Bragg Creek’s own Cameron Westhead was acclaimed March 10 as the NDP candidate for the Banff-Cochrane riding.
The practicing Registered Nurse (RN) is inspired by the ‘hard work and dedication of frontline workers who are holding the system together’, as he advocates for accountability from the PC government, which he feels has failed to make health care a priority for deserving Albertans.
“Patients receiving care in hallways and storage closets is not what I consider to be the Alberta advantage, it’s just wrong,” said Westhead, who is serving his third consecutive two-year term as a peer-elected workplace representative.
“I feel that the people of Banff-Cochrane want someone who will set the right priorities and stand up for them in the legislature to protect their services, not cut them.”
The 37-year-old said a step in the right direction to take pressure off overcrowded emergency rooms would be to build affordable, publicly-operated long-term care facilities to keep up with the demand for senior care, while keeping the pressure off of costly acute care hospital beds or burdening Alberta families with the high costs of private facilities.
The candidate’s top three priorities would be protecting and improving the health care and education systems, including building schools and the Calgary Cancer Centre to boost employment opportunities and public service; to ensure the Auditor General’s recommendations on flood mitigation and dam safety are implemented — based on the PC’s ‘poor record…ignoring their own 2006 flood mitigation report by allowing development to continue in flood plains’ (noting the PC push for the Springbank SR1 dam as inconsistent with the South Saskatchewan Regional Plan and another bad decision for the Ghost River watershed); and repairing Albertan’s broken revenue system, citing ‘the PC’s reckless implementation of a flat tax and corporate giveaways’.
Westhead’s primary concern is that Prentice would follow in former leader Redford’s footsteps — making a series of promises and failing to deliver and now placing the blame on Albertans to buck up and pay more. He is concerned that Albertans don’t have enough voices at the table to best represent Alberta’s diverse perspectives and needs.
The RN wrapped up his list of top three concerns with his disdain for what he has seen from Prentice to date.
“In less than six months, Prentice has already appointed unelected ministers, overruled committee decisions, manipulated school building priorities to influence a by-election and is about to throw his own fixed election law out the window.”
