The Canadian Press

Published Monday, Nov. 12 2012, 3:21 PM EST

Last updated Monday, Nov. 12 2012, 4:24 PM EST

Alberta’s Wildrose leader says Premier Alison Redford does not have the mandate to take the province back into debt and needs to hold a referendum on it.

Danielle Smith says there was no mention in the spring budget or in the April election campaign to have the government go into debt to pay for roads, schools and hospitals.

• Alberta’s Tories willing to borrow for infrastructure
• Alberta PCs reduce direct ties with Harper’s Tories over Wildrose
• Redford goes after the Wildrose Party at PC convention

Ms. Smith calls it a major repudiation of a party platform that saw Alberta’s $23-billion net-debt wiped out under former Progressive Conservative premier Ralph Klein.

On the weekend, Ms. Redford and Finance Minister Doug Horner said the province will take on debt to pay for the projects while making sure the government stays in the black on day-to-day spending.

Mr. Horner says it’s a fiscally sound approach and a necessary one, given population growth.

Derek Fildebrandt of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation says if Ms. Redford had campaigned on this platform in the spring general election, she would have lost.

By Keith Gerein and Sarah O’Donnell, Edmonton Journal November 10, 2012

CALGARY – Premier Alison Redford suggested Friday her government is increasingly pursuing public-private partnerships and other private investment strategies to build Alberta’s roads, schools and health centres, casting doubt on her promise to balance all of the provincial budget by 2013-14.

Redford has said previously that she would keep her commitment to balance both the operating and capital infrastructure parts of the budget next year. But on Friday, shortly after her speech to the party’s annual general meeting in Calgary, she appeared to backtrack on part of that promise.

“We have always said we would balance our operating budget; we have also said we would have a long-term, transparent infrastructure plan,” the premier told reporters. “(Finance Minister) Doug Horner has made it very clear we need to fully finance that plan. I think that’s what Albertans have asked to do, and as long as we can do that in a way the ensures we don’t go into debt, then we are doing exactly what we committed to do.”

Asked to clarify how her government will do that, Redford said she will ensure the infrastructure plan is fully financed, but that could mean going to capital markets. She specifically noted the twinning of Highway 63 to Fort McMurray, a project the province has said it will consider borrowing for to complete as fast as possible.

“If you take a look at what were doing with Highway 63, we’ve made it very clear if everything we do right now is funded fully with cash in the bank, then we are never going to build anything more in this province,” Redford said.

“We know it’s going to be possible to use P3 approaches and to talk to people that want to make investments in this province and help us to build infrastructure. It’s been a successful model we’ve used before and it has really allowed us to make the long-term investments that are going to allow generations to continue to succeed.”

The government will soon roll out a new plan to create 140 family care clinics, which should all be operational by the end of her first term in 2016, she said.

Redford’s comments came after she launched a passionate defence of Progressive Conservative values to her political family, contrasting her party’s vision with the “backward” Wildrose party.

“This year, we will all remember the people of Alberta faced a clear choice between two radically different plans for the future,” she said.

“The choice was clear between a party that was stuck firmly in the past — or as Doug Horner likes to call them, the ‘SoCred Retreads’ — or our party, a party who bets on the people of Alberta knowing we can meet an ever-changing world head-on,” Redford said.

Alberta made a forward-looking choice, she said.

But Redford’s speech also was heavy with references to the past.

After an event that began with tribute to Peter Lougheed and thanks from his daughter, Pam Lougheed, for the support and tributes her family received after her father’s Sept. 13 death, Redford talked about the need to honour Lougheed’s legacy.

Redford has often expressed an affinity for Lougheed and his policies. But she also paid tribute Friday to the PC premiers who followed.

“Through the difficult times in the mid-’80s, premier Getty wasn’t about to stand idle while everyday Albertans suffered,” she said. “He invested in the priority services that mattered to the people of this province.”

She described premier Ralph Klein’s “difficult decisions” in the face of budget deficits, saying those efforts to balance the budget achieved “what others in Canada can only dream of: A debt-free province that remains the envy of the nation.”

The Governor General’s decision to award Klein the Order of Canada next week is something many have been waiting a very long time for, she said as the crowd applauded the news. “This is great news for a very deserving, very deserving Albertan.”

Premier Ed Stelmach earned Redford’s praise for steering Alberta through a global economic crisis, remaining focused on “protecting Alberta’s interests, investing in needed infrastructure and creating jobs across the province.”

Afterwards, Redford said she felt it was important in her first speech as leader to the party’s membership to pay homage to those premiers.

“From my perspective I wanted to pay homage to an awful lot of incredible men who I think have done tremendous things to build this province,” she said.

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© Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal

CP  |  By The Canadian Press Posted: 10/30/2012 3:05 pm EDT Updated: 10/30/2012 3:46 pm EDT

EDMONTON – Alberta’s Opposition Wildrose party is asking the government to shelve any talk of new perks and pay hikes for politicians until the budget is balanced.

Party Leader Danielle Smith says that with the price of oil below expectations and the province facing a $3-billion budget deficit, now is not the time to hike pay.

Smith says she will introduce a motion at a meeting next week of an all-party committee debating changes to the pay structure.

The Tory majority on the committee voted earlier this month to have taxpayers make the full yearly RRSP contribution for all 87 politicians.

Wildrose says that works out to an eight per cent pay hike.

Members of the legislature make a base salary of $134,000 a year with more to caucus leaders and cabinet ministers.

First posted: Thursday, November 08, 2012 10:39 PM MST | Updated: Thursday, November 08, 2012 10:52 PM MST

Friday, November 09, 2012 8:24 AM

Friday, November 9, 2012

By Kelly Cryderman, Calgary Herald
CALGARY — Bill Smith has been president of Alberta’s Progressive Conservative party through three tumultuous years that saw former premier Ed Stelmach resign, an underdog candidate win an exhausting eight-month leadership race, and no end of daily political controversies.

Smith also helped lead the long-governing party through this year’s wild provincial election, where the Tories trailed the Wildrose in polls through most of the campaign but managed to keep a 41-year political dynasty alive.

The lawyer and former city firefighter will bow out of the volunteer job this weekend following the party’s annual general meeting in Calgary, where members will select his replacement.

But the 49-year-old Calgarian won’t depart without giving the new president a few lessons he’s learned from the battlefield: listen to your members, recognize your mistakes and fix them quickly.

Smith said there’s no doubt voters were angry in the early days of the spring campaign, especially over an initial decision that Tory MLAs wouldn’t give back all of the money earned for sitting on a legislature committee that hadn’t met for almost four years.

Falling in the polls, Premier Alison Redford reversed the decision the first week of the campaign.

“I think as we neared the end of the election, Albertans said, ‘yeah, we’ve delivered the message. We’ve heard from Premier Redford and the rest of the MLAs that … they’re going to do better,’ ” Smith said.

Opposition parties say the Tory election win came because the Redford Tories made billions in spending promises. But the contentious, socially conservative views of two Wildrose candidates also surfaced near the end of the campaign and gave the Tories new momentum.

“Did they make some mistakes? My opinion is yeah, they did. And I’m grateful for it,” Smith said of his opponents.

“Could they have played a couple of things differently and would that have changed the outcome? It could have.”

Still, Smith said he spoke to the Conservative caucus one week after election day and told MLAs, “OK, we’re going to give you four more years. Don’t screw it up.’”

At this weekend’s convention, MLAs and party members will debate another thorny issue, motions to delete the automatic inclusion and voting rights for federal Conservative MPs and officials at Alberta PC conventions.

“The Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta should be a distinct entity from the Conservative Party of Canada,” states a motion from the Calgary-Glenmore riding association.

“During the last election we saw several federal cabinet ministers and their staffs actively support ‘other party’ candidates. This does not bode well for the future of Alberta.”

Speaking to reporters Thursday, the premier called it a “really interesting” resolution. Redford said just because she’s a member of the PC Alberta party, that doesn’t entitle her to attend and vote in federal Conservative conventions.

“I don’t think there should ever be any assumption that there will always be that sort of crossover,” Redford said.

“We see that politics in Alberta has been getting quite interesting and we know that during the provincial election, that there were people who had all sorts of memberships in all sorts of parties working on different campaigns.”

On Saturday, party members will also choose one of two longtime Tories battling to succeed Smith — one hailing from Calgary and another from a rural area northwest of Edmonton.

Candidate Jim McCormick said he has the time to devote to the job after selling his Calgary-based oil and gas company earlier this year.

He wants to strengthen constituency associations and modernize the party’s operations.

“We have to make the break between government and party,” he said.

Lorne Olsvik, a former Alberta Urban Municipalities Association president, said he’s running for president because he believes the party needs to confront its “vulnerabilities.”

“When you look at the party, we have orphan constituencies when we’ve never had orphan constituencies before,” Olsvik said. “We’ve experienced close races where we’ve never experienced close races before.”

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© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald

By Sarah O’Donnell, Edmonton Journal November 9, 2012 7:12 AM

© Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal

Original source article: After decades in power, Alberta Conservatives meet in Calgary to talk renewal

• 9:23 pm, November 8th, 2012

Alberta premier Alison Redford speaks during a press conference at the Alberta Legislature in Edmonton, Alberta, on November 8, 2012.

Credits: IAN KUCERAK/QMI AGENCY

JACKIE L. LARSON | QMI AGENCY

EDMONTON — After a week of deflecting criticism over transparency issues — and many incoming questions to her cabinet on the floor of the legislature — Premier Alison Redford took a shot at the Wildrose Party on Thursday.

“I will remind people that during that election that other political parties sometimes wouldn’t let their candidates speak, sometimes put gag orders on their candidates, asked their candidates to put down $1,000 bonds and in some places sent campaign organizers and party officials to speak on behalf of party policy,” she said.

Redford said she has a front row of confident ministers who know their department and who can deliver the substantive answers opposition questioners are entitled to.

“I will not simply accept the fact that every time an MLA stands up and says this is a question for you, premier, that that therefore requires me to answer the question. We’ll continue to answer the questions as we feel appropriate,” she said.

Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith said Redford isn’t keeping her promise about accountability.

“Despite her talk about openness and transparency, she’s not walking the walk. She talks an awful lot about raising the bar and we have yet to see that.”
Smith threw the doors to the following weekend’s Wildrose convention session open to the media.

“Of course they’ll be open,” Smith said, adding that she’d like to see the premier adopt a policy like the British where once a week for a half-hour she takes questions.

As to her Progressive Conservative party’s decision to bar the press from discussions on 13 proposed party constitutional amendments at this weekend’s annual general meeting in Calgary, Redford explained the secrecy, saying debate within the party has been “vibrant.”

“We’ve decided that we want to make sure that all delegates can have a free and open and frank discussion,” she said.

The provincial Tories’ constitutional rules committee is looking to scrap the “preferential” system that saw Redford come up the middle to beat out Gary Mar in the party leadership vote a year ago after a three-way minority split that included finance minister Doug Horner.

The same system upset the apple cart on 2006 front-runner Jim Dinning, when Ed Stelmach took more of Ted Morton’s support.

The new system could keep the contest between the top two candidates in lieu of a 50% majority, and would have pitted Redford against only Mar, or Stelmach against Dinning.

Redford said she knew there was discussion about a change to that system, but that it wouldn’t affect her and that she hadn’t given it much thought.
“Party leaders will decide what suits them best for the process,” she said.

Redford fielded reporter questions on MLA pay and perks in the wake of Monday’s majority Tory vote in the all-party member services committee to double the amount to be handed to MLAs to use either for an RRSP or as part of their taxable income.

The sum represents almost a month’s salary per year, the same amount pitched (and then retracted) as a transition allowance by Tory caucus whip Steve Young, causing an uproar in recent weeks after Redford herself barred the idea of a transition allowance in a pre-election promise.

“On Monday, we saw the culmination of six months work, so it wasn’t some magic change from Friday to a Monday, it was the culmination of committee work by an all-party committee over a six-month period,” Redford said.

“I do think it’s appropriate to have an RRSP, and for an employer to make a contribution to that and an employee, so that’s what we ended up with.”

By: Tim Cook, The Canadian Press

Posted: 10/22/2012 10:55 AM | Comments: 191 | Last Modified: 10/22/2012 5:03 PM

Alberta’s Wildrose party Leader Danielle Smith makes a campaign stop in Calgary, Alta., Friday, April 20, 2012. Smith says it was a mistake for her to tweet that properly cooked tainted meat could feed the homeless. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

EDMONTON – Alberta’s Opposition leader says she was wrong to suggest on Twitter that beef recalled over E. coli concerns could be cooked properly and fed to the poor.

The Wildrose party’s Danielle Smith drew scorn when she agreed with a Twitter user who asked if there was a way the beef, which has since been dumped in a southern Alberta landfill, could be saved and prepared safely for the hungry.

“We all know thorough cooking kills E. coli. What a waste,” Smith tweeted in the weekend.

On Monday, she changed her tune. She said she still believes throwing away any meat cleared by inspectors was a waste, but she understands that there is so much public concern over safety there was no choice but to get rid of it.

“It was a mistake,” Smith said at the legislature when asked about her tweet. “I guess I would have to say that, if you can’t explain something in 140 characters, you probably shouldn’t try to talk about it on Twitter, so I have learned a lesson there.”

Her retreat didn’t stop her critics.

NDP Leader Brian Mason suggested Smith has so little regard for poor Albertans that she’s OK with feeding them tainted meat.

“I kind of share the view that it’s a terrible waste of food, but the idea it’s OK to give it to poor people and it’s not OK to give it to the rest of the population reveals an attitude that I find quite distasteful,” said Mason.

“I think people who are poor who maybe go to food banks deserve the best quality food as the rest of us.

“It represents an attitude toward poor people that is at best condescending.”

Tonnes of recalled meat from the shuttered XL Foods Lakeside packing plant at Brooks, Alta., has been dumped in a nearby landfill. There has been no definitive quantity given, but the recall involved 1,800 different products in stores right across the country.

A further 5.5 million kilograms of beef stored at the plant’s warehouses will either be rendered or cooked at a high temperature to kill any E. coli. The meat was not part of the recall as it never left the plant.

Some food-safety experts have suggested that the recall was overkill.

Dr. Jean Kamanzi, a former director at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, has called it “collective hysteria” on the part of a rich country that can afford not to take risks with its food.

Kamanzi, who now is responsible for food hygiene in Africa for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Program, pointed out that any E. coli in beef could be killed by cooking the meat to an internal temperature of 71 C.

“The meat we’re now throwing into the garbage, which contains this so-called E. coli, if you take it and cook it like you’re supposed to, there’s no problem,” Kamanzi said in an interview with The Canadian Press earlier this month.

“It’s edible. These are good proteins.”

But the food inspection agency noted that recent research suggests most Canadians don’t use digital thermometers when they cook.

Sylvain Quessy, professor of meat hygiene at the University of Montreal, said XL was left with little option but to throw all the recalled meat out to make sure people still have confidence in their food.

“There are a lot of consumers that would be concerned that some of the product might be contaminated,” Quessy said. Those who help feed low-income people say that while they can appreciate the thought behind Smith’s tweet, food safety must still be the priority for them.”

No one at the Brooks food bank wanted to talk about the recalled beef. But Jessi Evanoff with the Alberta Food Bank Network Association said food banks work with the CFIA and have guidelines on what is safe for people to eat.

“Although her heart is in the right place … in this particular case, in my opinion, just as an overall safety issue, it doesn’t make sense to bring it into the food bank,” Evanoff said.

“It is a shame in some regards, but I think just from a consumer perspective or a client perspective, there’s some concern over XL beef products now, even taking them in and bringing them into their homes, regardless of whether they are cooked properly or not.”

— With files from Dean Bennett.

CP  |  By Dean Bennett, The Canadian Press Posted: 11/01/2012 5:52 pm EDT Updated: 11/01/2012

EDMONTON – Alberta’s bridges are not falling down, but the province needs to do a better job inspecting them, the province’s auditor general reported Thursday.

Merwan Saher said his recommendation to the Transportation Department is simple: “You have a well-designed (inspection) system. Use it.”

Saher, in his latest report, said his team found that Alberta’s 4,400 bridges are not in imminent danger of collapse but work needs to be done to make sure they stay that way.

“The risk of unsafe bridges is unnecessarily high,” he said.

“The department can’t demonstrate that bridges are maintained to their standards.”

The government contracts out basic bridge inspections to private contractors, but Saher said they found that half the inspections were being done by inspectors whose certification had lapsed.

Inspections done by people who have let their certification lapse can’t be entered into government records. But Saher said the department overrode those safeguards to allow the non-certified inspections to be put into the database.

He said the timeline for inspections was followed in three of four regions, but said in the fourth region, 150 inspections were done a year late.

He said the department developed a spot audit process to monitor the quality of inspections, but didn’t follow it consistently. When spot audits were done they revealed inaccurate inspection ratings, he said.

Also, Saher found that the department doesn’t have a way to deal with those contractors who deliver shoddy inspections.

Transportation Minister Ric McIver said his department was made aware of the concerns months ago when a draft report from Saher was circulated.

He said they have already taken action to make fixes, particularly in making sure all inspectors have up-to-date certifications.

“They all have (their certifications) now, I can assure you,” said McIver. “And we have put systems in place that it will be checked on an annual basis.

“It’s administration, but it’s really important administration. We weren’t checking the boxes on a regular enough basis, and we are now.”

Saher also said he’s worried about future budgeting for bridge repairs.

The department says it will need $900 million over the next decade to replace bridges but right now is budgeting for only $25 million a year.

The department, said Saher, told him that the plan to address the shortfall in the short term is to close bridges or reduce the maximum weight of the trucks travelling over them.

McIver said they will work on the funding.

“We got a warning, if you will, from the auditor, when we’re budgeting for repairs to bridges we need to make sure there are adequate resources to keep those bridges safe,” he said.

NDP Leader Brian Mason said closing bridges is not the answer.

“Those bridges are there for a reason. You don’t just downgrade them or shut them down because you don’t want to maintain them,” he said.

Mason also said the government needs to revisit contracting out the inspectors and look at hiring them in-house to make sure their certification and other training stays current.

Liberal Leader Raj Sherman said the report reflects problems at the top of the department.

“There’s a lack of oversight,” said Sherman.

“Our economy can’t function if we don’t have good infrastructure, and we can’t have good infrastructure if we don’t monitor the infrastructure.”

Saher also went after McIver’s department on reimbursing employees for driving their own cars and trucks at work.

Saher said the department missed a chance to save taxpayers $450,000 by delaying a decision to have employees who drive a lot on the job to lease cars or use government vehicles rather than getting reimbursed 50 cents a kilometre for mileage.

He said some employees were getting an extra thousand dollars or more every a month this way.

McIver said the program was delayed by paperwork and approvals, but said they have already taken action on it.

“We have a couple of managers now driving government-owned vehicles and 50 more vehicles on order,” he said.

Mason said the car issue “may be small, but these things do add up.

“When (taxpayers’ money) is wasted like that, it’s a failure in trust on the part of this government.”