Editor: It was with great interest that I read recent letters to the editor by the astroturf group Alberta Can’t Wait (ACW).
Predictably, they are resurrecting age-old fear tactics based purely on fabricated premises to attract disaffected conservatives that yearn for a return to the discredited slash-and-burn policies of Ralph Klein.
With tinfoil hat firmly in place, the letters’ author describes a world only the most conspiratorial of conspiracy theorists could imagine, and displays a concerning case of political amnesia.
Constituents tell me what they can’t wait for are precisely the things conservatives and groups like ACW propose to cut, and that previous governments had promised for decades yet failed to deliver. Things like long-term care beds for seniors, affordable housing and a decade overdue cancer centre in Calgary; all things the NDP government has promised and is now delivering on.
The lie that looking after only the most fortunate helps everyone else has been proven wrong everywhere in the industrialized world – after being given a very good run. 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 deeply paradoxical to read the Oct. 13 letter by ACW’s so-called leader where he incorrectly imagines large school class sizes and crumbling infrastructure as a future legacy of Alberta’s NDP government. On the contrary, 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 their proposed cuts to health care and infrastructure, fully funded student enrolment, and froze tuition for the third year in a row. Slashing billions from the provincial budget in a knee-jerk fashion as ACW proposes would only put us that much further behind and would ironically make Albertans wait even longer, belying the group’s namesake.
Albertans have waited 40 years for a considered, prudent and systematic energy development 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.
As mentioned, ACW’s head-in-the-sand approach to the environment is another example that would lead Alberta backwards and virtually 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 putting a price on carbon and an emissions limit on the oilsands (source: http://bit.ly/2e25pVy). That’s something we can be proud of.
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 already waited long enough for a government that won’t download the province’s fiscal situation to hard-working families, and that is why they chose a new course in the 2015 election. Given a clear choice, the idea that we should deal 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 forward together.
Cam Westhead,
MLA for Banff-Cochrane
