On April 16th of 2019, Alberta elected a new representative in the House of Commons. Now Alberta is in the hands of Jason Kenney the leader of the United Conservative Party, the new premier has some aggressive moves up his sleeves against the Federal Government in order to get the Trans Mountain Pipeline built. His campaign plan revolved around targeting Ottawa in many cases and Justin Trudeau for Alberta’s economy. Though, throughout the process of his campaign and the election, it was often unclear what Kenney is willing to do to stop some of the problematic events occurring in the province.
“Change that replaces a high tax, high debt ideology with a commonsense job creation strategy that scraps the carbon tax, protects our public services and gets a fair deal for Alberta.”
Less Spending? More Cuts
As most Albertan’s know, the Carbon Tax is getting scrapped for the reason Kenney argues “taking money out of Albertan’s pockets” without a pipeline being built. But a brand new tax on large industrial emitters, killing the climate leadership plan and an Open for Business Act will mostly be implemented in the next one or two years. The tax is a small aspect of the 117 page plan released by the UCP (United Conservatives Party).
The tax plan is beneficial and is a major part in the UCP’s plan, including a costed budget which maintains $700 million in open spending for the next 4 years and with the provincial debt projected to hit only $86.1 billion in the year of 2022-23, compared to the NDP (New Democratic Party) in which the UCP believes will hit a $101 billion. Kenny states “We’re going to have to maintain some discipline to start paying down debt,” the leader also aims to move Alberta closer to the provincial average in program spending, cutting spending on multiple significant factors in the life of an average Albertan, including health care, education etc. The spending will happen after a “rigorous evaluation of all programs and services.” This will not only make life harder for most lower income Albertan’s to afford for health care but the classroom sizes may increase in the upcoming years.
Is it Going to Work?
Sources agree with most of the UCP’s research, but argues that it is off by a little bit, though would say it would have the same impact and a beneficial one in that. The leader of the opposition party seems to disagree, Rachel Notley states ” Jason Kenney’s Plan is reckless.” Sources such as CBC News discusses how it will be hard for the new premier to deliver all his promises. But one thing is certain hes playing some potentially risky moves on behalf of Alberta towards Justin Trudeau.
Too Many Promises?
Seeing the Conservatives plan it is somewhat hard to believe all that they promised to do for our province will become a reality, in some cases political researchers predict in his leadership little to no progress will occur. Global News has similar believes upon the UCP’s plan, from promising better health care while putting in the tax would make it incredibly hard for him to substantially improve health care. Alberta’s economy may improve in some cases, this may drastically affect other major departments. But we can only hope for the best, and as the United Conservatives would say an “Alberta strong and free.”
Political Alberta Leaders Debate (Outlining the UCP’s and other parties platforms) –
Outline Of UCP Plan – https://unitedconservative.ca/Content/UCP%20Policy%20Declaration.pdf
