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Using tax money to help NDP friends

I didn’t intend to write any more about the NDP giving out light bulbs, programmable thermostats...
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Letters to the editor

Dear editor,

I didn’t intend to write any more about the NDP giving out light bulbs, programmable thermostats and showerheads, but we find out this week that Shannon Phillips did not accept the lowest bid for this bone headed idea. She said that they had accepted a bid from an Ontario firm to save the taxpayers of Alberta money. We find out now that the bid from this company was not the lowest bid on this contract. I tried to find out who owns ECOFITT but when you look up their web page it only tells you that they have a head office in Quebec and offices in B.C. Ontario, Manitoba, and now in Alberta. It lists the president as Louis Garceau. I am not sure that you could find out who really owns the company. It has to be someone’s friend or someone who supports the NDP.

The contract was for $21.5 million and will cost $648 million over the next five years. In other words the NDP are spending money for three years after they will be in power. Most people have already done what they are preparing to do. In my house we have most light bulbs changed already and we have high efficient showerheads because we have to haul our sewer away. So far as the thermostats go, I will not have one in the house because I do not believe that you save anything by having one. First of all when you turn down the heat during the night your furnace runs longer in the morning to bring the temperature back up to normal. These thermostats also have a battery that can go dead and if you are away the house could freeze up (this happened to people we know). It could be that the NDP will be able to bug your house by installing these thermostats.

I do not think we should be paying for free light bulbs with tax money or money that is being borrowed and will have to pay interest on. Alberta’s household income dropped by 3.5 per cent in 2016. Over 81,000 jobs vanished in Alberta. NDP are bragging about 20,000 new jobs being created of which most of these are jobs in government. They will also be doubling the carbon tax in 2018. We now have over 4,000 bureaucrats working for the NDP government and the average salary is over $100,000 per year. Maybe they should be saving some of the money wasted on giving out free light bulbs and use it to pay their hired help.

Instead of try to think of more ways to get people to vote for Rachel Notley and NDP government, they should be concentrating on getting the two pipelines under way. When I worked in the oil field and they announced that they were going to build a pipeline within a week we would be working on it. Now after they announce it they seem to have to study it for a few years before anything happens. It now looks like B.C. might be going to vote in a NDP government there and they have stated that they will stop the pipeline.

So much for that outlet for our oil.

James A. Cook, Westerose