So you might have heard that Calgary is currently under heavy water restrictions due to a feeder water main suffering a catastrophic leak that flooded parts of the city, a 2m wide pipe. They initially told us to expect at least a week for repairs to be finished. But as of yesterday we learned the damage is more severe and expect another 3-5 weeks of water restrictions.
It has sucked, and the only thing that was bearable was maybe we could all better understand how to limit our use of essential resources. Well except that significant portions have refused to believe it and increased water usage. So we've been running on a thin line to barely not exceed water reserves for the city.
And the main thought going through my mind is the inability of our government to handle it because there are certain assumptions that have been made. Chiefly that we cannot allow this to impact the economy, or local businesses. So theyre exempt from the water restrictions, although several did take steps to help. Notably my employer, the largest grocery store in Canada, has been completely silent and hasn't even bothered to donate water bottles or something to help offset the water limits on people.
Any attempt to ask for the city to have businesses shut off to prevent the loss of our water has been met with a cry of liberal piggies explaining how they could not possibly survive without their paycheques... Like there is no thoughts that maybe we could just pay people to not work and they could preserve the precarious water situation by giving people an easier time? I also fully expect most of them refuse to go without brunch or fancy dinners out on the town. Treats before anything else!
Basically there is no vision for better solutions because everyone needs to work to get paid and any attempt around it is shouted down as impossible. It is further hindered of course by the Alberta provincial government being so far right wing that the very idea of even asking them for assistance is a fools errand when our premier is highly likely to promote conspiracy theories about the water main break.
This also is further proof of the failure of western powers to bother with maintaining basic infrastructure to ensure this shit doesn't happen. Supposedly the pipe was checked in April, but this is literally a pipe installed in the 1970s and so considering all the issues they're discovering (but not disclosing, which just feeds the conspiracy narrative), the maintenance has been far below sufficient to say the least. But because it is underground it is out of sight out of mind.
Sorry for the rant but nobody in my home or work wants to listen to me. And I've needed to get this off my chest and my work has conveniently given me far more hours than I can comfortably handle in the next 3 weeks so I'm not in a great state of mind.
Death to Canada.
Condolences for you being in Calgary. I'm uncomfortable with how reactionary the avg Ontarian is, so I feel bad for you.
Economics is sold as the study of how limited resources are distributed, but the neolib approach is assuming infinite growth potential, and is terrible at dealing with supply shocks like this.
Everything inconvenient is a conspiracy because there's no such thing as not having enough surplus to waste in the first world.
Idk if it's everyone having to work to get paid, or actually everyone having to work to pay landlords (corporate and residential, and banks who hold mortgages of people who "own" houses). It's crazy that Georgism as a class compromise hasn't taken off yet.
Paid, as in for rent and food and gas (because public transit in Calgary is a joke, and that's a completely different post about how shitty the city is).
I have no clue why more people aren't rioting. Shits bad and there is no hope on the horizon here. Maybe Albertans are stupid enough to think if we kick out immigrants that'll solve it rather than just create a whole new can of worms. I hate this place so much but I have no prospects of surviving without assistance of family that I have here.
I lived in Calgary for awhile after failing to find work in my east coast homeland (now in a different hellscape, southern Ontario). The average Albertan has been brainwashed into thinking that become a landlocked country is a brilliant solution to avoid some mild red tape in getting their fossil fuel shit across provincial boundaries.
Say what you will about those batshit crazy Texas secessionists, but at least their insane plan doesn't involve getting landlocked.
In my experience I don't know too many (but I do know some) who believe Alberta would stand a chance as an independent nation. But leaving the cities is like travelling into warzone of conservative ideas that just have been percolating into these highly virulent strains that divorce them from all reality. The government literally fucks them over with every decision and they just applaud until they realize they have to go to the doctor and the nearest one is Edmonton or Calgary because who the fuck want to be a small town doctor in Alberta?
How reactionary are they... they're more urbanized, relatively speaking, and thus much of the people there is proletarianized, so what gives?
(Labor aristocracy?)
The avg person can't look at the recent influx of indian immigrants without being racist. Even other immigrant groups hate the influx of cheap exploited labour. By my arbitrary estimate of talking to people not born in Canada, people become Canadianized (racist) after 2-5 years.
We're not that 'urbanized' really, more suburbanized which breeds its own brainworms that seems pretty similar to Alberta (car dependence, insane distance between stuff, horrible commutes). It also feeds into the real-estate bubble/crisis because most new builds are insanely inefficient suburban McMansion type houses that no one can afford.
Somehow most people have the politics of a hockey parent (idk where you're from, they have similar class make-up to Trump's big beautiful boaters), even if they're proles.
Everyone hates the carbon tax, the conservative premier easily buys support with refunds/tax-relief that regressively benefits the rich more than the poor. We're all primed to blame the wrong thing for affordability issues.
This is all 100% accurate I will concur. But in Alberta the Indian immigrants are mostly accepted but Sudanese and Asian (chinese specifically but anyone who looks Asian gets lumped in unless they have flawless better than Canadian English) get a huge amount of flak for showing up and taking our jobs that we refuse to do; mostly cleaning, meat packing, warehouse and trucking work. In fact some of the most racist to immigrants are people who moved most recently here and form the new recruits for the conservative party. It's like the "fuck you got mine" gets pumped into them when they clear customs or something.
Ah fuck...
If I had a nation, I would actually want to rely on these immigrants to build mines up and live in it, perhaps create some revolutionary fervor within them, so seeing them kicked to the curb is sad...
I guess there's something to my semi-joking point about trains and apartments being more necessary than ever in Canada in rea life....
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