Can we take a minute to talk about how messed up Alberta's opinion media landscape is and how it consistently gives a platform to extreme far-right positions
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This piece by Danielle Smith is absolutely breathtaking. In it she argues for we should abolish all universal social programs - healthcare, education, old age security etc etc. "Maybe none of our programs should be universal," she says globalnews.ca/news/4210573/d…
She makes the argument that anyone making above $300,000 a year should have their own healthcare system, their own university, their own private schools, their own child care etc etc.
The final paragraph is simply amazing in its hatred of the poor and the people despicable enough to not want to be bankrupted by sending their kids to subsidized daycare, having their gallbladder removed or daring to drop their kids off at a well run public school. 
This is well outside the norm and is the type of libertarian wet dream stuff you see on r/Libertarian.
But here she is writing columns for Global and running a call-in radio show five times a week. She has a massive platform to spout off her marginal views.
Or check out this amazing piece by Jack Mintz in the Financial Post. business.financialpost.com/opinion/jack-m…
The final sentence bends reality back onto itself. " Economists should stick to talking about the various trade-offs, not their personal value judgments, and let voters decide what they want." After he just spend several hundred words making the case that flat taxes are good.
And to be clear flat taxes are bad for anyone not making more than $126,000 a year - which guess what - constitutes the vast majority of Alberta. Flat taxes are a massive tax giveaway to the rich couched in the language of "fairness"
Progressive taxation, that is where we tax the rich at higher rates the more money they make, is one of the single best policy tools ever created to make sure we don't end up back in the whole lord-serf arrangement.
Or here we have Rob Breakenridge arguing from his perch in the Calgary Herald about Alberta's "excessive bubble zone law." I could spend a few minutes arguing how terrible this is but I'll let Lauren Dobson Hughes take the wheel
These were all published in the last 24 hours and they are all incredibly doctrinaire, hard right wing positions. Abolish universal social programs, flat taxes are amazing, let anti-abortion protesters harass people accessing healthcare. That are far far outside the mainstream.
But even though I believe the vast majority of Albertans don't agree with these extreme far right positions these voices and views are given a consistent platform in Alberta's opinion media landscape.
A consistent effort has been made to turn Alberta into this conservative heartland. The media buy into this narrative most of all. The trouble is that conservative ideas are bad for the vast majority of Albertans.
It turns out people don't want to be bankrupted when they have a serious medical issue that takes them to the hospital. They won't want to spend another mortgage payment on sending their kids to daycare. They want to send their kid to a good public school.
There are writers and commentators out there who can convincingly make the case that universal social programs are in fact good and that flat taxes are, you know, terrible. But they're nowhere to be found in mainstream media.
I've long toyed with the idea of building a news and opinion hub for progressives in Alberta. A Tyee for Albertans. I think it's needed now more than ever as the provincial election in 2019 looms in the future. If that's something you're interested in, my DMs are open.
