.

If Alberta wants respect, this page recommends that a province with about 1/10 of the country's population stop trying to tell the rest of us what to do. One of Calgary's own is sitting in 24 Sussex Drive, what else do these people want? It also wouldn't hurt to take care of the little things, like enshrining human rights for all Albertans into law, writing up an actual Labour Code, stop choking on the words "sustainable development", cease and desist the screwing around with the Canada Health Act and...oh yeah...sign off on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Believe it or not, the Conservative regime refused to endorse the Convention because a number of MLAs thought it would interfere with a parent's right to administer corporal punishment.

Being an East Vancouver resident, this page believes British Columbia living next to Alberta is like me living next to the drug dealer's house down the street: the people seem to have a lot of money and look like their having a good time. However, for all the shiny new toys the place looks ugly and abandoned, there are a lot of scary noises coming out of there at night, and what's that gawd-awful smell?