GeorgeBellsPurpleAss

Opinion: Alberta’s water reckoning: Conservation is now an economic imperative edmontonjournal.com/opinion/column…

To Mark Carney & Those Applauding Him: I am a Canadian paying for a country that doesn’t include me. I live in the part of the country your map forgets. About 2,600 kilometres from the nearest stop on your proposed $90 billion train. I am an overtaxed, under-served Canadian. I heat my home with rising costs. I fill my vehicle at almost $2 a litre, depending on the day and my luck. I watch a country with 163 billion barrels of oil behave like it’s on a meagre allowance. And you want me to pay for a train I will never use. How thoughtful. I am a hard-working, falling-behind Canadian funding infrastructure I will never touch. It runs roughly 800 to 900 kilometres, depending on how creatively it detours around reality, from Toronto to Quebec City. Seven stops. All neatly contained within Ontario and Quebec. Top speed, 300 km/h. National reach? Let’s just call it selective. I am a Canadian treated like a revenue stream, invited only by invoice. Roughly $90 billion. About $8,000 per household. For a ticket I will never hold. From where I sit in Saskatchewan, your high-speed rail corridor might as well be interstellar travel. Two thousand plus kilometres away circling the station, and still billing me. I am a Canadian bereft of a stop on this train. Close enough to fund it. Far enough to never use it. I am an overextended, nickel-and-dimed Canadian. I am fixing my own road access. Paying more for groceries. Driving farther for basic services. And now funding new infrastructure for people who already have airports, highways, and existing rail. At this point, I would settle for a train that delivers affordable groceries. No need for 300 km/h. Just cost-saving reliability. I am a Canadian squeezed by government-made inflation, where every errand costs more than it did last week and every explanation from you sounds rehearsed. I am a Canadian quietly recalculating the future, trying not to downgrade my retirement to a leaky camper on wheels, while the country accumulates debt it cannot repay and prints money to pretend it can. I am a rural Canadian watching how this works. Not on my land. Not this time. But close enough to understand the mechanism. Because an 800 plus kilometre corridor does not meander politely. It cuts. Straight. Fast. With purpose. Through farmland. Through properties. Through communities. I am a watchful Canadian taking note of precedent. Survey stakes. Expropriation powers. “Public interest” to be explained after. It is not my yard today. But it is someone’s. And tomorrow, it will be called "necessary" for something larger. Something urgent. Something climate-related. Something that cannot wait. I am a wary Canadian noticing how easily "necessity" is declared to match your agenda. And how quickly my rights become flexible once it is declared. I am an observant Canadian with a long memory for names. And somehow, the same SNC-Lavalin lineage Canadians were told to forget is back, rebranded as AtkinsRéalis, positioning itself for one of the largest public contracts in Canadian history. A remarkable comeback. Truly. No apology tour. Just a new logo and a larger taxpayer subsidized opportunity. Seems history doesn’t repeat. It follows a predictable pattern. I am an unimpressed Canadian watching familiar #Lavscam players return under reimagined branding. The script is the same. Only the cover has changed. I am an exasperated Canadian you included in your sales pitch. I am told it will create 50,000 jobs. I am told it will add $35 billion to GDP. And I am sure it will. In the corridor. Where the stations are. Where the density is. Where the benefit is. I am a shunned Canadian excluded from the outcome. Included in all the arithmetic. Excluded from all the access. I am a cynical Canadian being told this is nation-building. Though the nation appears to exist along a very specific set of coordinates. I am the depleted Canadian who: Reads grocery receipts like an audit. Choreographs fuel stops around paydays not plans. Measures distance in cost, not kilometres. I am an overburdened, last-in-line Canadian. Essential when it is time to pay. Optional when it is time to benefit. I am an impoverished Canadian whose citizenship now resembles a pre-authorized debit agreement. The withdrawals are national. The benefits are regional. I am an exhausted, overlooked Canadian. You’re not building this for me or my family. You're just sending me the bill. Signed, Your most reluctantly reliable revenue stream, Melanie in Saskatchewan

Canada, China sign pledge in Beijing to deepen financial-sector ties theglobeandmail.com/politics/artic…