NDP the wrong choice for Albertans
By Lethbridge Herald on May 27, 2023.
Editor:
Like many I voted emotionally in 2015 opting for the NDP. I’ve regretted that ever since. Working with local business leaders and owners, we watched our economy tumble. In four years, the number of people and investors leaving our province was shocking. After seeing colleagues lose their jobs and hard-working friends lose their homes, I vowed never vote NDP again.
Currently Alberta is leading the country economically with budget surpluses, high investments and people flocking to Alberta. We are the envy of other provinces. While considering your vote, get informed, read this article from 2016: https://torontosun.com/2016/06/26/alberta-ndp-making-a-bad-situation-worse “A once proud economic gem of a province is being ravaged by incompetent NDP policy decisions”. It was sad to see. In 2015 Lethbridge had two NDP representative, Fitzpatrick, and Phillips.
Ask yourself, what did Lethbridge get out of that representation. The expansion to the university, the technology campus at the Lethbridge College and the expansion to the Regional Hospital were all approved by the previous government. Before 2015 the city council received funding to expand the industrial area which brought on Cavendish Farms and many other new businesses.
What did Lethbridge get from the NDP government? The drug consumption site is the only thing that comes to mind. Along with that came the crime – just ask any business along 2nd Avenue South.
Right now, we must focus on the cost of living. However, your government will not be able to help if the economy is not flourishing. With this in mind, I can’t believe Albertans would hand over the best performing province to the worst performing NDP government. Who do you think Justin Trudeau would like to win? By the way, I recall Rob Miyashiro ran as a Liberal candidate in 2011, why the change.
Tom Burns
Lethbridge
9-8
The expansion of the University – a 270 million dollar investment in Lethbridge – was money promised by the PC government. But they back-loaded the funding over a six year period such that only four million was to be available in the first year and then increasing past that. This would have allowed the government to spend a pittance prior to the election and then cancel the project after it. Notley’s government reversed the funding schedule, otherwise I fear the Science Commons would still be a parking lot.
They scraped the Super Lab in Edmonton that would have save lives and could have been used to create COVID vaccines we have been told. Scraped the railroad cars that oilmen state would have brought Albertans an extra $2.2 billion in oil royalties, wasted $1.3 Billion on the Keystone XL pipeline, by not listening to Joe Biden, wasted $3.5 million on trying to prove that foreign corporations were attacking our oil industry, and oil executives weren’t dumb enough to agree, they knew it was a lie, and now Smith has found it smart to waste another her pal Preston Manning trying to whose fault it is for COVID distaste they created by not listening to doctors. Its been one gong show after another.
To be clear, my point was that the NDP delivered the Science Commons building where the PCs did not.
What may be interesting is depending who wins, i.e. the NDP or UCP, is how each of them would deal with the now too low price of a barrel of oil. Would the UCP do more cutbacks to education and health care, for example? The NDP, would be more likely to increase the corporate tax rate to 11% (would still be the lowest corporate tax rate in the country) instead of keeping it at 8% (which is basically a socialist style handout to corporations and did not revitalize downtown Calgary which was what it was meant to do). My family-of-origin $multimillion farming corporation could easily pay a bit more corporate tax and still be fine.
The corporate tax rate was 15% under Lougheed and Klein cut them to 10% creating a loss of billions dollars to Alberta taxpayers and Klein’s daughter Angie was furious with him for doing it. She knew what it would do to us. His father Phil felt the same way.
The oil price collapse in 2014 thru 2016 trashed the countries economy , especially Alberta. Blaming the NDP for the economic chaos strongly associated with oil prices is untrue. The UCP inherited a mess but through no fault of the previous government as the writer seems to suggest. Oil prices rebounded nicely during the last few years, years governed by the UCP.
Lost in all the discussions is the environment , other than a recognition that climate change is here and at least partially man-made – something the NDP seem to understand. The UCP not so much.
If the current polling is true and TBA reigns supreme (sorry I mean of course UCP), whatever god is watching will not be happy with this slice of the world he/she/it created.
Indeed. We have forgotten the Prentice budget – 5.6 billion dollar deficit and spending cuts, all handed off to the NDP after the election. Prentice knew who to blame for Alberta’s economy – “look in the mirror”.
It has always been the same sort of stupidity with these Reformers. Blame it on someone else. It’s all they know. As my friends have been saying if Poilievre gets elected as prime minister he’s going to be serious trouble, he won’t have anyone to blame. That’s all he has done since being elected leader of the Conservative Party that’s all he knows. He isn’t smart enough to run the country properly, he wouldn’t know how.
Oilmen have stated that the $12 billion these reformers are bragging about would have been around $36 billion if Lougheed had been still running for show, Albertans are still being screwed out of billions of their wealth. While Smith bribed us with $600. Alaskans got $3,284. last year and $50,000. Since 1982.
well said
So Tom explain to us how an oil industry crash in 2014 created the mess you talk about yet you blame it on the NDP. Where is the intelligence in that ?The lawyers, accountants, oilmen, bankers and former conservative MLAs certainly don’t agree, they know what happened.
This what former conservative MLA Allan A.Warrack said about Rachel Notley and every conservative MLA I have spoken to agreed. There are several former conservative MLAs in Edmonton, at this time, urging people to vote for Notley just like Ralph Klein’s daughter Angie did in 2015.
“Rachel Notley Has Led Like Lougheed”
I bet you aren’t even aware that Ralph Klein and Jason Kenney were both Liberals also. The
Apparently Tom hasn’t learned about how these Sun Newspapers are so pro Reformers like us true conservatives have been seeing for years. They have never supported true conservatives.
The Suns are conservative rags.
The common belief is that conservative governments are better managers of the economy especially with respect to deficits. It’s a myth not supported by fact. No Conservative Prime Minister balanced the federal budget – it was Jean Chretien and Paul Martin. And it was Saskatchewan’s NDP government that was the first province to balance it’s books. In Alberta, if you take oil revenues out of our budgets then they haven’t been balanced for decades.
excellent entry…but hardcore cons cannot see past their social conditioning. this is not at all to suggest libs or ndps are best, as they all somehow find way to fail the masses whilst ALWAYS finding ways to line the pockets of the in group and the big corps.