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Politics : Canadian Political Free-for-All -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Claude Cormier who wrote (4838)	4/29/2005 10:34:30 PM
From: Cogito Ergo Sum	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 37569

Union stats 2002. bcbc.com

To: Claude Cormier who wrote (4838)	5/1/2005 9:49:31 AM
From: Frank Pembleton	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 37569

Claude ... I'm living in Edmonton (originally from Timmins)-- (1) I consider myself an Albertan, (2) a North-American and (3) under torture, I might admit to being Canadian. I love it out here, would never live in the Eastern part of Canada again ... I'm all for Western separation. That said, Doing a quick internet search I found that 37% of Canadian workers are unionised, as opposed to 10% in the US - Alberta has the lowest union membership in the country at around 23% -- the Klein government has not been a friend to unions, bit by bit, law by law the conservatives have been enacting "right to work" legislation on the libertarian notion that a worker is not truly free from coercion from either unions and/or governments unless he/she can either join or quit these organisations at will. It's illegal for teachers to strike, same for nurses-- and there's also been some high profile battles between business and unions, most notably with Peter Pocklinton. As for how "libertarian" the Klein conservatives are...? just a quick observation-- to me Klein comes across as a beer drinking, peace, love, go naked kinda guy who has surrounded himself with a cabinet full of religious catholics ... there's a duality to everything that happens in this province, despite the "right-wing" label-- you can easily get an abortion, but in Edmonton (dubbed "Redmonton") you cannot get the proceedure done at a public hospital, but you can pay for one at a private clinic. Which leaves me with the impression that personal rights, as opposed to group rights, are what people in the province care about. Anyway, imho...

To: Claude Cormier who wrote (4838)	5/1/2005 9:52:19 PM
From: johnlw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 37569

Anybody from Alberta on this thread? Hi, my daughters are the 4th generation of our family on this particular piece of dirt. One set of grandparents homesteaded outside of Calgary, the others arrived in the province, rather territory at that time, at the turn of the century. I would like to know how is life in Alberta? Prosperous. Busy. Infrastructure is stretched to max in many areas. The affluence and activity of the Highway 2 corridor is spreading out. The rural lifestyle is under pressure from the oil and gas industry and from the money moving out from Calgary and Edmonton. With the recent years of drought and the BSE debacle the increased oil/gas activity is seen as a mixed blessing. As a result of all of this I am not sure if I will want to live here rurally in 10 years. For a young person starting out, wanting to "get ahead" financially I can't imagine a better place to live. What is the proportion of uionized workers? My perception is the construction end of the mega projects are predominately union as are the gov't services. I see Frank found 20% plus, less than 10% would have been my estimate. How libertarian is your conservative government? I used the Word thesaurus for libertarian and got a wide range of synonyms: tolerant, liberal, democratic, permissive, open minded. In my view it is a satisfactory level of all of the above. The more it stays in the background of my life the better. JW