Alberta’s Next Chapter

Before jumping to my main message, I want to thank Premier Ed Stelmach for his many years of public service to his community and to our province. Although I disagreed with him on most of his signature policy initiatives, I have never questioned his commitment to our province and its people. He is a devoted husband, father and grandfather and I wish him and his wife, Marie, all the best in retirement.

With that said, I again echo what I have repeated many times. As a former member of the PC Party Caucus - as someone who sat on its Treasury Board, who debated with its Cabinet members, and who saw the influence of special interest groups and unelected insiders on its policy development process – I can assure you that the problems with the PC Party will not be solved with a change of leader.

The leadership of Premier Stelmach was not the cause of PC Party’s problems – his leadership was merely a symptom of a political party bereft of democracy, adrift without principles or purpose, and unwilling to challenge the unelected insiders who seemingly drive its every meaningful action.

This is the same PC Party, the same Cabinet and the same Caucus, that in the last 3 years has:

• Voted itself a 34% Cabinet raise behind closed doors.
• Mishandled health care by centralizing all health delivery into a single Superboard and watched haplessly as record wait times, an incompetent H1N1 response and an unprecedented ER crisis followed.
• Voted unanimously to kick Dr. Raj Sherman (an ER doctor) out of Caucus during an ER crisis, and then worked to smear him as mentally unstable putting his medical license at risk.
• Sent our oil and gas industry fleeing to BC and Saskatchewan with a punitive tax hike in the middle of a recession, which they later reversed but never admitted to as a mistake.
• Ended a run of over 10 years of balanced budgets with repeated record deficits during a time when oil revenues from royalties have never been higher.
• Passed Bill 50 allowing the Government to hand out roughly $20 billion in transmission line contracts to past Party donors without competitive bidding and without going to an independent hearing to determine if so much new transmission capacity was even needed.
• Kicked MLA Guy Boutilier out of Caucus for speaking up for his senior constituents, and threatened my position on Treasury Board for suggesting publicly the Government should limit future spending increases to inflation plus population growth.

After being told I could not vote against or even speak against these initiatives in the Legislature or in public, I decided to fight against these policies in opposition as a Wildrose MLA – and so I crossed the floor.

Were these policies all Ed Stelmach’s doing? Absolutely not. Each had to first clear Cabinet and Caucus and then a vote in the Legislature – and they did – one after another after another. All passed without more than a handful speaking out in Caucus – and none publicly with their vote in the Legislature. This is a PC Caucus that places loyalty to party above loyalty to constituents.

Albertans deserve better. We deserve a Government that will undo the recent damage and empower Albertans to elevate our province to new heights of achievement and prosperity. Changing PC leaders will not accomplish this…electing a new Wildrose Government led by Danielle Smith will.

I have chosen to be a part of this change…and I hope the majority of Albertans, whatever your past allegiances, will join with us to usher in the next exciting chapter of the Alberta story.