Ralph's World received an e-mail from the Alberta Social Credit Party this morning. Below is the text of that e-mail. We have also added the Alberta Social Credit Party to our links at the right. Click away to have a look at their website.

Here's the e-mail.

Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 09:33:42 -0700

I'm writing to let you know that Alberta's Social Credit Party endorses a
higher minimum wage and the elimination of health care premiums.

Please refer to our website's platform at:
http://www.socialcredit.com/platform.htm

Ken Shipka
Executive Director
www.socialcredit.com

This is in support of two letters (click here and then here) that Alberta citizens have sent to the Premier.

Dear Mr. Klein:

As a follow-up to an earlier e-mail, as retired Albertans and on behalf of the Seniors Action and Liaison Team, we wish to suggest ten reasons why Albertans deserve meaningful tax relief through the elimination of Health Care Premiums:

1. Albertans will then join those Canadians resident in eight other provinces and the territories where Health Care Premiums do not exist.

2. As you have acknowledged publicly, Alberta is in a net debt-free financial position. Statistics Canada recently confirmed this and further reported that, as of March 31, 2003, Alberta is the only province enjoying a net-worth per capita financial position of $2,942.

3. Government estimates of a surplus of well over $2 billion for the first quarter of the current fiscal year could well result in a surplus in excess of $5 billion by the end of this fiscal year. Further, the Sustainability Fund would not be at risk as recently released figures show that fund is well ahead of schedule and will require fewer resources in future years.

4. Eliminating Health Care Premiums will also eliminate the costs of collecting those premiums – costs that have been estimated at $19 million annually.

5. Elimination of the current $4 billion plus debt, which may take place during our centennial year, will result in future savings of the 3% of budgetary expenditures for interest costs.

6. Eliminating Health Care Premiums will provide the most visible tax relief and will benefit every Albertan. Seniors, who lost many of their universal support programs, will rejoice in no longer having to pay Health Care Premiums.

7. Eliminating Health Care Premiums eliminates a regressive tax, one that particularly impacts low and middle-income Albertans. It will also yield significant benefits with respect to employment, savings and investments that will ultimately result in higher rates of economic growth.

8. Eliminating Health Care Premiums will also eliminate the inequitable situation in which some Albertans pay these premiums from their earnings and also contribute to the taxes that pay the premiums of Alberta’s provincial employees including nurses, teachers, Members of the Legislative Assembly, along with municipal employees and elected officials.

9. Eliminating Health Care Premiums will win your government as many or more votes as the electricity rebates before the 2001 election.

10. Historians will record the elimination of Health Care Premiums as a pre-centennial tax relief affecting every Albertan, a significant legacy of your government in its centennial celebrations.

Mr. Premier, can we count on your government eliminating this highly visible tax? We believe such action makes sense economically, politically and in the interests of fairness.

We are sending copies of this letter to other seniors groups and will post this letter and your response on the Ralph's World website.

We look forward to your early reply.

Most sincerely,

Michael Marlowe
John Mathewson
Seniors Action and Liaison Team

This is a copy of our letter sent to Premier Klein January 30, 2004. As is our custom we will publish the Premier's response when it is received. For a review of the Premier's responses to our previous communications click here.

Gillian Steward in the Globe and Mail: "For 10 years, Ralph tried to convince us that a U.S.-style health-care system was the way to go. But he has finally thrown in the towel."

Have a click on this article in today's Globe & Mail which gives a good summary of the last ten years of Healthcare wars in Alberta. The Premier and his privitization supporters vs. the Citizens of Alberta. Ralph's challange is daunting. He has to figure out a way to make the citizens pay more for healthcare through user fees and increased Healthcare premiums, give them less services by delisting, provide sufficient profit to his backers in the health industry, and still get the citizens to vote for him. Gillian Steward in her article thinks he has given up.

I'm not so sure. Ralph's slogan is "Ralph Listens - Ralph Cares". I agree 100% with half the slogan. He listens.

It is not at all clear for whom he cares.

Click here for Max's latest price comparisons. We can't afford electricity, natural gas, car insurance and healthcare premiums but maybe we can save a few pennies on food.

Here at Ralph's World we have a dedicated team of trolls keeping track of the Alberta government's responsiveness to our e-mails. The Klein Government has set a stringent target for themselves in responding to e-mails from concerned citizens. They aim for a response back within 72 hours. Please click here for details of government policy.

My first e-mail to Premier Klein was on November 19th, 2003. I received a response back January 14, 2004. This is 61 days or 1464 hours after I sent my first e-mail. Seems a little tardy to me. Perhaps things have slowed down a bit what with the holidays and that trip to India. What is more bothersome is the response itself which in effect said. We won't answer your questions until we know where you live.

So . . . . .

I have dispatched another e-mail which is as follows:

Dear Ms. Nelson and Premier Klein:

I have had e-mail communication with both of you recently on various issues where I have requested a response. You have replied as follows:

From The Minister of Finance

Mr. Slow,

Thank you for your comments, the Minister appreciates them. Mrs.
Nelson prefers to respond in writing. Could you please send us your
mailing address?

Thank you,

Colleen M. Potter
Constituency Assistant
Calgary Foothills

From The Premier:

Thank you for your recent e-mail addressed to Premier Klein. Please be
advised that the Premier's office requires your mailing address in order to
provide you with a further response.

It is not clear to me why you need to know where I live in order to correspond with me. You have my e-mail address which is all that should be required. As my intention is to post your responses to Ralph's World as they are received, it would be much easier if I received your answers in electronic form. This would save me considerable effort in re-typing your responses and it would save you the cost of a stamp.

Please rest assured that I am a concerned Albertan as are all others who contribute to Ralph's World. When we correspond with you publicly we do so in the belief that our questions are worthy of a public answer. If you believe our questions to be trite or naive please bear with us. We are not experts. We are just citizens looking for answers to questions that greatly affect us and our children.

I look forward to your response.

Yours truly

John Slow

Please click here to review the correspondence that we have had with the Alberta Government.

Dear Premier Klein:

Many seniors and baby boomers are becoming increasingly concerned that our government is planning further cuts to senior benefits. One persistent rumour involves the imposing of an income test for the drug prescription support program like that for health care premium subsidies.

This, notwithstanding that in factoring in the assets of the Heritage Trust Fund, our government in reality enjoys a healthy surplus, in excess of $5 billion, together with the $2 billion surplus realized during the fiscal year ending March 31.

The loss of dental, hearing and visual support programs and the exorbitant increases in energy costs, because of a flawed deregulation system that only puts more money into the pockets of the energy companies, are having a harsh impact on many seniors who are on fixed incomes. Mr. Premier, you know that 75 per cent of Alberta seniors have incomes of under $25,000 annually.

Our government seems intent on plundering still further the senior programs introduced by the previous thoughtful and caring Lougheed and Getty governments. The most recent example is the increased costs to seniors in longterm care facilities, up more than 40 per cent.

During the campaign preceding the last elections, the Tories broadly used the slogan, “Ralph Listens – Ralph Cares”. Is the continuous plundering of public benefit support programs for seniors who have contributed their tax dollars to such programs all of their working years the sign of a caring government?

The angry venting of many in the overflow crowd at the Seniors United Now rally held earlier this year attests to the discontent that has been smouldering in seniors for many years now.

Mr. Premier, we look forward to a response to this letter informing seniors whether or not the rumours that are worrying them are true. We also urge your government to assure the seniors of today and tomorrow that there will be no more reductions of support programs and that seniors can start looking forward to the restoration of some, if not all, of the support programs that have been taken away from them.

A copy of this letter has being posted at Ralph's World. In the interest of seniors in Alberta, we will be pleased to post your response as soon as it is received.

Yours truly

Lois Argue, George Daly, Michael Marlowe
Seniors Action and Liason Team - SALT

Story by Graham Thomson - Edmonton Journal - January 10, 2004: "What about the trade mission? Why was Klein leaving the province in the middle of the mad cow crisis? Klein wasn't coming out of his office. Several reporters and at least one camera crew camped outside the premier's headquarters for hours."

Have a look at this article. Graham Thomson thinks that our Premier should cancel his $64,500 trip to India and Hong Kong and stay home to handle the BSE crisis that is crippling our Province's beef industry.

Mr. Thomson, I humbly disagree.

Mr. Klein should go to India and stay there until some sort of rational solution is found for the BSE crisis. He does not help by staying at home. He does not understand the problem scientifically, statistically or politically. His latest musings call for a 100% testing of all animals slaughtered in Provincial facilities. This would guarantee that none of these animals had BSE or if they did they would not enter the food chain. So far so good. Unfortunately, none of the animals slaughtered in Provincial facilities can be exported outside of the Province. So the message Ralph sends is: "We are going to produce a supply of beef that is guaranteed to be 100% BSE free. Unfortunately it will be available only to Albertans".

As usual, a host of people (Alberta Agriculture Minister Shirley McLennan, Canadian Agriculture Minister Bob Speller, Dwayne Landals, Registrar for the Alberta Veterinary Medical Association, Marilyn Jahnke, President of the Saskatchewan Stockgrowers Association to name a few) all disagree and moved quickly to damage control mode. See this and this. But the damage is done and cannot be undone, just like the "Shoot shovel and shut up" damage could not be undone.

So Mr. Premier, take as long as you want in India. Run those tax-payer credit cards up to the max. Visit the Taj Mahal. You might even throw a pancake breakfast next to the reflecting pool. That'll impress them thar Indians. Just don't try to sell them beef Mr. Premier the way Lyle Oberg did in Vietnam (see related posting) . You see Mr. Premier, they don't do cows in India.

Bon voyage.

For more on Mad Cow from Ralph's World click here.

It appears that Mr. Klein thinks I am a "health-care junkie" because I am one of many Albertans who know and care about the health council proposed in the Romanow Report (Klein blasts health council - Journal, November 20,2003). Our Premier is quoted as saying, "Outside of the Friends of Medicare and maybe some of the health-care junkies, who knows about a health council?"

Well, I do. I know that every province except Alberta now supports it. I know that Mr. Romanow suggested it to ensure compliance with the principle of universality in the Canada Health Act. He did it to ensure some consistency in health care services across this country rather than the patchwork that will result if every province is allowed to go its own way ­as our Premier apparently wants Alberta to do.

Nor do I accept that this knowledge makes me a health-care junkie. In fact it seems to me that the term "junkie" is more appropriately applied to those who reject ideas because they came from someone else or because the idea might inhibit their freedom to do as they please on their own turf (i.e. power junkies).

I don't think Alberta has anything to fear from a national health council. We can certainly contribute some innovative ideas and, who knows, we might even learn something from other provinces. Accordingly, I invite our Premier to do the right thing and support the health council idea. After all, what is there to lose?

Noel Somerville

To: The Hon. Patricia L. Nelson
Minister of Finance
Government of Alberta

Dear Ms. Minister:

This correspondence is in regard to the poll conducted in June by Environics West regarding auto insurance. My questions are based on an article by Tom Barrett in The Edmonton Journal on January 8, 2004. The article states that the poll results to the question "Should a government auto insurance system be adopted" was 59.1% in favor of a government plan being implemented. The article then quotes you as saying "Clearly they (the respondents) were not as concerned about who was delivering the insurance package as to what the product was and did it service their needs of accessibility and affordability".

While it may be clear to yourself and others in Alberta Finance how 59.1% in favor of a government plan can be interpreted as "Clearly not being concerned about who was delivering the package", it is not clear to me. My simple interpretation would be that 59.1% would like the government to deliver auto insurance. However, I realize that I do not have access to all the information that you have.

I would gratefully appreciate answers to the following questions in order to clarify in my own mind the government approach on this issue.

1. Would you please publish all the survey questions and their results on your government website so that I can make my own judgment as to how Albertans feel about auto insurance? My assumption is that the survey was conducted using tax payer dollars as opposed to PC Party dollars and consequently this information belongs to the citizens. If I am wrong in this assumption, please let me know.

2. Would you please tell me what your government's general policy is regarding the publication of survey questions and results when polls are commissioned and paid for using tax payer dollars? It would seem to me that all polling questions and results should be made part of the public record. This would allow Albertans to make up their own minds as to what the polling results mean. This would go a long way toward strengthening democracy in this Province and would indicate your government's trust in the common sense of Albertans.

Thank you very much for your consideration of this request. I will be publishing a copy of this letter on the political discussion website know as Ralph's World and will be happy to publish your response upon receipt.

Yours truly

John Slow

Click here for status of MLA responsiveness to this and previous letters.