St. Albert had its turn hosting a provincial government cabinet tour on Wednesday.
The series of flesh-pressing tours has had the government sending its ministers and MLAs to all corners of the province since April 26.
Hosted by St. Albert MLA Ken Allred, the one-day St. Albert leg included a visit from Employment and Immigration Minister Thomas Lukaszuk, Service Alberta Minister Heather Klimchuk and Edmonton MLA Tony Vandermeer, who chairs the legislature’s Cabinet Policy Committee on Health.
“The real meat of it is talking to the people,” Allred said of the tours. “They’re not a public relations exercise.”
The PCs will hold a retreat starting June 7 and information gathered during the tours will no doubt go into forming and tweaking policy, Allred said.
The tour began with a visit to Big Lake, where Mayor Nolan Crouse and members of the Big Lake Environment Support Society advocated for sound planning of Lois Hole Provincial Park to ensure the threatened area remains as natural as possible.
Throughout the day, the contingent visited St. Albert’s sights, such as the grain elevators and Little White School House. It also held meetings with various groups, including city council, various community organizations, the RCMP and the chamber of commerce. Also included were visits to the local food bank and hospital.
Mayor Nolan Crouse described the day only as “okay” since Health Minister Gene Zwozdesky and Tourism, Parks and Recreation Minister Cindy Ady both had to cancel at the last minute.
“The two ministers that we wanted to speak with … were not there, so that was disappointing,” Crouse said.
He’d wanted to speak to the health minister about the city’s disappointment in progress of the province’s takeover of ambulance service but had to settle for parliamentary assistant Raj Sherman, who joined the afternoon leg of the tour.
Crouse felt the day was still meaningful because city reps were able to influence several government people.
At the St. Albert Food Bank, executive director Suzan Krecsy was happy to talk about her organization’s community village model, which helps food bank users access other social services. Her other prime message was about the gaps in mental health services and affordable housing.
“I was absolutely thrilled that these politicians took the time to come here,” she said.
The tour is a good way for the government to engage in important two-way communication and is an obvious effort to keep its rural support base intact, said Chaldeans Mensah, a political scientist with MacEwan University.
“There’s a PR aspect to it but also there’s an important political task at play ... preventing any challenge on the ground by the Wildrose Alliance,” Mensah said.
Lukaszuk said the tour is helping to put a face to the issues and is a good way for the government discuss initiatives it’s undertaken that haven’t generated headlines.
He said the tour isn’t a direct response to the rise of the Wildrose Alliance but it’s effectively neutralizing the upstart opponent.
“If anyone was at all concerned about the potential, momentum or inertia of Wildrose, this tour has definitely dissipated that. We’re finding that overall in Alberta, Albertans are positive, more positive than I thought they would be,” Lukaszuk said.
“We’re travelling areas where the Wildrose Alliance wouldn’t have a chance to come in third on a good day.”
