To: Canada From: Alberta

Dear Canada,

We want to wish you an early happy birthday!

While your actual birthday isn’t until Monday, we were too excited to wait – how old are you now, 152?

You don’t look a day over 150.

Here’s your present – and just as you asked for, we got you cash. $22 billion, in fact.

We’ve noticed that you really seem to like it when we give you cash. We gave you cash last year, too. And the year before that. And the year before that too.

In fact, we’ve given you more than $600 billion since 1961 – and honestly, we’re feeling a bit tapped out.

Especially since you and many of our brother and sister provinces don’t seem to want our other gift: ethically and environmentally responsibly produced oil and gas.

We really don’t understand why you seem to prefer oil from places like Saudi Arabia or Venezuela – who commit human rights atrocities regularly – instead of using oil produced by your fellow Canadians?

It’s been a tough few years here in Alberta. We’ve been struggling to pay our bills and make ends meet, and a lot our citizens are out of work.

Using more of our oil here in Canada would be a great start to fixing some of those problems.

We also don’t understand why you won’t let us get our resources to international markets by letting us build new pipelines.

The money we earn from selling our resources to other countries helps us earn the cash that we send you each and every year. It’s in your best interest to help us sell more oil at a better price!

Here’s the thing, Canada.

We’re starting to get the impression that we’re not your favourite – or even that you particularly like us.

And that makes us sad, because we’ve always been proud to be part of Canada, and we’ve gladly stood up and paid our fair share when asked, because we believe that Canada is the greatest country on the planet.

So on Monday, when you’re out celebrating your birthday and spending our gift (don’t spend it all in one place!), we’d be grateful if you’d take a few minutes to think about our province and how you could help us – we’d suggest putting Quebec and BC in a timeout until they realize that it’s time to stop pouting over our pipelines.

Happy birthday – and with love,

Alberta

PS. Could you actually wait until Tuesday to cash that $22 billion? We’re a little short this week.

Categorised in: Canadian News