The race is on Albertans head to the polls on April 16
“There is very little I like better than campaigning.” With that, Lethbridge West MLA Shannon Phillips joined a team of volunteers posting “Reelect” signs Tuesday along a London Road street.
The New Democratic Party cabinet minister held the city’s first campaign event just hours after Premier Rachel Notley announced Albertans will go to the polls April 16. The call came a day after Notley’s government presented a Speech from the Throne as the legislature reconvened.
“We feel very optimistic here in Lethbridge,” Phillips said. New Democrats won both Lethbridge constituencies in the 2015 election, with Maria Fitzpatrick picking up Lethbridge East.
This campaign, Phillips predicted, will be about which party is best at diversifying the economy and creating jobs — and which leader is fit for the job.
Notley has run “a scandal-free government,” the candidate said. She has demonstrated “that she is fit to lead.”
The premier will be coming to Lethbridge early in the campaign, Phillips added.
“Jason Kenney has shown he is not fit to be premier,” she maintained.
The United Conservative leader has come under attack within his own party for benefitting from a “kamikaze candidate” scheme to replace former Wild Rose leader Brian Jean, and for disregarding his earlier “grassroots guarantee.” A number of United Conservative constituency executives and candidates have resigned.
For “Team Notley,” said Phillips, the priorities are supporting and improving Alberta’s public services including health care and education. In southern Alberta, those improvements could include the cardiac catheterization lab being proposed by surgeons at Chinook Regional Hospital.
Phillips has met with the surgeons as well as the health minister on the matter, she said. “We have heard their concerns.” As Lethbridge grows, she pointed out, city and rural residents will need access to more health services here.
But if voters elect Kenney, she warned, he has already said he’ll privatize parts of Alberta’s healthcare system.
“Albertans don’t want Americanstyle care,” Phillips maintained.
The government must also respond to southern Alberta’s need for more seniors’ lodges, assistedliving homes and long-term care facilities for an aging population, she added.
The Notley government’s efforts to increase daycare spaces will continue with a new westside facility being opened by the YMCA this spring, she said.
This spring’s campaign looks similar to the 2015 election, Phillips said. Albertans decided they’d had enough of a party offering “backroom deals for wealthy insiders” along with cuts to essential services.
“It appears the Conservatives have learned nothing.”
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