Well the numbers are in. I wrote an editorial a few weeks ago regarding my disgust with Jason Kenny and waffling on the coal issue to the point he created a survey allowing Albertans a say on the future of resource extraction in our pro resource province.

From the public outcry I assumed that there would be hundreds of thousands of respondents, perhaps even a million. Imagine my surprise when only 24,572 people responded to the survey. If you do the math that’s 0.5566278% the population of Alberta. You read me correctly just over half a percent of the population of this great province answered the call to arms. I’ve tried to figure this out but my question is, when a number is this small is it actually statistically insignificant? I think it just might be.

The demographic breakdown is as follows: from central Alberta, there were 8,000 responses, from southern Alberta there were 13,000, from northeast Alberta there were 403 and northwest Alberta there was 589, you have to love northern Alberta whose bread and butter is resource extraction.

When the Old Man Regional Planning Commission was updating our Municipal Development Plan they conducted a survey for the community and one of the questions was “Can Tourism and Mining Co-exists”. 70% of the respondents said yes. 700 people responded to a survey in a community of approximately 5600 people, which is 15%. I based my decision on supporting coal extraction based on the will of the people that took the time to respond to the most important document the municipality owns, the future development plan of the community.

How can the government even take this survey seriously? Even if two thirds of the respondents were anti-coal that’s approximately 16,381 people or 0.374773% of our population. I think they can note their concerns, send lovely letters about how science trumps conjecture and call it a day.

The opponents of this project keep talking about short term benefits of a mine, a 23-year life of mine plan is short term? The mines in the Elk Valley have been operating since the 1960s and no end is in site. Why, because new ways to make steel are not in the imminent future! The proponents also talk about a few jobs. Using Teck’s ratio of direct to indirect jobs, 400 direct and 1100 indirect, that would represent a payroll alone of 128 million a year. (400 @ $100,000k a year and 1100 @ $80k a year) even if that’s only half it would still be a huge boost to our local economy.; add in federal/provincial tax rate of 40% a boost to maintaining all the government programs we cherish.

So I’ll end this saying that I felt like doing a victory dance when just over 0.5% of the population of Alberta filled out a survey. With the public outcry from musicians, ranchers, environmentalists and sudo-scientists I feel like the rational people of Alberta have spoken. It always seems to be those who agree that are the quietest, while those against pound the drum with outcry. I suppose the people have in fact spoken in the fact that they didn’t really respond at all.

I hope Mr. Kenny listens to the 99.4% of Albertans who say the coal issue isn’t an issue for them at all. Perhaps they have bigger fish to fry like surviving in a country that’s so in debt there will be nothing to fix it but another tax hike. Perhaps an extra 128 million-payroll income increase in a year isn’t a bad thing. Perhaps they understand that Alberta is a resource extraction province and that’s how we support the rest of the country through transfer payments. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

I can’t begin to think what is going through their minds, but I assure you with so little respondents to the coal survey it certainly isn’t the coal issue in the Crowsnest Pass. So I say listen to the concerns of approximately 16,000 people, acknowledge them and lets move forward to prosperity in southern Alberta.

It’s about time our neck of the woods had something they could clap about and do our share in the prosperity of Alberta both north and south. What a great day I had when I found out about how few people really cared about our coal issue.

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