Brian Jean, the leader of the Wildrose Official Opposition, rallied together roughly 150 people at the Seniors on the Bow Centre with a rare trip to Cochrane.
Jean has been travelling across the province speaking mainly to rural crowds as part of his On Your Side Town Hall series.
The crowd enthusiastically welcomed Jean, introduced by former Banff-Cochrane Wildrose candidate, Scott Wagner, as “the next premier of Alberta.”
Following a speech by Jean, Chestermere-Rocky View Wildrose MLA Leela Aheer delivered a presentation on Wildrose talking points and opened up the floor for questions.
Crowd members raised such concerns as the carbon tax, equalization payments and the possibility of “splitting the conservative vote” if the Wildrose and PCs don’t have a firm game plan in time before the next election.
Wildrose supporter Greg Dyck applauded last week’s floor-crossing of former PC party member Sandra Jansen, who joined the NDPs, noting that “there are too many liberals in the PCs” and the focus needs to be with getting behind the Wildrose.
Ron Voss said he wants to see conservative leaders stop beating around the bush and come out on record to denounce the existence of climate change.
“Donald Trump doesn’t believe in climate change – did that hurt him?” said Voss of the President-elect.
Coun. Tara McFadden attended the event, interested in learning about the Wildrose commitment to municipalities and funding models.
“That’s really important to us – that provincial leadership understands the importance of municipalities,” said the councillor, currently serving her third term, noting that it’s key for community leaders to develop relationships with all political leaders as “you never know what will happen.”
Topics du jour: the looming carbon tax; the plummeting popularity of the NDP in rural Alberta; the possibility of a merger with the PCs and/or formation of a new conservative party; and the Wildrose plan to get Alberta “back on track.”
Jean, clarified that “until the PC party decides for sure who they are…we need to make sure we’re not distracted from the work we have to do.”
Should a Wildrose government be at the helm in 2019, Jean made it clear that the first order of business would be to scrap the carbon tax by “immediately enacting legislation to repeal it” – a comment that ensued whoops and cheers from the crowd.
Jean made reference that President-elect Trump would not be implementing a carbon tax and that both Australia and France recently scrapped theirs, but “nobody (in Canada) is talking about it.”
Jean said if it was determined that a federal carbon tax could be imposed, the Wildrose would compensate through property and personal tax reductions to offset the added burden to Alberta families.
The Wildrose leader discussed his desire to bring back parent choice in education; an end to the fentanyl crisis in Alberta (one death per day in overdoses); halt inflated equalization payments; “stop buying oil from foreign dictators”; and drastically reduce government spending – without reducing front line workers.
Earlier this week Jean introduced Motion 509, calling upon the NDP to study equalization fairness.
“It was only 20 years ago that Alberta was number one in the world for education – today we’re number five in Canada,” said Jean, making additional reference to Alberta’s essential services costing 20 per cent more than in British Columbia.
“(Our priorities would be) to reassure the public service that we’re not going to indiscriminately lay off and fire thousands of workers …but to find those areas that are less efficient,” said Jean, stressing the plan to return to zero-base budgeting, freeze government wages and impose a hiring freeze (only essential services re-hired), which would reduce the managerial ratio from its current 3:1 ratio.
Jean said the Wildrose plan would not put the province back to the late 1990s where “we did a great job on the books but we destroyed a lot of people’s lives…and that’s not the Alberta way.”
“No secret meetings, no back room deals, no discussions without our members knowing they’re in charge ultimately,” pledged Jean.
Excited about beefing up social media presence by being “very aggressive on Facebook” with 84,000 “friends” – trailing Brad Wall at nearly 99,000 – Jean said his team has worked hard to reach a younger demographic.
Jean commented that he has never seen a more politically-charged Alberta than today and that the strength in the Wildrose lies with the grassroots movement.
