Shop never close even when it's slow
How many pipelines to tidewater does a gal have to buy to form a majority around here?
If you have or are thinking about having kids, consider not living in Alberta.
Imagine your life with kids. Conventionally you’re looking at two adults with full-time employment, theoretically eight hours per day but probably more, and kids in some kind of care during business days. Recently the Death Machine Guard were asleep at the wheel and some crumbs fell off the Wealth Spewer into the Prole Cage in the form of subsidized daycare. Such glorious vittles we’ve never seen, and for a moment it looked like We could get a pace or two ahead of the Reaper.
Or so I thought. As usual, the daycare cash was just some mud and paint over a closet-sized hole in the drywall. Stick a finger in it and the fix sags, as any seasoned parent could have told me. Hell, I could have figured it out myself if I went putting my nose into documentation of my future misery. But who wants to spend a Friday night like that?
The subsidized daycare is rational - hours to match your work day, come grab your kids, shove some calories in them, and wrestle them through bedtime like a young Linda Blair. Then the kids make a critical error - they age. Around five they go to kindergarten. Even less expensive, but the care goes from around eight hours per day to four or less. Worse, those half days do not include Fridays which, last I checked, most employers count toward a full work week. What the fuck do you do now?
Add to that misery the misery of your teacher comrades. Their unions, operating with occasional excellence, can’t get concessions on class size so they spackle over those cracks by winning more Professional Development days. Completely necessary - if you jam 45 kids into a (my) grade 11 English class they might expect some grades at the end of it. Those essays explaining that Moby Dick is actually a metaphor for Insta clout won’t read themselves. Those days off aren’t covered with a statutory holiday, so I hope you have some flexible childcare and the cash to pay for it.
All the sudden the number of monthly hours a five year-old is in some sort of childcare in Alberta plummets for one very stupid year, right when everything is just starting to normalize. Maybe your post-maternity leave career is just getting back on track and then the Calgary Board of Education domes you from two kilometers like a bureaucratic Chris Kyle. Of course you can always pay for private kindergarten (not subsidized in any way) or try to collect some subsidy pennies for after-school care. Enjoy three month processing times and updating the government every time you sneeze lest you incur clawbacks
Even these indignities are non-uniform. Seemingly nine-in-ten Calgary schools have this part-time scheme while some lottery-winning-ass parents are situated near the half-dozen or so schools that have full-time programs. This is in stark contrast to British Columbia and other, cooler provinces that feature full-day public programs. Live in Alberta? Spring for private kindergarten at the low, low price of a kidney or hope one parent can quit their jobs. Some parents I know are just opting out of kindergarten entirely.
It’s a hash of unequal programming, underfunded and crumbling buildings, underpaid staff, and widespread kneecapping of productivity and happiness that could really be the underpinning of a successful social democratic election campaign. Lots of people are parents, and a lot of parents vote. Is there anyone I can inform of these facts so they could come up with policy proposals? Is there a left-leaning party in this fucking place? I will have to do more research.
👺Not sure why the UCP bother hiding drug poisoning death statistics. They don’t care about these people and probably praise their death as cost-savings. Why not just put the numbers out?
🫀Giant dummies poised to nuke mega-dummies with dumb-dumb bombs.
💄I wonder what this province could build if we had a normal corporate tax rate.
🐖Google wants to benefit from people using Google News and other products but they don’t want to help local news to thrive. They want to keep all that ad revenue for themselves and fuck your functioning democracy. The idea on this one is sound but I’m not jumping for joy if Postmedia becomes a funnel for Google dollars to Postmedia shareholders.
🍖Canadian bread price fixing is brought to you by…the Bimbo Group? That can’t be right…
🥡Any new train is a good train.
🍸Pour one out for Sue if that wood/grippy/bussy right.
🥁100 politically significant films.
📉Labour Intensive chats with Jim Stanford about your grocery bill choking you to death.
🎧CJPME Debrief talks Palestine with an activist badass enough to stay in Jerusalem.
🔇Canada Re-Imagined assures us that all hydrogen tech won’t Hindenburg us.
🎚️The Orchard and Tech Won’t Save Us sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.
✒️On June 30th, a screening of No Visible Trauma will take place in Calgary. It’s an important film to see if you have concerns about the brutal conduct of the Calgary Police Service. You can check out our coverage of the film here, and chortle at the stupid response the CPS had during the local premiere.
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Our editor is Clinton Hallahan. Newsletter subject lines are stolen from these songs.
