I read recent letters to the editor by the astroturf group Alberta Can’t Wait (ACW) with interest. Predictably, ACW is resurrecting tired fear tactics based on fabricated premises to attract those yearning for the slash-and-burn policies of Ralph Klein. Tinfoil hat in place, the letters’ author describes a scenario only the most conspiratorial of conspiracy theorists could imagine, displaying a concerning case of political amnesia.
Constituents tell me what they can’t wait for is precisely the things groups like ACW would cut, and that previous governments promised yet failed to deliver. Things like long-term care beds, affordable housing, and a decade overdue cancer centre in Calgary, all things the NDP government has promised and is delivering on.
The lie that looking after only the most fortunate helps everyone else has been proven wrong. But there are those like ACW who keep proposing it because they don’t have any new and better ideas.
That’s why it was paradoxical to read the Oct. 13 letter by ACW where the author incorrectly imagines large school class sizes and crumbling infrastructure as a future legacy of Alberta’s NDP government. Let’s not forget that is precisely the situation Alberta found itself in after four decades of conservative governments.
That’s why our government reversed the cuts proposed by the PCs to health care and infrastructure, fully funded student enrolment, and froze tuition. Slashing billions from the provincial budget as ACW proposes would put us that much further behind, and make Albertans wait even longer, belying the group’s namesake.
Albertans have waited forty years for a prudent, systematic strategy that won’t rob Albertans of the benefits of good times by the pressures and costs of unsustainable booms; and so we wouldn’t pay such a heavy price during the inevitable busts. Yet ACW seeks to return to a program of socialism for the rich, and austerity for everyone else. Those days are over in Alberta.
ACW’s head-in-the-sand approach to the environment would lead Alberta backwards and guarantee our energy products remain landlocked. They rehash the same antiquated thinking that failed to gain approval for a pipeline to tidewater by conservatives in Alberta and Ottawa over the past decade.
Instead, as one of the world’s major energy producers, we need to take control of the climate change issue, before it takes control of us. Alberta is now seen as the most responsible energy producing jurisdiction in the world. Suncor, Shell, Cenovus, and CNRL applaud our Climate Leadership Plan as a means to gain better market access by pricing carbon and capping emissions from the oilsands (source: http://bit.ly/2e25pVy).
We are once again seeing a demonstration of the economic price Alberta pays for failing to diversify our economy. That’s why we introduced the Alberta Jobs Plan. For instance, our $34 billion capital plan will support an additional 8,000 estimated jobs in 2016 alone, building projects like the Southwest Calgary ring road and the Calgary Cancer Centre.
Albertans tell me they have waited long enough for a government that won’t download the province’s fiscal situation to hard-working families. That's why they chose a new course in the 2015 election. Dealing with the drop in the international price of oil by imposing deep cutbacks to health care and education was rejected in favour of stability. Let’s move forwards together.
Cam Westhead, MLA for Banff-Cochrane
