MLA Phillips optimistic about 2022 after a tumultuous past year

By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on January 8, 2022.

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LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com

After a tumultuous year dealing with the Alberta government’s handling of many issues, MLA for Lethbridge West Shannon Phillips is optimistic about 2022.

In 2021, the NDP MLA addressed on behalf of her constituents many matters including the doctor shortage in Lethbridge, the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as coal mining on the Eastern Slopes of the Rocky Mountains.

And the Lethbridge Police Service was in the spotlight over matters involving the MLA.

Phillips said in an interview this week that the support she has gotten from Lethbridge residents on the issues she has addressed is one reason for her optimism.

Phillips will soon be gearing up for the 2023 provincial election and is looking forward to knocking on doors as she begins the quest to retain her seat.

As the NDP finance critic, Phillips will be continuing to make sure Lethbridge’s voice is heard in the legislature this year.

“The election is just over a year away so now that Rob (Miyashiro in Lethbridge East) is nominated, I will be nominated, and as soon as it’s not -20 anymore I will be out there knocking on doors again,” said Phillips.

“I knock on doors as an MLA all the time…I take great joy in it and as the days get longer, I can be out there for an hour-and-a-half or two hours a night and it sure keeps your feet on the ground and your head out of the clouds to go out and talk to constituents,” she said.

“There will be a full blown launch of the campaign I suspect, probably 12 months out of the election because we are ready and we’re very organized and we intend to win these seats and we’re gonna.”

2021 began on a sour note on the first day, she said.

“You had the premier of the province stand up and tell Albertans in no uncertain terms that it was not a big deal that a good five members of his caucus and staff were out gallivanting around beaches and were busy sunning themselves with sand between their toes while the rest of us ate our turkey dinner via Zoom with our grandparents, she said.

That set the tone for the rest of the year, said Phillips “and frankly I think defines the UCP premier’s leadership which is being belligerent, puffed up, bellicose, filled with hubris and rejecting the premise of everyone’s questions – how dare Albertans ask for accountability when his own people were flouting the public health directives while the rest of us had to spend Christmas on our own. And he had to walk that back. That really set the tone for the rest of the year.”

She said the same dynamic played itself out last summer when he had his “best summer ever” plan that public health experts were nervous about, she said.

He said Kenney scoffed at and made fun of people who questioned him as did his staff.

“And then hundreds of people died,” she said.

“2021 was really hard for everyone. It was universally recognized as a difficult year,” said Phillips adding that trying to govern a province regardless of political stripes “is going to be hard during a pandemic. No question.”

But she said Kenney had every available opportunity to do the right thing “that was provided by evidence and common sense and basic decency” and the premier chose to do the opposite.

“It wasn’t just that he made fun of public health experts who were raising questions about just opening everything back up in July with the level of vaccination that we had. It wasn’t just that, then he just left the province and left no one in charge.” That showed judgement and character Phillips had never seen before in her political life, she said.

Phillips said the UCP had another episode of “failing to level with the people of Alberta which is around coal. We went straight into that. At this time last year, the official government policy from the UCP government was that we were going to happily hand over permission to Australian billionaires to strip mine our Rockies, to poison our water and to put our agricultural jobs and economy and production at existential risk.

“That was the official government and so the fact that southern Albertans pushed back so hard on that leads us to the situation we’re in today which is the government has received a report on how to proceed on coal mining. They’re keeping it secret,” she said adding the report was received on Dec. 31 but the UCP is refusing to release it.

“Either that report reflects what Albertans want which is not strip mining the Rockies and poisoning our water and putting our agricultural economy at risk. Either the report says that or the report sides with the UCP and says ‘yes we should do some of this’ in which case it’s desperately offside with public opinion and what people across the province, particularly in Lethbridge and southern Alberta want to see.”

During this time, more people in Lethbridge began losing access to family physicians which Phillips became aware of in 2020 thanks to a trickle of people contacting her office. By spring of 2021, “this was becoming a more than weekly occurrence…by early summer, it was very clear to me by this point that what the UCP had authored was a full-blown local disaster in terms of access to health care in Lethbridge.

“It was very clear that the UCP MLA in Lethbridge East and the health minister up in Edmonton were hearing directly from Albertans,” she said.

“By the time Jason Kenney is running around yelling about the best summer ever, there were already thousands of people down here in Lethbridge who were looking at a very desperate situation for the foreseeable future,” Phillips added.

“By late summer, it had become essentially a tsunami of people writing emails and contacting my office and talking to the health minister and talking to the media.”

Phillips said there was no hiding from the situation by July and August, that it was not anecdotal or just a few doctors who had retired or relocated.

“It was a full blown crisis and the reason those doctors couldn’t be replaced was that the UCP had torn up the agreement with physicians, had poisoned the working environment for health care professionals of all sorts, but especially family doctors and that tens of thousands of people in Lethbridge were paying the price for their desperately poor handling of management of the healthcare system,” added Phillips.

This year, Phillips expects the increasing cost of living will become an issue with Albertans, the MLA said.

“I suspect that In 2022 you’re going to see a lot more concern around cost of living and inflation and while maybe the price of bacon isn’t Jason Kenney’s fault the fact of the matter is the cost of car insurance, the cost of business insurance, the cost of tuition, our increased personal income taxes are his fault. So I think you’re going to see those issues really begin to dominate.

Electricity bills are also a concern, said Phillips, adding Kenney could reinstate the cap the NDP put on residential consumer prices.

“They could make different choices.”

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