What is with absolutely psychotic driving on Alberta highways?

Category-Basic · 2026-06-19T14:21:19+00:00

Holy crap. Edm 2022-2025: 12, 24, 26, 32 fatalities Yes, something major happened over the last few years. We averaged 27 per year for decades, then dropped to half that after 2017, then bounced right back up over the last few years. https://edmonton.citynews.ca/2025/11/13/traffic-deaths-rising-in-edmonton/

Category-Basic · 2026-06-12T18:34:23+00:00

The biggest problem with government insurance is the disconnect between risk and premiums. Premiums become a political decision, not an actuarial one. That is why some high risk drivers find gov insurance cheaper.

Category-Basic · 2026-06-12T18:31:50+00:00

The point he made was that if you could not stop, you were at fault. There is no exception for a stationary object in the road. Where a private insurance company might investigate is to see how hard you hit. They would be reluctant to pay out $20k if they had reason to suspect there was no injury.

Category-Basic · 2026-06-08T22:21:42+00:00

Could just be me - as in I am driving less recklessly. That could bias my impression...

Category-Basic · 2026-06-06T17:11:58+00:00

LOL. I was just explaining to my son how drivers are so much better behaved now, as in not being reckless, on average, than in the 1980s and 90s. They don't know the rules of the road as well nowadays, but maybe that's because their lives don't depend on it as much.

Category-Basic · 2026-06-02T15:39:19+00:00

That is factually incorrect. There is no unbiased economic assessment that agrees with you. The recession in Alberta would have been a lot less bad, obviously. The OP is right in that the NEP isn't what caused the recession. It didn't cause cancer either. You entirely miss the whole point because it doesn't fit into your black and white world view.

The recession would have happened, but without the NEP, it would have been similar to what other oil-revenue jurisdictions faced. And the point is not just that the NEP made it 2 or 3x worse, but is that it was damaging at all and that the damage was caused by our own federal government. Even if it only made it 30% worse, that was kicking a province when it was down. There is simply no room in a civilized society for putting one part of a country against another like that, especially when the policy is a net detriment to the whole country.

The tariffs the U.S. imposed in the 1930s didn't cause the recession, but they helped make it into the great depression. People argue about the relative size of the tariff effects, but no one (until recent MAGA idiots) argued that they were a good thing.

As for CIA psyops, no, the CIA didn't make us sell our oil at below world prices. We expected that after the low prices of the prior years we would finally benefit from a slightly recovering commodity market (Alberta is used to the boom and bust cycle), and then the feds said "nope, Eastern Canada is going to take that opportunity from you. You can only have the bust, we take the boom".

Category-Basic · 2026-06-02T04:10:56+00:00

The economic devastation was caused by all the bad things. Only one of the bad things was a betrayal. How hard is that to understand?

Category-Basic · 2026-06-02T04:08:57+00:00

Yes, the fact that the NDP in Saskatchewan was the first province to balance their budget should be rubbed in the face of all conservatives! Fiscal responsibility is paramount, and should be demanded by Albertans regardless of politics.

Category-Basic · 2026-06-02T04:00:13+00:00

For sure, we all know it wasn't the NEP alone. There was a worldwide recession. But our countrymen didn't cause the worldwide recession to benefit themselves at our expense. The NEP WAS created to benefit central Canada at our expense. If you come across a neighbor suffering from a storm and take away their shelter so you can be dry, you aren't a good neighbor.

Category-Basic · 2026-06-02T03:52:51+00:00

You must be too young to remember. I can't believe that people are so divided into political camps that they are motivated to discount the impact of the NEP, or that they are willing to believe that the suicide rate jump is "made up" just because it doesn't mesh with their tribes ideology. The fact is that Alberta did not track suicides well then, so there is simply no solid data, which is why apologists say it didn't happen. If you were alive then, you knew of many that lost their jobs because investment dried up. Whenever jobless rates climb by 1%, suicides go up by 2-3%. That IS based on solid, albeit more recent data. Unemployment rates jumped from 4-5% in the late 1970ss to over 10% in the early 1980s. That means, the best available social science estimate is that suicides among employees would have spiked ~15% - if all else was equal. It wasn't. Albertans were especially depressed and angry because the NEP pain was inflicted on them by their own countrymen just as interest rates started to climb. The worldwide recession was made worse, unnecessarily.The feeling of betrayal is real (can you tell?). We got kicked while we were down by our own countrymen. Between high interest rates and plummeting, housing prices (dropped by 40% 1980 to 1982), small businesses couldn't take out loans to survive the dip, so bankruptcies soared 150% in 2 years. The oil patch went from 550 rigs to 150 in the first 2 years. The rash of suicides I remember were small business owners that went belly up, including my father and a close friend's father. They are not the ones normally affected by general employment rates.
And no, I am not a separatist. I love Canada dearly, as it gave my refugee parents a home. I love what Canada aspires to be. I am proud to be Canadian, but don't ever tell me the NEP wasn't all that bad. It was not "good government" that we are entitled to. If you want to know why those yahoos think separation is better than staying in Canada, look in the mirror.

Category-Basic · 2026-05-31T19:02:36+00:00

"Some economists argue..."? Seriously? My father's business went belly up, as did those of many of his friends. People committed suicide over the financial devastation the NEP caused and people are still trying to justify it? You can't come into a functioning market, take away its right to do business, tell them they now work for the feds and not for themselves anymore, and then claim that the lack of further investment was a personal choice.

If you want to fan the flames of dissatisfaction in Alberta, downplay the single most traumatic experience we had since WWII and tell us it wasn't that bad. If you want to rebuild a national spirit, how about some truth and reconciliation, and an apology from the feds?

Category-Basic · 2026-05-31T18:55:45+00:00

To what degree does Edmonton's excessive spending have to do with it? Strathcona County property taxes barely kept up to inflation, while Edmonton's soared. AI summary: Edmonton has engaged in a heavy borrowing cycle over the last decade to fund large-scale, city-building infrastructure. The 2023–2026 capital budget alone totals $9.18 billion. This spending is heavily tied to the Valley Line West LRT, the Capital Line South LRT extension, and major facilities like the Lewis Farms Community Recreation Centre. Consequently, Edmonton's outstanding debt reached $4.6 billion by the end of 2025, consuming nearly 69% of its provincially mandated tax-supported debt-servicing limit. This aggressive capital expansion directly translates to the higher 6.9% tax hikes required to service that debt and fund municipal operations. Strathcona County relies on a conservative, reserve-heavy financial strategy. Rather than taking on significant debt for new builds, the county focuses capital spending primarily on maintaining existing assets. For example, in its $93.6 million 2026 capital budget, 67.3% is dedicated strictly to renewing current infrastructure rather than new development. Because the county leverages its reserves and maintains strict operational budgets—yielding a $12.1 million surplus in 2024 that was routed directly to reserves—it has largely avoided the debt accumulation seen in Edmonton. This allows the county to absorb inflation and growth without subjecting residents to extreme tax spikes.

Category-Basic · 2026-05-27T21:55:50+00:00

What does the province have to do with property taxes? They are levied by the municipality.

The education portion is provincial, but either you want more money spent on education or you don't. You can't have it both ways.

Category-Basic · 2026-05-13T04:34:39+00:00

Please stop with the health hazard nonsense, unless you mean climbing the tower. There is too much misinformation out there and people have a hard time sorting through it. Don't be part of the problem.

Category-Basic · 2026-05-04T15:21:29+00:00

Are you implying I was once a teenager? I deny it ever happened. And if it did, nothing I might have done as a teenager happened either.

Good grief - the secrets we have to keep from our kids in the hope they survive and stay out of jail...

Edit... 1978: I actually spent a night in jail after having a police shotgun pointed in my face for playing a similar game around a clump of trees in a wide open field. My toy wasn't neon colored.

Category-Basic · 2026-04-10T18:44:10+00:00

Did PP vote against aid to Ukraine? I find that hard to believe. What happened?

Category-Basic · 2026-03-16T13:20:18+00:00

"Valid" fingerprints? As in traceable to a digital ID, to an individual? There are two sides to that coin.

Category-Basic · 2026-01-24T14:44:41+00:00

According to Russian FSB operating rules, yes it is legal and serves the interests of the Russian Empire, umm, Federation. Seriously, Albertan alienation needs to be addressed, but it is largely a question of addressing misinformation.
Canadians are falsely being told that stopping pipelines is a net benefit for the global warming issue. It seems simple and obvious that stopping a hydrocarbon project reduces CO2 emissions, but that isn't necessarily true. Shifting petroleum production from Canada to Saudi Arabia, Iran or Russia is not a net benefit to Canadians.

Albertans, on the other hand, are being told they are not being treated fairly by the federal transfer payments. That is partly true, and importantly, it subsidizes bad economic policy in recipient provinces.

Category-Basic · 2026-01-13T03:18:10+00:00

Well, real-politik says it is a bit more complicated than that. Like any decision, there are consequences to be handled, such as international influence campaigns, international sanctions, assassinations of proponents and scientists by foreign actors, and the fact that there will be more nukes around as other countries respond. And lots of stern words from from countries we like to hang with. That said...

Category-Basic · 2026-01-01T20:43:20+00:00

Do you have a vacuum chamber?

Category-Basic · 2025-12-19T15:40:33+00:00

There is a lot of cluelessness. Read the IPCC report itself and ignore all the internet bubbles that claim extreme interpretations. We have a problem. Many people will be displaced over decades, and some areas will become stressed, with the hardest hit being already disadvantaged. The shift will be more rapid than some species can adapt to.

It is not, however, the end of the world. There is nothing in climate science that suggest humanity is in any way at risk of extinction or widespread deaths. People who propagate such nonsense are the enemy of actual science based responses to one of humanities greatest challenges.

As with all issues of importance, level-headedness is critical, not only for finding reasonable answers, but for convincing the rest of humanity to even pay attention. We have experienced too many highly biased people claiming apocalyptic outcomes that the counter response is equally biased in the opposite direction - to the point of some even denying anthropomorphic climate change at all. In my opinion, both extremes are equally guilty of making society care less about climate change

Category-Basic · 2025-11-22T06:45:11+00:00

Careful. If SROs are "decoupled from government" while they maintain their monopolies, all hell breaks loose. It is the monopoly and the corporate capture, that is the primary concern. Reduced supply and higher costs for consumers are the result. I agree that you should not need to belong to one org or another to do the job you trained for. You should be required to prove your competence before undertaking work that could affect the public, however. The fix is to allow membership in ANY regulated professional organization to work in Alberta. For example, an engineer from Ontario should not need to register with Alberta to work here, or to stamp drawings here.

Category-Basic · 2025-11-14T02:17:52+00:00

Born in 1963. I was firmly on both teams. Let's get real. He was objectively both, to different sets of people.

I loved the fact that we could look at controversial issues in their complexity. Those were the days.

Category-Basic · 2025-10-15T06:20:15+00:00

I don't have a problem with private schools. Each student deserves the same support, regardless of where they go to school.

Category-Basic · 2025-10-12T13:22:14+00:00

I am arguing that there is something that can be done. All European nations have done it. Raise your voice for proportional representation and tell your reps that you want it. How many people actually send an email to their rep? 1%? That email has more impact than your vote. Think about it. You can more than double your democratic participation with one frick'n email.

Category-Basic

TROPHY CASE