I’ve been reading the opinion pieces in the Calgary Sun lately. (I know, I know, I shouldn’t. But it’s always offered to me at work, and I sometimes get a laugh out of reading it.)

There has been a lot of talk about how textbooks in Albertan schools are thrown out each year as new ones come in. I think it’s great that we have the resources to get the most up to date textbooks in our schools; it’s great for our education system! However, if it is true that these books are thrown away (Could someone please confirm it, I emailed the Calgary Board Of Education one month ago an did not get any response.), I think they could be put to much better use.

Starting within the province, we could go to other school districts that may be strapped for cash, and offer to give them better text books. This could easily be done by setting up a database on the internet. Each time a school wants to replace its textbooks, it must place the ones they want to get rid of on an online database. Other schools then can view this database and if they need any of the text books they can request to have them. This would be a great way to improve our education system in Alberta and we would also be helping out the environment at the same time. And if the text books are so obsolete that no one wants them, then we can recycle them.

This does not just need to happen within the province of Alberta only though. I know that when I was in British Columbia, we were using text books from the 70’s/80’s. If provinces could trade with each other, this program would be even better.

Sometimes the solutions are simple.

Darren Entwistle’s (Telus CEO) made 14.096 Million last year.

A minimum wage earner in Alberta made $14,560 working full time last year.

This means that the Telus CEO made 968 times the amount of money as a minimum wage earner in Alberta did. Does he really deserve it? To break it down even further, it only took the CEO of Telus nine hours to make the same amount that the minimum wage earner makes in a year. Does he really do the same amount of work in those nine hours as the minimum wage earner does in an entire year? Not to mention he makes that money even while he is sleeping, unlike the minimum wage earner.

This is corporate corruption at its worse. If the telecommunications industry were under public ownership again, the person in charge would not be making nearly as much as this. This means that more people could get hired, which means more jobs. Also, we don’t even need to shut Telus down. The government could compete with Telus. With little or no profit margin, the government could easily offer services for a lot cheaper then Telus could ever dream of. Also think of what we could use the little profit that we could make for. I can think of tons of things, starting with fixing the roofs of many schools in Calgary.

With Telus’s poor service and lack of regard for its unions, I say it’s about time we bring public ownership back to the telecommunications industry.

When I first moved to Alberta from British Columbia about three years ago, I was surprised by the school fees for high school. The total for the school year was around $400. In British Columbia my father was only paying $50/year and $25 of that was deposit that he would get back at the end of the year. Being low income at the time, that was a tough pill to swallow. (And yes, I am aware there is a waiver system. But that system is very complex, and we could not even fill out the application since we were new to Alberta and they required an Alberta Health number, which we could not get till living in Alberta for some amount of time.)

I was so concerned that I wrote to the Minister of Education with my feelings. Shortly after I received a reply stating how Alberta has the most funding per student in the entire country.

So where is this money? I compare the school fees to British Columbia. I compare the class sizes and see them much larger in Alberta. Numerous schools in Calgary have leaky roofs. Where is all this money that I am being told about?

I really think it’s time for an audit on the School Boards, and also on the cities and the province. I think Albertans will be really surprised to see what a massive audit will find.

Edited to add: Also before I moved out to Alberta, I had never heard of fundraising for school essentials. I see casinos every year at most of the schools in Calgary to fundraise for these essentials.

Alberta Energy Minister’s comment that an external review of Alberta’s oil royalties is too complex for Albertan citizens to understand is highly insulting. This government is getting way too comfortable in its seats and I think they will be really surprised after the results of the next election come out.

It seems like the Tory government thinks things can not get any better for Alberta and they’ve become complacent. Every day that Alberta clings onto the old royalty structure, Albertans are losing money and the oil corporations are getting rich! I’m here to say things can get better! There are still homeless people in our prosperous province. Our health care system is crumbling and grossly under funded. Our schools are falling a part, and school fees for elementary, junior high and high school are ridiculously high! The extra money from increased royalties could be used to eliminate these problems and there would still be cash left over. We could then use that extra money and fund the growing green energy industry in Alberta and become a world leader in sustainable energy. Of course the oil corporations will spread their propaganda through out different mediums stating that this would make all the oil companies leave Alberta because it would cost too much. This is a lie; the oil corporations are making record profits off of Albertan resources, while Albertans are getting nothing more in return.

We can do it. We have the choice. We just need to act.

I’ve been hearing a lot of talk from fellow Calgarians about having more cops in the downtown core to stop the growing drug problem. Having more police downtown will not be enough to solve this problem, actually it won’t even address it if other things are not done. It will just move the problem to another neighborhood, as seen previously in Vancouver. The homeless will still have no home and dug addicts will still be addicted and using.

What we need to do is go after the root of the problem and stop only fighting the side effects. We need to go after poverty! This can be accomplished by such things as making education more affordable, housing more affordable and implementing a living wage. Not only will these implementations prevent these problems in the future, it will also help the people presently on the street get off the street and eventually we will be able to eliminate the problem of homelessness.

There is a notion going around that I’m hearing quite a lot lately. That is, “Most people on street, choose to be on the street.” Yet when someone says this to me and I ask them to give me an example of one of these people, they can not. They later confide in me that they heard this from someone else but have absolutely nothing to back it up. Let’s stop spreading these lies and get out the facts. Stating the previously mentioned notion is just a way of not addressing the problem and taking away the guilt associated with it. But there is a better way to take the guilt away. You can take away the guilt by addressing the problem!

It may be hard work, but we will be living in a much world if we do the right thing.