Question for Canadians: is demanding/insisting/fearing that various people will "freeze in the dark" if energy policy X comes to pass a phrase people regularly use elsewhere in the country? Or is that an Alberta regionalism?
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I’ve only heard of it as a weird Alberta thing which is part of why it was such a surprise on moving to Edmonton from Montreal that energy is so much more expensive here. I can’t get over it! I miss HydroQuebec’s rates something terrible.
I was just staying with a friend in Ontario and her electricity rates are so much higher than mine here?? But also they have on and off peak times?? I have no idea how any of this works or relates to other provinces.
Ontario privatized under Mike Harris. In Quebec, hydro is a crown corporation. Me and my partner moved here a year and a half ago and constantly joke about the bills being much higher and there being fewer and crappier services as the being the Alberta advantage.
Pretty sure it was Ralph Klein who said that in the early 80’s (“let the eastern bastards freeze in the dark“), as I recall. Eastern Canadiens were also referred to as “blue eyed sheiks”.
First time I heard it was in some sort of dispute, I think about a pipeline, between the Gulf states and some New England states. Must have been some 50 years ago.
A slogan embraced by Albertans but not originating with them. It predates Ralph Klein's provincial political career by a decade, coming out of the National Energy Policy debates of the early 1980s. It may have actually been coined by the Yale economist Paul W. MacAvoy around 1981.
the few times I've heard it outside the phrase "let the eastern bastards freeze in the dark", it was clearly used with a nod to that saying's history. (Northern Ontario here)
I live in BC and I've never heard it. Thousands of people who can't afford a place to live freeze in the dark every night and our governments do not seem concerned with preventing that.
Sfaik, it is somewhat unique to Alberta (there were bumper stickers made with that phrase). The only other instance I can recall hearing of is when Ford threatened to cut off energy exports to the US a few months ago.
So. That is the widely-held belief, yes. However, after today I think I'm a truther?? The amazing Star librarians say they can't find any record of him actually saying it, just that he didn't mind being associated with it. There is ref from an American saying it in the 70s. It might be apocryphal??
It was a bumper sticker slogan in opposition to the National Energy Program in the 1980s. I'm sure Ralph Klein said those words at some point in his life (maybe at several points) but he didn't coin the phrase.
There are SO many stories crediting Klein! Also between that and "god, give me one more oil boom and I promise not to piss it away," bumper stickers were really on it like 40 years ago.
Which is so funny because Ontario was always a have province and never complained about equalization. We were happy to help other provinces. When you're 40% of the national GDP, things necessarily centre around Ontario, but it wasn't a thing people actually thought about.
I think most people can't comprehend that equalization comes from the federal government, which means there isn't some magical ledger where money is siphoned from one province and handed to another province like they're separate bank accounts. We're taxed as Canadians, not provincial residents.
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I thought it was a quote by... someone? But both Mary Janigan and John English attribute it to the bumper stickers.
Who's surprised it's o&g ppl?
Do the fumes go to their heads?
But I'm kind of a freak for collecting random Canadian politics trivia.