Enough with the regulations and redtape!

As most Canadians go through their day to day life the last thing on their minds is the ever existing, non relenting government creep into our daily lives. Unfortunately, it creeps along taking our freedom a small bit at a time, not enough to raise a red flag, but there none the less. Like rats, one is just the first and before you know it your home is infested. Now the really insidious part of it is that it comes from all directions, from all levels of government, and seldom shows any indication of where it will lead say a decade down the road.

The underlying cause of all of this is that by default one of a governments main functions is to regulate. Think about it, at the end of the day once you set aside the most obvious top of the pile government duties like defense and such, what's left but regulation. Every level of government, civic, provincial, and federal all are at work continuously to rewrite, enhance, and create new regulations. Add to that the fact that with every change of government the "new guys" have to prove they can do better than the "old guard" by making changes to existing, trashing the old, writing new, or just being creative and making a crisis out of something that was never regulated before.

Think about it, what restrictions and regulations have been brought into place in just the last ten years? What regulations affect your daily life?

Government has gone from serving the people, to supervising the people. Canadians are now wards of the state, for the most part viewed as irresponsible individuals who have to be taken care of from cradle to grave, and told how to behave in society. Government regulation takes from our pockets as surely as taxes do, but regulations typically do it under the radar. Every product or service that you purchase almost certainly has regulations attached to it, regulations that incur costs for the provider, manufacturer, wholesaler, retailer, and in many cases all of them at differ points in the path to the end user, which are in turn passed onto you as the consumer. So, just how bad is it?

Water, Water everywhere but not a drop to .....

For those of you not familiar with the city of Edmonton (which is about about 99% of the known world) here are a few facts about the city. Located on the North Saskatchewan River the city is the capital of the province of Alberta (yes readers, the capital of Alberta is on the North "Saskatchewan" River....strange but true) and the province's second-largest city. Situated in the Canadian prairie's the surrounding geography is pretty uninspiring, mostly flat with the nearest mountains located in the Jasper region, about a 3 1/2 hours drive northwest of the city. From a tourism point of view our cities main claims to fame are undoubtedly, West Edmonton Mall one of North Americas largest shopping centers, and during the summer months a large number of music and cultural festivals that draw tens of thousands are held within the city. The winters are harsh and long (October through April)  most years with temperatures at times dropping as low as -40 at the worst of times.

So to say that Edmonton is not a tourist hot spot is not unreasonable, but by the same token many of us view Edmonton as home and would not live anywhere else by choice. Over the years attempts have been made to make our city more interesting (some successful, some still in the works, and some just plain laughable). One of these attempts made back in 1980 was the creation of a "waterfall" on one of the bridges that cross the river. Although the term "waterfall" may be a bit of a stretch in describing a long pipe fitted with sprinkler heads,(hey its Edmonton remember). Now before you decide this falls into the "laughable" category consider this, Edmonton is not blessed with a lot of natural wonder and this particular man made one draws thousands of spectators every-time it is fired up, which is typically 3-4 times a year. Here's a video of Great Divide Waterfall in all of its glory (sorry for the short commercial at the front)

Apparently this "iconic" piece of Edmonton may have seen its last days. Why? Well in large part simply due to government regulation, or more to the point conflicting regulation between different levels of government.