By Sniffles
For years now, we cats have wondered why HR recruiters at major US corporations haven't been speaking up more about the horrible laws that Republicans are passing in red states. How is it possible that businesses are convincing great talent from across the country to live and work in places where it's hard for them to vote? Where they can't enjoy reproductive freedom? Where they can't be sure their kids will be safe in school, from either COVID or guns?
Sooner or later, this has got to catch up with them. If you were a talented millennial or Gen Zer, a single person or a young woman of color, why would you want to take a job in the theofascistocracies of Tennessee, Texas or Florida, just to name a few? No, thanks.
Until then, it's discouraging that more corporations haven't spoken out about, for example, Texas's vile new abortion law. But we cats are sure that at some point in one of our nine lifetimes, this recruitment problem will become a thing. How do we know? Just look north.
The Canadian province of Alberta, like Texas, is conservative oil-and-gas land. Alberta has boomed in the past, but things have been pretty rough there lately: a faltering energy sector, high unemployment, Canada's second-highest per capita rate of COVID-19 infections, and provincial leaders who tend to go on glamorous vacations abroad when constituents at home are hurting. Premier Jason Kenney, in fact, just spent more than three weeks in France, incommunicado during his province's latest coronavirus emergency. It's a pattern.
The result? A lot of people don't want to live there any more. Statistics Canada reports that 3,384 Albertans fled to other parts of the country in the first quarter of 2021 alone — the fourth quarter in a row in which more folks left Alberta than arrived.
There are lots of reasons that people move. But a poorly governed province with rampaging sickness, a low quality of life and cynical leadership surely ranks near the bottom of anyone's destination list. Texas, Florida, et. al., please take note. We cats HISS.
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