People who don’t know country music like to joke it’s all about pickup trucks, but that’s not true. As the owner of box sets by Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, George Strait and Bob Wills, I can tell you it’s also about drinking, broken hearts and Mama. Not as many dogs as you’d think.
The bond between a boy or girl and their truck is special. Ask any singer from Gretchen Wilson to Garth Brooks. To get the real, low-down truth, money.co.uk, a British website comparing prices for financial services, did what any good accountant would. It ran the numbers.
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There is a big difference between being stupid and simply not paying attention. That’s a lesson that the UCP government has yet to learn as they try and grope their way out of an entirely unnecessary coal mess of their own making.
Albertans are not stupid. And in the wake of a grim and unpleasant Christmas season during which many things became clear, we are definitely paying attention.
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Try refreshing your browser, or Opinion: Opening Rockies to coal mining has got Albertans attention Back to video
It began on a Friday before a long weekend, as so many bad things do. On May 15, 2020, the Kenney government released an Information letter that advised anyone paying attention that the province’s Coal Development Policy, in effect since 1976, would be rescinded effective June 1. Very few of us, however, were paying attention. We were worrying about our families during a pandemic. Maybe that was the plan.
iPolitics By Kelsey Johnson. Published on Jan 19, 2021 11:44am Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau (Matthew Usherwood/iPolitics)
Here’s today’s agriculture news.
The Lead
The federal government has told its provincial counterparts they have until the end of January to respond to Ottawa’s proposed changes to the AgriStability risk-management program, which farmers say is in desperate need of reform.
As Real Agriculture reports, Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia are on board with the proposal, while Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba have not yet indicated their support. Under Ottawa’s proposal, Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau would drop the reference margin limit and increase the compensation rate under AgriStability from 70 to 80 per cent. The proposal was made during the annual meeting of federal, provincial, and territorial Agriculture ministers, which was delayed until November because of the pandemic.
This case is not about an unlawful exercise of government power, she argued earlier Tuesday. This case is about the government s ability to create and dictate policy based on economic, social, political and other relevant factors.
Southern Alberta ranchers and area First Nations are attacking the government s decision to revoke a coal policy from 1976 that blocked development on some parts of the eastern slopes of the Rockies and tightly restricted it elsewhere. The policy was quietly revoked without consultation by Energy Minister Sonya Savage last May.
Burkett, saying there is nothing to review, argued the policy was not rooted in legislation or regulation.
CALGARY As public outcry grows over the dramatic expansion of coal leases along the previously protected foothills, Energy Minister Sonya Savage tried to ease tensions this week. But critics say the announcement affects a tiny fraction of the more than 400,000 hectares opened to strip mining last May. The change in policy removes nearly 45 years of protection under the Alberta Coal Policy of 1976. “It means nothing,” says High River Mayor Craig Snodgrass, speaking about the cancellation of 11 leases sold in December. “People that aren t watching that are mad about this. That s what this is, a play to get everything to calm down.