RiversdaleReporter.ca

SASKATCHEWAN NEEDS REDRESS AND RECOMPENSE!

University of Saskatchewan graduates and the disadvantaged young working class continue to leave Saskatchewan in droves. Those who stay here or immigrate here from even more disparate and depressed lands face closing businesses, rising crime rates -- Saskatoon already has 14 official homicides for the year -- and ever increasing property taxes to pay for ever increasing policing (and suppression and pacification) costs. Besides food costs (thank you federal carbon tax) and housing costs the only things really rising here are incarceration and criminalization rates.

Saskatchewan, perhaps a provincial canary in a coal mine for the still functioning Canadian provinces, is a mess. It just can't gain population and only its land owning pesticide and herbicide deploying large scale farmers and urban real estate tycoons are really prospering. The Saskatchewan government, friend to big oil and gas, and enemy of local high tech and green tech, just doesn't have the brain trust or desire to repair the sinking ship and get it back on course.

Following Canada's General Election, in which the people of Toronto and Ottawa raised a collective middle finger to the west and helped give the undeserving, unnerving, entirely self-serving Trudeau Liberals the most seats in the House of Commons, Saskatchewan"s Premier tweeted an open letter to Trudeau telling him what he needed to do to curb the growing tide of western separatist sentiment. (As of now a facebook group called "Wexit" has about 200,000 members. It had less than 2000 before Toronto and Ontario's Trudeau salute to the west).

The Saskatchewan Premier's list of required changes seemed relatively small:
fix the Equalization farce er formula which in the last 20 years has seen Quebec, Ontario's biggest market just coincidentally I'm sure, receive more than 250 billion dollars more than Canada's four western provinces combined,
build the Trans-mountain Pipeline, and
Kill Trudeau's regressive and sure to be ineffective at reducing green house gas emissions carbon tax.

Subsequent to this, a former employee of Saskatoon's US Hedge Fund owned daily newspaper, who used to write editorials for the daily where he didn't hesitate to castigate locals his sensationalizing rag vilified for ill-founded reasons but would never castigate the warmongering, propagandizing and fake news of his own rag, penned an opinion piece blaming Saskatchewan and Alberta's Premiers for "fueling the corrosive politics of division and alienation that threaten to tear apart Canada."

Talk about deplorable victim blaming. The former Saskatoon daily editorial writer has once again gotten things so, so wrong.

Anyone still living in Saskatchewan and having any sense of loyalty to the province and its citizens, and anyone wishing to honour the memory of their ancestors who chose to live and settle here and were forced to depart because of the Great Depression, horrible federal agricultural policies, or the moribund Saskatchewan economy, should demand as their precondition for continuing to call themselves Canadian, as opposed to joining the Wexit movement, that Trudeau, who has issued countless apologies on behalf of Canadians to various individuals and groups and generous cash payouts, for wrongs real and imagined, apologize to the people of Saskatchewan for the very real crimes federal governments of various stripe have committed against them since the province was founded and:

1. Terminate Canada's Equalization formula which in the last 20 years has allowed Canada's Liberal and Conservative federal governments to give Quebec and through it Ontario, more than 250 billion dollars more than has been given to the four western Canadian provinces combined. Ending the formula will remove a major source of western Canadian grievance. More than that, termination will increase system democracy because it will encourage people to move to more resource rich areas rather than to continue to reside in Quebec and Ontario, provinces whose populations already dominate this country numerically -- and politically. Most importantly, this migration will be environmentally beneficial. Shipping oil and gas by rail or pipeline takes energy and is fraught with difficulty and danger. People should move where the resources are to minimize the risk and cost.
2. Create a high speed rail link/loop between Saskatoon, Kenaston, Regina, Medicine Hat, Calgary, Red Deer, Edmonton, Lloydminster and North Battleford that is double tracked so the trains can move both directions. This region is North America's most geologically stable area and therefore most suited for a high speed train. This rail link/loop will be great for the environment because it will significantly reduce motor vehicle and air traffic between these cities. Being the only high speed rail link in North America will also serve as a major tourist draw and make the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan more of a destination for immigrants.
3. Use federal social housing dollars to allow home owners to repair and rebuild the many abandoned homes dotting the prairie landscapes because of the farms killed by the federal governments' short term thinking, economically disastrous and environment damaging agricultural policies and the abandoned homes in the ghost towns and villages that rural depopulation engendered. Use some more of those dollars to encourage retirees from other provinces to move to Saskatchewan in order to lower their housing costs and thereby create housing unit availability in those provinces, selling the retirees on Saskatchewan's beautiful hot summers, living skies and star and Aurora Borealis filled nights. To make Saskatchewan's harsh winters tolerable for past and new residents alike money should also be deployed as infrastructure spending to create more indoor facilities -- recreational and fitness with commercial shops - similar to the facility in Churchill, Manitoba,
4. Stop the capital drain from Alberta to Ontario and Quebec so it can help foster development closer to home, like Saskatchewan. This goes hand in hand with #3.
5. Use federal education funding power to force the University of Saskatchewan to bring its intellectual property policies more into line with those of universities in other provinces and states so intellectual property creators studying/working at the University of Saskatchewan get intellectual property rights in the intellectual property their work/study helps create. This will give the creators input into how the results of this work is licenced to companies in the private sector and to whom this intellectual property is licenced. Most importantly it will provide these creators with sources of revenue if the creators wish to continue to carry on business in Saskatchewan outside the university environment.
6. Stop wasting so much money on policing and criminalization and incarceration as this creates and perpetuates an impoverished, alienated and unemployable criminal underclass and diverts precious dollars to the mainly US based policing and surveillance tech industry and direct more funds to businesses that will employ impoverished youths, including and especially aboriginal businesses.
7. Compensate the Saskatchewan government for all the spending the Saskatchewan government* was forced to do to support off reserve native people when the federal government was unlawfully neglecting and refusing to fulfill their BNA act responsibilities to Canada's and Saskatchewan's first nations people by supporting them at a suitable living standard.**
8. Compensate the Saskatchewan government for all the police and justice system costs that flowed from the federal government's unlawful and immoral refusal -- this went on for decades and decades -- to fulfill its BNA act responsibilities to support native people at a suitable living standard when the people moved "off reserve".
9. Compensate the Saskatchewan government for all the money Saskatchewan had to spend on highway and grid road repair after the federal government allowed Canada;s railways to abandon their branch lines as they saw fit, moving goods transportation traffic from efficient and optimal for the environment railways to polluting, green-house gas emitting, road damaging, dangerous semi-trailers.
10. Compensate the first nations people resident in Saskatchewan who were forced to "move off reserve" for all the suffering and hardship they were forced to endure and experience when the federal government unlawfully and immorally neglected and refused -- again, this went on for decades -- to fulfill its BNA act responsibilities to support native people at a suitable living standard when the people moved "off reserve". This suffering and hardship was every bit as bad as the suffering and hardship caused by the Residential Schools debacle and the often abject poverty it engendered provided sometimes well-meaning but racist social workers with the rational they needed to apprehend and adopt out children, in the suffering and hardship inducing, 60's scoop debacle.***
11. Compensate the Saskatchewan farmers whose farms lost their viability when the Federal government allowed the railways to close all their branch lines and force the farmers to incur more expenses to get their product to market
12. Compensate Saskatchewan farmers whose farms lost their viability when the Federal government double compensated eastern Canadian and British CPR shareholders by killing the Crow Rate, a statutory freight rate for hauling grain that many farmers depended on and made their operational plans around, and a rate that like the treaties the federal government signed with various Indian people, were promised to last forever -- in perpetuity.
13. Compensate the Saskatchewan government, and Saskatchewan people, for all the economic harm that was caused to them by Pierre Trudeau's National Energy Policy.
14. Compensate the Saskatchewan government and Saskatchewan people for all the economic harm that was caused to them by Steven Harper's decision to kill the Canadian Wheatboard and sell its assets to Saudi Arabia for pennies on the dollar.

If what was done to Omar Khadr in a US prison warranted an apology by Trudeau on behalf of all Canadians and a compensatory award of 10 million dollars, and if an apology and awards of 200 million dollars to former female RCMP employees because they were sexually harassed -- one of many new feminist words and phrases vilifying male sexual reproductive behaviour that wasn't even perceived to be wrong more than thirty years ago -- by male RCMP officers at work were warranted, what has been done to Saskatchewan warrants an apology and a compensatory award of 1 trillion dollars.

Central Canadians, you owe the people of this province big time for the crimes against its people that Canada's Federal governments have committed for your benefit. Pay up and let the good times roll. Let's finally get Saskatchewan to 2 million inhabitants --, only 98 million fewer than the geographically smaller Philippine Islands -- and then five million inhabitants -- only 3.5 million fewer than landlocked and much geographically smaller Switzerland.

* Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta have the most citizens with native ancestry. However, Manitoba is the only Canadian province that has a higher percentage of its population with native ancestry than Saskatchewan. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/canadian-provinces-and-territories-by-indigenous-population.html
** The BNA doesn't speak to how well the Federal government had to treat Canada's First Nations people and the living standards that needed to be afforded to them. Much of the Canadian confederation enterprise was about occupying land the First Nations people formerly made use of at the least possible cost -- which meant giving them as little as possible in return. However, because Canada signed various United Nations human rights conventions after world war two this duty on the part of the Federal government has existed since the signing of these conventions.
*** Residential school abuse was another significant causal factor behind 60's scope apprehensions. Psychologically damaged, self-medicating on intoxicants parents who were unable to hold down jobs, and love and properly care for their children, often left the children in danger and living in squalor. Of course, had the federal government not been unlawfully neglecting its constitutional obligations, the number of children perceived to be in need of apprehension, would have been reduced.