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Reply to the Throne Speech

April 22, 2008

Ms Blakeman: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Well, welcome to my fabulous constituency of Edmonton-Centre. I am now commencing my fourth term of serving those fine people in this Assembly, and this, in fact, is my 13th spring session. I’m very pleased to be back, joining former colleagues and welcoming new colleagues to this Assembly.

While I have an opportunity, I would like to thank very much the voters of Edmonton-Centre but also the volunteers who worked on my campaign, people who donated money to the campaign, and other people that I met all over the city that stopped and said nice things or encouraging things or gave me advice or guidance. It’s always appreciated, and I really appreciate people taking the time to do that.

I think that Edmonton-Centre and Edmonton and Alberta are a land of opportunity. We are so lucky to have the great good fortune to have been born into this place or to have chosen to move here where we get to walk around and live and reap the benefits of the dinosaurs having laid down and died here. That oil and gas really enriches our lives and gives us an unbelievable opportunity for many things. We have so much money here, and that money should be able to propel us forward to a number of choices. I’m sure we have a Legislature that many others envy in that we are able to make choices about where money is spent and even where more money is spent, and I am grateful for that.

I’d like to raise some of the issues of those voters that I spoke to as I door-knocked and put them on the record. It’s important that I bring their voices forward into this Assembly. A big part of what I think my job is here is to bring those voices into this Assembly and help the rest of my colleagues here understand the issues that are facing the constituents of Edmonton-Centre.

I’m going to touch on a number of areas, including housing, seniors, transit, not-for-profit organizations, payday loans, auto insurance, long-term savings, of course the Vriend decision, transitional housing, AISH, mental health, domestic violence, library funding, long-term care, and funding for CNIB plus Alberta labour laws and child care spaces. That’s just my short list for tonight, but these were all raised at the doors. That’s why I have so many little funny-coloured pieces of paper. They all come from the notes that I took when I was door-knocking and of people that have come to see me since the election.

Housing, rental housing in particular, continues to be a monumental issue in Edmonton-Centre and, I’m sure, in many of the urban ridings in Alberta. The lack of any kind of temporary rent controls is really hurting people. People were crying on the door with me as I door-knocked because they could not imagine how they were supposed to be able to find enough money to pay an increase when they’d gone from paying $550 for a one-bedroom apartment, and they were now looking at $1,300, $1,600. I mean, it’s unimaginable for me to comprehend what I would do in that situation, and I don’t know how they are coping, frankly.

What’s happening is they’re ending up having to move into a lower quality of accommodation and probably in a section of town that is not as safe for them as before. What I’m hearing is that they’re into, in many cases, substandard subsidized housing. They’re dealing with things like pest infestation, bedbugs and things that they can’t get rid of. That’s just the way it is in those kinds of accommodations. Noise. It’s unsafe, and that’s particularly problematic for young children, who are facing a certain level of stress because of where they live. They’re not studying as well. They’re not doing as well in school because they’re not sure who the strange people are in their corridors that are making noise and running up and down. I won’t even go into the horror stories about drug use in the hallways.

People are also concerned about environmental health standards. They’re not being enforced, so even where you do have an infestation of bugs or, you know, conditions that are creating asthma or asbestos or mould, they’re calling for enforcement, and nothing’s happening. They can’t get the landlord to improve it. Even when public health comes out, they don’t seem to be able to have anything behind them to actually enforce this, so it’s really frustrating people in my community. It’s making them sick, frankly, and that ends up costing all of us because we’re paying health care costs as a result of that.

Again, people are concerned about the lack of control on the amount of increases and the condo conversions, which are taking away a stock of housing that used to be available for rentals. Frankly, we have people in our society who are never going to be able to afford a place to live. They’re always going to pay rent either because they’re in a transient business or, for whatever reason, they just can’t afford it. To not have reasonable, safe rental accommodations is a huge stress.

I have a number of seniors that live in my constituency who are very good to me, give me wonderful advice and guidance. I’m delighted to spend time with them. I have eight seniors’ high-rise residences in Edmonton-Centre and a number of other community drop-in centres, so I get to spend a lot of time with seniors and hear a lot from them.

What I’m hearing from them is the concerns they have around the cut-offs for eligibility for funding. If somebody is 50 bucks over the limit, well, that’s it; they pay full freight on things. If you’re $51 lower than that, then you’re eligible for a whole bunch of subsidies.

Frankly, that’s always going to happen when you’ve got some sort of a limit on eligibility. You’re always going to have people just above the line. But seniors are really feeling that this is a hardship for them. They were also talking about housing costs and that there is not enough financial support in many cases in the government’s benefits programs. For example, dentures I think are available every five years, but people’s mouths change as they age, and in fact they’re often needing dentures more quickly than five years. For them a $4,000 to $6,000 bill to change their dentures is simply beyond their means. Those are the things the seniors wanted me to raise.

We don’t have enough transitional housing, and that’s something I’ve spoken about quite a bit in this House. In particular, for people that are really trying to turn their lives around and move on to something else, they need that stable transitional housing to help them bridge out of that old life. They don’t want to go back, but frankly if they don’t have the transitional housing, the likelihood is pretty good that they will. I’m talking here about drug rehabilitation.

I’m talking about people moving away from domestic violence. These are people that are working hard. Parenting teens is another group that need transitional housing. In my constituency I have La Salle house, I have Jellinek House, and I have Our House. They all serve different clientele, and they’re all struggling. La Salle, in particular, came to see me, and they’re just desperate. They are supposed to move people through in under a year, and they’ve now had clients that have been living there for 18 months. They can’t take new people in because they can’t move the old ones out because they can’t afford to find a place to stay. So you can see how the cycle starts to reverse. People that I have on AISH are looking for assistance with nonprescription medical needs: diabetic supplies, for example, vitamins, other things that get prescribed for them that aren’t covered. I’m sure that in this House, you having been on the doors, you’re well aware of the limited funding that is available for someone on AISH. I think we’re still at $1,050 a month.

Mr. MacDonald: Add $5 to that.

Ms Blakeman: Oh, add $5 to that. I’m sorry: $1,055. They really feel the lack of a consumer advocate to assist them, and also they’re seeing a lack of funding to support their not-forprofits that give them assistance and services. The mentally ill in particular, whom I probably love the most, are really finding difficulty accessing support, because they’re mentally ill. When you have timelines about, you know, that you’d get cut off if you don’t respond within X number of days and it’s a short timeline, that’s just not going to work for somebody with a mental illness. They miss the timeline, and then they get cut off. I’m thinking: what was the point of this benefit program if all we’re doing is cutting off a bunch of people with mental illness? That doesn’t strike me as being very helpful.

Mr. MacDonald: Did anyone complain about their power bill?

Ms Blakeman: No, but you’re going to talk about that, Edmonton- Gold Bar. The other issues I’d like to go over are the payday loans, and I have a motion on the books for this session around that. I think we have to look at something that’s going to legislate those payday loans.

I’d like to speak briefly about not-for–profit, charitable, volunteer organizations and their capacity, just a few of the things that are happening. The John Howard Society offers some very great value for the services that they have in the community, but a lot of the organizations that receive funding through the victims of crime fund are struggling because there’s a cap on that fund of $100,000 a year. Yet that victims of crime fund is sitting on $38 million in net assets according to the financial statement found on the Alberta Solicitor General website.

Mr. MacDonald: Thirty-eight million dollars?

Ms Blakeman: Yes. When I was Solicitor General critic a number of years ago, it was in that sort of $8 million range, so it has increased substantially, yet we’re still not getting more money flowing out into the organizations, and there is still a cap in place of $100,000 that’s been in place for a long period of time. I also note that the CNIB is writing to me and saying that Canada is the only G-8 country that does not publicly support library services to people with print disabilities. You’d think that in this province we’d be able to do that. I’m certainly noticing as I get older that my eyesight is not as good as it was. I’m much more appreciative of things like CART services. By the way, we don’t have CART services available for Legislative Assembly business, so if we have someone with a hearing problem that comes to one of our policy field committees, for example, or even into the Assembly, there’s nothing that’s available with closed caption for them to help them understand our proceedings. Surely to heavens that’s something that we could be doing in being more inclusive of our constituents.

Here’s a situation where people with visual disabilities are having trouble accessing money for Braille. I think a number of you heard a recent news story about kids that couldn’t get Braille books on time. These are citizens that should be able to find assistance in Alberta, and they’re not finding it right now. The Legislature Grounds and, in fact, this building are in my riding, and I would certainly like to see some kind of solid plan and public consultation about what’s going to happen with the Legislature Grounds. I sat on the committee that was formed by the previous Minister of Infrastructure till his untimely exit from the caucus, and in the end the work of that committee came to nothing. Now here we are two, three years later. The apartment buildings nearby that we had managed to get a moratorium on so they didn’t build up and obstruct the view of the Legislature Building from the rest of the city – the moratorium was lifted when that committee was disbanded, and now they’re building. It’s cutting off our choices about how we will renovate and renew these Legislature Grounds, which should be a jewel of Alberta. They should be something that people from Drayton Valley and Peace River and Calgary and everywhere in our province can come and visit and be proud of, and we’re falling down on that one as well.

I think it’s important that we recognize that we have a nonexistent savings plan in this province. Honestly, I’m sure the government would be horrified if we had our population today going: “You know what? I don’t think I’ll contribute to my RRSP on a regular basis so that I can have a good pension plan when I retire. I think I’ll just put into it, gee, when I have a really good year, and I’m not going to determine what that really good year is. I’ll just recognize it when it happens.” That’s exactly what this government is choosing to do about contributions to the heritage savings trust fund. Yes, you’ve inflation-proofed it – congratulations – but you’re not doing regular payments into that fund, and as a result, that fund is not performing as it should be.

Guys, that’s not our money. That’s the future’s money. The oil and gas revenues will decline in this province, and, boy, we’re going to have to pay a heavy price when we look down the road and have to admit that right now the government is not collecting enough money in taxes and other fees and licences to be able to sustain the budget that you’ve got in front of you. We’re subsidizing from oil and gas revenues to pay for our everyday services all the time. We have to take between 30 and 50 per cent of those nonrenewable oil and gas revenues and plow it into the heritage savings trust fund. I’d like to also echo my colleague from Calgary-Buffalo in asking that we write sexual orientation into our human rights legislation as a prohibited grounds of discrimination. I think that’s very important. Library funding is key. We need people to read; we need people to participate; we need people to understand safety manuals and training manuals and to excel in our province. The fact that we continue to fund library funding on old per capita rates is really appalling. We have to step up on that one, and you’ll be hearing from me a lot on that. Of course, long-term care: if we really want those seniors to stay in their own homes, we need to be stepping up on home care funding.

Thank you for the opportunity to raise some of these issues today.

The Acting Speaker: Under section 29(2)(a) five minutes are available for anyone to make comments or ask questions. The hon. Member for Edmonton-Gold Bar.

Mr. MacDonald: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I would like to ask the hon. Member for Edmonton-Centre if there are any other issues? We all know how wonderful her constituency is. Are there any other issues? She must have knocked on hundreds and thousands of doors during the campaign, and surely the constituents had more instructions for her and more policies and issues for her to bring forward.

Ms Blakeman: Thank you. Actually, there were more. In particular, labour laws. Alberta’s labour laws and child care spaces are two other issues that were raised a lot with me, and I’ll admit that I got a lot of support from union members and from working folks in Edmonton-Centre, and I’m very grateful for that. But we certainly do have to have a look at our labour laws, particularly around replacement worker legislation and first contract legislation because those are two glaring omissions in our labour laws right now. Child care spaces. You know, we keep talking about how short we are of people in the labour force, but we could have a whole bunch more people in our labour force, and that is women, if we were able to have safe, affordable child care spaces for them to leave their children in. I would like to see us get really innovative about that and help the municipalities with some zoning bylaws, changes, and some empowerment through the MGA to allow them to require daycare spaces be built into new buildings, for example, so people could have their kids nearby to where they worked.

So lots of opportunity for people in Edmonton-Centre. Thank you for asking the question and allowing me to get a couple more of my list up. Thank you.

The Acting Speaker: Any others wish to speak? The hon. Minister of Transportation.

Mr. Ouellette: Yes, Mr. Speaker. I just have a hard time when somebody can get up and say that we aren’t doing any savings of any kind when every year we inflation-proof the heritage fund. We also have the Alberta heritage medical research fund. We have the education fund. We have the ingenuity fund. There are all those savings plans that we’ve always had in place, yet the opposition can just get up and act as if we’re not doing any of that. It really is happening. So I’m really wondering why she would say those things without clarifying that, yes, we are putting money into savings.

Ms Blakeman: Thank you very much for the opportunity to address that. That’s a good question. Actually, if you look in the budget documents, there’s nothing budgeted to go into the heritage savings trust fund. There is inflation-proofing that is now being done. Thank you very much. That was a new addition. But the only money that goes into the heritage savings trust fund is that that is unanticipated surpluses, so that’s even beyond any surplus that we would expect to get, that the government has budgeted for. It’s only when we get money beyond that – so we’re talking a huge bonanza from oil and gas revenues – that the government actually takes money and puts it in. Last year they had a super bonanza, and they put $937 million into the heritage savings trust fund. Actually, they put in $918 million, and they’ve still got $19 million to come. But they don’t budget that. We only get it when it’s a windfall, which is why I was giving the comparison about pensioners that only put in when they had a great year but not on a regular basis. Interestingly enough, the government has not added one dime to the access to the future fund since it was established. It got a billion bucks to begin with. It was supposed to get $3 billion. No more money was put into it. How about the cancer legacy fund? That got $500 million to go in at the beginning. It never got up to the billion.