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Response to the Speech from the Throne

Ms Blakeman: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I’m pleased to be able to rise and respond for the 13th time to the throne speech. I want to say what a gift I think this is and how much I view my ability to represent the people of Edmonton-Centre as a great honour and also a great gift. It’s a job that I enjoy doing, particularly because of the constituents that I represent.

Now, I am very fortunate in being able to represent the fabulous constituency of Edmonton-Centre, which, in fact, has the Legislature Building as part of it. We have some wonderful infrastructure in this constituency: a baseball park, the downtown area, Grant MacEwan College. We’ve got the beginning of the LRT; please, dear God, we get more of it. There are a number of wonderful places to visit in this constituency: the arts district, various recreational opportunities through the river valley park system. But, really, for me the most joyous part of it is representing the individuals that live here.

I, as always, have consulted my constituents through a variety of means to solicit their views on what they wanted me to bring forward and look for in the throne speech but also to speak about in response to the throne speech. I’ve had an additional honour in that being named a deputy leader, I’ve heard from people outside of my constituency and from across Alberta that also wanted me to talk about some things.

If we may, Mr. Speaker, I’m just going to back off to the 10,000 foot level and speak more generally about some of the issues that people have identified as being really key. I have to say that jockeying for first position are the environment, particularly water, and the economy. In fact, I think that’s appropriate because the two things are very much tied together in this province. That is our legacy: trying to find that balance between where we put an emphasis on economic development versus our incredible natural environment.

I have been very amused and have taken great delight in listening to the last couple of days’ worth of responses to the throne speech and listening to a number of the members on the government side talking about the fabulous sustainability fund. I recognize that most of these members are new to the Assembly, but I cannot tell you the immense satisfaction I take in knowing that, in fact, this was an idea that was developed and brought forward by the then Leader of the Official Opposition, Dr. Ken Nicol. At the time the proposition that we brought forward as part of our Official Opposition position was met with hoots and howls of derision, snorts of disdain. “Oh, my goodness; what a stupid idea,” they all said. And here we are years later with newly minted backbenchers crowing in delight of exactly that idea.

Now, granted, there is a significant difference, Mr. Speaker. We called it a stability fund, and the current government calls it a sustainability fund. I’ll admit that that’s a significant difference. Aside from that, it’s the Liberal idea, lock, stock, and barrel. You’re welcome to go and check it out in any of our documents from the time. So I take some delight in that.

The second thing that I keep hearing about as I hear my hon. members on the opposite side make their responses to the throne speech is the plan, the great plans for the future that they see inside of the throne speech. Again, another idea brought forward, pounded forward every day by members of the Official Opposition. Where was the plan? Exactly what was the plan? Where were the performance measurements? How did we measure this? Day after day after day after day. Again, howls of derision, snorts of disdain. How dare we? If I’ve got the quote right, “Only a Liberal would want to plan” was the insult that was thrown back at us. Indeed, only a Liberal would want to plan. So I thank you very much for the accolades that have come our way indirectly from the members of the backbench when they talk about how impressed they are with the plan.

The environment and the economy. You know, one of the other things I’ve noticed is in some cases a sort of petulant demand from some of my hon. members opposite that the Liberals insist on telling everybody exactly what it is that we would cut from the budget. If we can’t do that, then we should just put up or shut up, and since we can’t put up, then the obvious should follow. An interesting idea, but I would have expected a bit more support, then, from those very same members for our proposal that was brought forward in Members’ Services to get additional funding to help us do research because, to be honest with you, we’re a little short-staffed on that side of things.

Two things I would like to improve but am unable to do so at the time. One is research support to help us be able to go through things like the budget documents and pick out those kinds of numbers or those particular programs that we felt should go on a list of things to be reviewed and perhaps cut or eliminated. More than that, I’d like to get more information. I’ve been watching budget documents for 13 years now, and I have to say there’s less information available in budget documents today than there was 10 or 12 or 15 years ago. I went back to ’92-93, and the amount of information that was available in those budget documents is significantly more than what’s available to us today. So when there’s a demand and a little stamping of feet that they want to know exactly what programs we’d like to cut, I’d like to help them, but frankly that’s very difficult to do. Perhaps they’d like to work on my behalf and correct those two oversights. We have seven research support staff now to do 24 ministries and five policy field committees, so that’s a heck of a lot of work.

A couple of other pieces around the economy. I think it’s important to point out – and I represent a lot of small businesspeople in downtown Edmonton – how important it is to recognize those small businesses as major drivers of our economy. We do tend to look at those monolithic structures, those huge organizations, but still in Alberta and across Canada it’s small- and medium-sized businesses that really provide most of the jobs for people. I urge the government to go back and look, to try – they had a red tape commission, and once again we never heard what came out of it. I never saw what was being reduced or done. [interjection] Well, yeah, supposedly that was a plan, but it’s a plan that doesn’t exist if you don’t share it with the rest of the people. So I’m wondering again what is being done and what is in this throne speech for my small businesspeople and small businesspeople across the province.

We are at a really interesting point in Alberta here. We have an economic entity in the oil sands. Various deals have been struck over the years to have an exchange of money that comes back to Albertans to compensate them for the use of and access to their assets, but I also think that increasingly people feel that there needs to be much stronger environmental protection. It’s a challenge to us. I remember a friend once talking about the war on carbon and the fact that it’s not so much that our oil and gas reserves will run out – they will. They just get more expensive to produce and get out of the ground. But it’s not so much that. The war on carbon is about other people saying that they don’t want it anymore. And we may move faster than we expected to a point where that oil and gas, a nonrenewable natural resource, may not be as much of a significant force in our budget as it is today.

I think we need to look very strongly at developing a greener economy and investing in other forms of renewable energy as quickly as possible. We continue to make the same mistake over and over and over again. Peter Lougheed nailed it: we have to diversify our economy. That was 35 years ago that he said that, and frankly we haven’t gone very far down the road to diversify that economy. So that is a continuing concern for me.

Perhaps a tightening of economic times will encourage us to be more creative and to look toward investing in some of the renewable energy resources that we can produce here. I’m looking at these tougher economic times and that whole debate about: run a deficit, don’t run a deficit, cut, don’t cut. What has come back to me from the people that have contacted me is that we need to be careful to maintain an investment in certain things. What’s the criteria on that? I think the criteria is: if we don’t invest in this now and continue to invest in this given entity, will we be in better or worse shape when we come out of this economic recession? I think the areas that we need to continue to invest in include infrastructure for two reasons. One, because it is a stimulus for the economy; it is jobs for our citizens. Also, we need that infrastructure when we come out of this. If we don’t continue to invest in it and to have bridges and public transportation and municipal buildings ready, we will truly be in a challenging place when the economy starts to pick up on us and we the government have not been able to provide that infrastructure that we need to really move forward. So infrastructure is one.

Health, clearly. For those of us that have dealt with these issues recently, if you don’t have health, you have nothing. All the money in the world means nothing to you if you are ill or dying. It means nothing. We really have a pressure upon us to provide our citizens with the best possible health care.

Beyond that, I think we need to have the discussion with our citizens and encourage them to have the discussion about what kind of health care. How far? What is the continuum of health care that they expect us to provide? There are trade-offs involved in that. You can’t expect citizens to be happy with the result that’s handed to them if they didn’t get to be involved in the discussion, and I think we need to have a discussion. When I watch some of the public discussions they have in Holland, I’m amazed. I mean, they actually had a public discussion that went on for several years on euthanasia and came to a decision on it. That’s their societal expectation, that’s what they’ve set down as a policy, and they all bought into it. Pretty brave. I wish we could get closer to that because I think that in some ways we set ourselves up in that we don’t allow the citizens to have that discussion about exactly how much health care is enough.

I would also challenge the minister of health, as I have before, rather than saying “This is how much money we’re going to spend on health care; make everybody healthy for that amount of money,” to say “How healthy do we want people to be? What are the benchmarks that we want to hit? What kind of delivery of programs are acceptable to us?” and then fund to that. That also includes that discussion with the citizens; that’s a part of that. I think we have to continue to invest in education and in children. No question.

I would also argue that investment in the arts – okay, it’s near and dear to my heart, so sue me, but I think an investment in arts and culture continues to have a considerable payback. We know it’s between $3 and $7 for every dollar invested.

I think that there’s also a role of government to provide what no corporation will provide unless there’s a profit that comes out of it. That’s areas like protection of vulnerable people; housing, particularly around mental illnesses services and programming; seniors; and AISH. One of the people that contacted me was really concerned because her son is on AISH. She’s experiencing a situation where AISH will subsidize this fellow for a bus pass but they won’t subsidize him for a DATS pass. Well, lots of people on AISH require a DATS pass, so this is an interesting discrimination. I would ask the government to look to this, and I’ll also provide additional documentation to the relevant minister. Honestly, that’s one of the areas that needs to be looked at.

One of the other areas that I have had a significant amount of correspondence on – and if I have, everybody has – is around seniors’ unhappiness with the plans for changes in pharmaceuticals and in long-term care and assisted living. I’ve had a lot of correspondence, and people have phoned me on it. There is a real sense there that middle-income seniors, particularly on a fixed middle income, are being dinged in a way that they did not expect. They feel it’s unfair and it’s a breaking of that contract with them of what they expected to be available to them when they retired.

Let’s face it. I mean, the government has always looked after truly vulnerable, disadvantaged, bottom of the heap, absolutely no or little-income seniors. They always have. This is now adding to it a small number of other seniors that are equally low income. But, you know, my mother has a teacher’s pension. She would get covered and be paying full freight on this one for a fairly small teacher’s pension, and she’s some 20 years into it. So this is a real concern from seniors.

I think the other issue that is of real interest and concern here is the relationship with the municipalities. I am bringing forward Bill 204 later in the session, which I hope will provoke a discussion – well, I know it will provoke something – about how we fund municipalities. I’m asking the government to consider allocating a portion of income and corporate tax directly to the municipalities for them to use in their operating funding because they’re being expected to carry a lot of the load, and they do not have access to the same amount of funding in order to do that.

I’d also like to see the status of Edmonton as the capital city upheld. I know that when a lot of my colleagues from the government side were elected in Edmonton, somehow Edmonton was to be highlighted again. I would argue that that’s happening less and less. Increasingly press conferences and big announcements happen just about anywhere but Edmonton, and this is the capital city. The Legislature Building is here in the fabulous constituency of Edmonton-Centre, and I think that the respect that is due this institution and this building should be upheld.

I’ve had a lot of feedback on that from people, as well as on the Legislature Grounds renewal themselves, which is a project that has now, I think, been tried 12 times, three times to my knowledge. We have an opportunity here to create a real jewel of a building and of a Legislature grounds, and I hope that the members will support the plan when it comes forward. It could be quite fabulous, and I hope it will be, but thus far all other attempts have failed because it didn’t have the support of the very members that are elected to sit in this House.

Those are some of the issues that I wanted to raise in addition. Thank you for the question, Member for Edmonton-Riverview.

The final issue is around support and stabilization for the not-for profit associations, that we depend on so much to deliver many of the programs that government, in fact, is legislated to provide. At this point they need some stabilization. They need contracts to be written with cost-of-living increases in them and some sort of wage parity for their staff.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.