Albertans barely had a chance last week to wrap their heads around one issue before another surfaced to shift their attention to something else.
This of course is all by design — it is not a flaw, but a feature meant to prevent a proper opportunity to debate.
The contentiously controversial Bill 22 has so much packed into it that hidden spoiled Easter eggs were still being revealed late last week after the legislation had already been rammed through with nearly no meaningful opportunity for discussion.
The focus has largely been around the dubious termination of the election commissioner, who was in the middle of conducting an investigation into the UCP’s 2017 leadership campaign, which was fraught with irregularities and allegations of fraud.
Also drawing the ire of educators throughout the province was the decision to move the Alberta Teachers’ Retirement Fund under control of the Alberta Investment Management Corporation, without so much as seeking a shred of feedback from those who could be affected. Talk about quality consultation.
But that’s not even all.
Turns out Alberta Sports Connections, which in part provides support for Special Olympics Alberta, is gone.
The Alberta Historical Resources Foundation, which provided funding to museums throughout the province, has also been dissolved and folded into another department.
Beyond the bombshells in Bill 22, UCP promises to maintain or improve funding for health care were clearly empty words.
Interestingly, not a single one of these controversial decisions were campaigned upon. Neither were proposals to fire Alberta’s RCMP and replace it with a provincial police force, or pulling out of the Canada Pension Plan, or the elimination of an elite wildfire fighting unit that could place remote rural communities in peril as the threat of devastating wildfires only continues to increase.
None of this was whispered about or even remotely hinted at during the campaign. Plans were undoubtedly being developed privately behind closed doors, but certainly not discussed publicly.
Rather fascinating, coming from now-Premier Jason Kenney, who shrieked when then-premier Rachael Notley’s administration introduced the carbon tax. “The NDP never campaigned on that!” he cried at the time.
Not even one year into power, barely half of a year into power for that matter, and Kenney is already pulling off stunts he accused the NDP of using.
So the Conservatives have once again demonstrated their core philosophy, “Do as we say, not as we do.”
We encourage any of our readers who share these concerns to be heard and to contact their representatives up to and including the lieutenant-governor of Alberta, Lois Mitchell, who could yet — although it's unlikely — refuse to grant Bill 22 royal assent.
Simon Ducatel is the editor of the Sundre Round Up.
