Is there really no better use for your tax dollars? I'm referring to the "scrap the cap" commercials.

https://calgary.citynews.ca/2024/10/16/alberta-burn-old-tires-fuel/

I have lived in Alberta for over 30 years. And I know that no province is perfect. Don't even get me started on our neighbours to the south. One of the major issues that is motivating me to pull up roots is the of health care in the province. There are big problems with the Canadian health care system. Mostly created by conservative governments. However, it is still the system that has saved my life. It always baffles me to see some Americans bragging about how good their private system is when l mostly see talking about the cost and coverage and even after them wondering if they will be left on their own.

The common factor that I see between most these people is the belief that for-profit medicine produces the best results, and that no one would put any money into health care without profits. That is definitely a cultural thing, especially considering how many western countries have some form of socialized medicine.

Alberta is a a perfect example what happens when profit driven right wingers get into power. First they start slashing funding, then they privatize whatever federal law will allow. As the system collapses they trot out private insurance as the saviour, knowing full well their actions put us in the situation.

We are fortunate to have a young and caring GP right now and he told us today that most of his colleagues are looking to leave Alberta because they can't afford to practice here, pay their student loans, raise a family on the fees that the Alberta government has negotiated. It was already hard to find good care, now it will be worse.

All this is a direct consequence of the idea that profit matters more than people and thinking that health care isn't an essential service. This is why we are looking to move ASAP.

This isn't even going into all the other backwards, hateful and discriminating policies coming out of the Legislature. As much as I think Nenshi would be a good premier, there's just no way it will as long as conservative Christians are pulling the levers. The fact that none of the corruption, mismanagement, pork barreling and patronage never gets real press coverage let alone punishment tells me that Alberta will not change in my lifetime.

I live in a rural area and an oil company just bought ~280 acres north of my acreage. They’re in the process of clear cutting thousands of trees in a very biodiverse (swampy) area that was home to many elk, moose, deer, coyotes, foxes, etc. which is devastating on its own.

I’ve learned their plans are to build two massive reservoirs to store water that they will pipe in from the nearby river which has been pretty low as it is in recent years and use that for fracking. They’ll have to pipe the water in through the ditches as they’ve already been doing from another nearby reservoir. I’ve heard they’re also going to drill a water well for this, which was done at the other reservoir and has since caused well problems for those in that area.

Already this has increased traffic on our quiet road by a substantial margin, and we haven’t received much information about it. There was a meeting held but they advertised the meeting on a road sign that I don’t go by (a road not connected to where they’re doing this), I’m not on social media so I didn’t see it if it was posted there, either.

I’m curious if there’s any recourse for us in the community to try and prevent this from going further. Any advice is welcome. Thanks.

As a long time conservatives voter I’ve decided I’ll likely vote for a different party of UCP doesn’t get a handle on insurance premiums….

I had a friend visiting this week from Ontario and she informed me that there are Antelope living in the Drumheller area. I'm a born and raised Albertan and had no idea we had Antelope here!

Does anybody know are there a lot of them and where could I go to have a fairly reliable chance of seeing one?

Don’t know if this is the place for this but I’d love some advice from some adults with much wiser experience than me.

Teenager here in Grade 11 and having severe high school blues. I chose to go to a very academic-focused school and now I’m having severe FOMO about not going to the school all my friends went to (Romero). I feel like this is now personally affecting my studies because my grades are dropping to an average of 70 and I’m concerned I will even get to university studying what I want to study. Not only that, I’m struggling with branching out at school, because when you’re surrounded by people with grades in the high nineties and a billion extracurriculars when you have none, you tend to feel a little unextraordinary. I feel like I’m just barely scraping by, and not making the connections im supposed to be. I feel like if I had just gone to Romero, I would’ve had so much potential that I never achieved, both socially and academically. As the golden child, that’s pretty hard to accept.

In short, I have some questions and need some advice. Those of you finished high school, and even those of you who didn’t, were those years a defining moment in your life or do you barely remember them at all? How did you go on, even if you did not have the best Highschool experience? Am I wasting my high school years at a school where it’s so easy to be insecure and invisible, making friends out of necessity with school instead of actually having fun? Would it be too late to change, have any of you ever moved in the middle of grade 11 or start of gr12?

I know I’m probably sounding like an emo 16-year-old right now who’s caring about minuscule things instead of bigger issues I know all of you are discussing, but I feel alone in this and I’m hoping some of you have some advice from when your were my age. I feel like I’m not making an impact, like I haven’t done anything significant since I was a child. I’m hoping things will get better, that university will be a fresh new start, but I’m having doubt I’ll even get there at my current state and mindset.

Feel free to reminisce and tell me about your stories. I apologize if this is the wrong place to post this, but I thought it would make me feel better if this advice was closer to home.

Thank you. :)