Author: anne | Date: September 11, 2007 | Please Comment!
Below is an excellent letter to the Premier from Calgary Mountainview resident Jason Kubke. Thanks Jason!
“Dear Premier Stelmach, honourable Rob Renner, Mel Knight and Dave Hancock, Dr. Swann,
I have written to in the past to your predecessors to express my concerns on similar issues. I feel it is again time to express my thoughts and concerns.
I’m a native Calgarian. I have lived in Calgary for 34 of my 36 years. Until recently I have very much enjoyed all of the riches and blessings that Alberta has. I feel I have done my part to make Alberta a better place to live and have been an ambassador for my city, province and country.
I feel that life has gotten out of balance recently in Alberta. The only focus seems to be economic in nature with little regard for the other elements that are important in society. Despite our recent financial wealth, I feel society in general is degrading to the point that I’m questioning whether I want to live here anymore.
homeless populations and the nature of the homeless has changed over the past 5 years. I have commuted by bike and foot to work for the past 10 years and this necessitates me walking by the Calgary Drop in Centre. In these past 5 years I have gone from never being fearful for my health and safety, to having grave concern for the safety of myself and my family. Drugs and drug deals are so common on the Bow River pathway that I no longer am shocked to see drug deals occurring, or people passed out right in the middle of the pathway.
simultaneously, despite seeing a rise in the extreme poor, I have witnessed unprecedented consumerism. Many of my fellow citizens are buying vacation properties and new vehicles to race to their weekend homes. While lip service is paid to enjoying “getting away” and “enjoying nature”, these same people disregard speed limits that are designed to protect my safety, their safety, and the safety of our wild animals and have super-sized their vehicles to get them where they’re speeding to.
Development of almost any flavour is pushed to the brink.
Oil and Gas development seems to be being pushed at all costs. Please don’t let the opportunity to revise the Oil and Gas royalty regime slip away. We seem to be in a rush to use up all of the earths natural resources but I think it would serve Albertans well financially to increase the royalties so that future generations can benefit from the current thirst for energy as well. This might also slow down activity just enough so that working class people might once again be able to afford buying a house and so we could build hospitals and other infrastructure on time and on budget.
Please don’t let greed for resource dollars eclipse society’s need for a clean environment. The older I get the more I realize that everything requires balance. What good is a healthy economy if we have polluted waterways and if every acre of our province has a hole in it pumping out the last few drops of oil and gas? Who will come to visit Alberta when we’ve destroyed its beauty? What good have we done if we don’t want our kids to walk outside because smog warnings are in effect?
Housing developments are being built at breakneck speed, but little care or attention is paid to environmental or efficiency standards. With the exception of a few developments, community planning and design continues to encourage/demand automobile use for commuting or even buying groceries. We’re packing new communities into city limits as fast as we can and people are spending more time commuting as current infrastructure was never intended to accommodate a population of this size.
I’ll try to keep this to a readable length. My main message to you all is to please work together, please work towards goals that show vision beyond your immediate elected term, please value the idea of BALANCE when designing policies.
I thank you for the work you’ve done and I hope you’ll take my words and concerns to heart. ”
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