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The Morinville-St. Albert United Conservative Party constituency association hosted a meet and greet fundraiser on Tuesday night, giving party donors a chance to hear where five leadership candidates stand on a handful of topics.
Around 115 UCP donors and guests gathered at the Chateau Nova Yellowhead hotel in Edmonton on Aug. 23. Morinville-St. Albert MLA Dale Nally served as the moderator for a roughly 90-minute forum between Brian Jean, Rajan Sawhney, Rebecca Schulz, Danielle Smith, and Travis Toews.
St. Albert Coun. Ken MacKay was also in attendance, at a table designated for Morinville-St. Albert UCP. MacKay declined an interview request from The Gazette.
After each candidate was given a few minutes to introduce themselves, Nally, the minister of natural gas and electricity, asked the candidates: “What is your plan to continue with a quality and sustainable health-care system?”
All five candidates said Alberta's health-care system is either "broken" or in "crisis."
“The AHS system is broken and we know it’s broken," Jean said. "Everybody knows it’s broken."
"The thing is, let’s not make it worse ... doctors, nurses, teachers; they’re the foundation of our communities. The nurses and doctors, they’re the people that are going to get us out of this issue."
Jean also said the government should be focusing on health-care outcomes.
"We have a very expensive system, it’s one of the most expensive in the world for first world countries," Jean said. "We need to treat patients like customers, instead of profit centres.”
Sawhney, the former transportation minister, was next to answer the question.
"[Alberta Health Services] does need an overhaul,” Sawhney said. “We do need to mend fences with our physicians and health-care workers. People who are intrinsic to the health-care system do need to be involved in helping us understand how we need to move forward."
Schulz, former minister of children's services, said fixing Alberta's health-care system would begin with physicians and primary care networks.
"It helps us to address one of the biggest struggles, especially in rural Alberta," said Schulz. "Every single Albertan should have access to a family doctor, as well as a team of professionals to support their needs," she said. "We need to fix the health-care system, and not lock people down.”
Smith said people need to "realize just how serious the crisis is in health care."
"One of the issues that we have on capacity is that we have a large number of patients who are awaiting placement in long-term care,” Smith said. "You can imagine what happens when you don't have an efficient way of moving patients into long-term care, when patients come into emergency rooms, there's no place for them to go."
Toews, the former finance minister, was the last candidate to respond: “The first thing we need to do is acknowledge that Alberta’s health-care system is failing."
"I would immediately order a review of our health-care credentialing body’s criteria. There’s thousands of foreign-trained health-care workers in Alberta that cannot get into the system and apply their trade."
Environment
Nally asked the candidates about environmental policy: "As Albertans we like to leave things better than we found them for our kids and our grandchildren, so what is your plan to leave the environment better for our kids and our grandkids?”
Sawhney said she would implement all of the recommendations made by the Coal Policy Committee, and that she understands many Albertans want to protect the Eastern Slopes from coal mining.
"We also have to push for [liquid natural gas]," Sawhney said. "Trudeau does not know what he’s talking about when he says that the business case isn’t there. He needs to get out of the way and he needs to let industry come in and make those decisions.”
Schulz said, “Conservatives have long been known as conservationists."
"We care about the land. Our farmers and ranchers do care about the land," Schulz said. "What also matters is water, land use planning — these are things that we have to get right."
Smith talked about abandoned oil wells, something she called a "$30-billion liability."
“Addressing the issue of abandoned well sites will be really key for us winning back support in rural Alberta, because they’re the ones that are bearing the cost of seeing those sites go year after year without being reclaimed," Smith said. "I think it’s giving us an international black eye.”
Toews said he agreed with Sawhney and would implement the Coal Policy Committee's recommendations. He also said he agree with Schulz's comment about land use planning.
"There’s a way to develop resources responsibly and protect the environment. We can do that in Alberta and we need to get on with it," Toews said.
Jean said he's "committed to environmental policies aimed at improving the lives of Albertans," such as clean farms and carbon capture.
Trade workers
Another question posed to the candidates was how would they "ensure that we’ll have the skilled trades that we need for the economy of the future?”
Jean and Smith agreed that increasing the number of foreign workers coming to Alberta would be a solution.
“We need to take over our immigration file from Ottawa," Jean said. "We need to take it back and we need to fast track temporary foreign workers.
"We need to have more people that can do the trades and that means our kids need to go into that educational force and we need to be proud of that as parents."
Smith, meanwhile, said, “[We've] got to more effectively use our temporary foreign worker program as a pathway to permanent immigration."
"If our federal target is 400,000 newcomers to Canada, we should have at least our share of those, which is about 40,000 or 45,000," Smith said. "The left is not the friend of resource jobs or blue collar jobs, so let's come up with a plan.”
Toews and Schulz both mentioned that increasing the number of people who enter the trades should start in high schools.
"That’s a way of the future, to pull students in at an early age, get them interested in these vocational trades," Toews said. "We’re going to need thousands of them, and there’s great careers for those students that choose it.”
Schulz added: "We need to do a better job in that area of recruiting high school students into the area where we know we have labour market shortages because we don’t have a jobs problem, we have a people problem.”
Sawhney broke away from the pack as she mentioned developing a "campus" to help support truck drivers.
"The narrative around the trucking profession is not positive at all," Sawhney said. When she was the minister of transportation, Sawhney said, "I asked what are some of the things that we can do and they talked about putting together a campus where you can get credentialing, where you can get experience, where you can get additional training, and more importantly, where you can get positive reinforcement.
"Skilled trades are important jobs and we don’t talk about them the way that we should,” Sawhney said.
Pierre Poilievre
To conclude the forum an audience member asked the candidates who they supported in the leadership race for the Conservative Party of Canada.
All candidates except Sawhney stated they endorsed Pierre Poilievre, the former shadow minister of finance.
"He’s spent time in Ottawa and he knows what to do and he’s from Calgary," Jean told the crowd. "I really believe that [Poilievre] will do what’s necessary.”
Schulz said Poilievre's mother lives in her riding, and attends all of Schulz's events.
Toews said he supports Poilievre due to their mutual agreement on topics such as "fiscal management, and our view on how to position an economy for competitiveness and investment attraction."
Smith said Poilievre, who she first met when he was a teenager, "talks like a conservative. You know that he is going to govern like a conservative, and you know he feels proud to be a conservative."
UCP members will be mailed ballots to vote for the party's new leader on Sept. 7, and the party's new leader is expected to be announced on Oct. 6.
