Let them suck plastic

Alberta is facing an unprecedented drought in 2024, a new childcare group has organized rolling daycare closures to protest $10/day childcare, and the Premier is championing plastic straws.

Danielle Smith sips Canada Dry with a comically long straw from the comfort of the Premier’s office while farmers are encouraged to seek help for mental health concerns over the expected drought, and some Alberta parents will be without daycare services.

“Next, plastic straws…” ~ Premier Danielle Smith

Back in 2018, demand for paper straws was “off the charts” according to David Rhodes, the Global Business Director for Aardvark, at the time the only paper straw manufacturer in the U.S., (Canada’s first manufacturer started in Ontario that year) as businesses across North America sought ways to reduce demand on single-use plastics.

The move was first proposed to McDonald’s at a shareholder meeting in May 2018 which the company urged shareholders to reject as the company was already researching alternatives — and at the time, the only company that was making them was struggling to meet the 5,000% increase in demand.

Fast food chains across the continent committed to moving from plastic to paper that year, with A&W Canada leading the way north of the border. In a press conference June 8, 2018, A&W spokesperson said the straws were “compostable, sustainably sourced, and last up to three hours in a drink without breaking down”, according to The Georgia Strait.

The move was expected to keep some 80 million straws out of landfills and wherever people who don’t use garbage bins choose to throw their trash.

Prior to becoming Premier, as well as until the business sold, Danielle Smith owned a railcar restaurant with her husband in High River. Smith once told an anecdote about how the drinks they served at the restaurant ate through paper straws at such a fantastical rate they had to provide “four paper straws because they get so destroyed”.

We’ll just suppose the premier preferred to buy the super-compostable straws that degrade in minutes, rather than hours.

Under the obsessive focus of Smith, Alberta has continued to fight the federal government’s proposed single-use plastics ban that came into effect in 2022, but the outcome is moot for many companies already committed to net zero.

As most governments scramble to keep up with the pace of business, Alberta’s government puts its feet up, encouraging local business owners to instead pull their shades to the big bad world changing around them.

Danielle Smith’s UCP; the government that’s really — cross their hearts — here to help.

“The federal government must respond to the concerns of these operators.” ~ Premier Danielle Smith

The Association of Alberta Childcare Entrepreneurs are enacting rolling childcare closures in protest of long waits for (provincial) government reimbursement of the $10 day childcare program that they say doesn’t cover increased operational costs of (provincial) utilities and food when it is received.

Certainly, the UCP has yet to show any reluctance to fund businesses with public dollars — until a large part of the population stands to benefit, apparently.

The federal-provincial funding agreement was signed in 2021, with a funding commitment of $6 billion from the federal government and the understanding that the province would contribute to costs for parents as well.

In 2021, however, Alberta was rolling around in multi-billion dollar surpluses from oil and gas royalties, or as Danielle Smith noted during her leadership campaign in 2022, “a structural deficit of $8 billion”.

After barely holding onto government in the 2023 general election, the UCP caucus tabled the Protecting Conservatives in Alberta Act (PCAA) — formally known as the Taxpayer Protection Amendment Act — to ensure tax increases can never be used as fodder to topple a conservative dynasty again.

As Alberta’s surplus hopes look set to wane in 2024, Smith points Albertans once more to hold the federal government to account for forcing former-Children’s Services Minister Rebecca Schulz’s to sign the agreement three years ago.

Despite being the Minister who negotiated the deal, the former Minister’s social media has been scrubbed with any reference to the event. So, there’s this.

“What we were looking for was the flexibility childcare providers and parents were looking for. We got the flexibility we were looking for. Minister Gould is right, we’re not willing to leave $3.8 million on the table… we have the flexibility to create over 40,000 spaces.”

“It’s a societal issue; not an environmental one.” ~ Assistant Deputy Minister of Environment Stacy Smith on the coming drought, obviously filling in for the ADM of pretty much any other department who could better make that claim.

On top of a predicted reduction in government revenues in 2024, the province is preparing for an extreme lack of water, which is an “us” problem, to be sure, but I’m not yet convinced droughts have no effect on the environment.

I’m not a scientist — or a highly paid Assistant Deputy Minister for a science-y kind of government ministry — though.

At a telephone town hall few people knew about, Minister Ric McIver admitted he would be willing to sacrifice his lawn for the cause, adding government may infringe on Albertans’ freedoms by having them reduce consumption and consider installing environmentally conscious products within their own homes.

I suppose we should prepare to be flooded with photos from anti-mandate types splashing around in their backyard pools and showing off their overflowing toilet bowls this summer.

“Approach: Plan for extreme drought; hope (society comes through to provide) for snow and rain”.