KENNEY HAS LOST JOBS, LOST MLAs, AND LOST THE TRUST OF ALBERTANS

EDMONTON – As the spring 2021 sitting of the Alberta Legislature winds down tonight, Kenney has posted three major losses.

“Jason Kenney has lost jobs, he’s lost MLAs, and he’s lost the trust of Albertans,” said NDP Leader Rachel Notley.

According to Statistics Canada, there are 13,600 fewer Albertans at work today than there were when the sitting began in early March.

“If you look through the bills that Jason Kenney presented during this session, it’s extraordinary how little attention there is to job creation,” Notley said.

The UCP’s so-called Alberta Jobs Now program was months late and inadequate. The government’s best-case scenario projections suggest it will create less than half of the 50,000 jobs the UCP lost before the pandemic.

“Jason Kenney’s cuts to municipal funding under Bill 56 are cuts to job creation. That money flows through cities, towns, and counties to build things, repair things, and create local jobs. Bill 56 is effectively an anti-jobs bill. Jason Kenney’s ongoing attack on postsecondary education is anti-jobs, and his plans to lay off 11,000 frontline healthcare workers is also, obviously, anti-jobs,” Notley said.

“Add these to the 13,000 jobs he lost over the past months and this has been a jobs-killing session.”

Jason Kenney is finishing the spring sitting with two fewer MLAs than he started with, and several other MLAs and cabinet ministers are openly questioning the Premier’s judgement and honesty. The Premier acknowledged that public trust was broken in the wake of Alohagate at the beginning of the year.

“In a session when the Premier should have been laser-focused on earning back that trust, he lost even more,” Notley said. “He’s lost $1.3 billion of Albertans money on his disastrous Keystone deal and continues to hide the details around that. He’s continued to be dishonest to Albertans about his plans for coal mining in the Eastern Slopes. He denied that there was a rising third wave of COVID-19 until Alberta hospitals were almost overwhelmed.

“He denied he violated public health orders at his SkyPalace patio party, even when he was caught on film violating public health orders at his SkyPalace patio party. As recently as yesterday, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, Jason Kenney told a bare-faced lie to Albertans when he denied that he imposed a niqab ban when he was the Immigration Minister.

“It’s hardly surprising he is the least trusted premier in Canada.”

Meanwhile the NDP Opposition Caucus has proposed several pieces of legislation to protect the Eastern Slopes from coal mining, protect Alberta parks from being sold, provide presumptive WCB coverage for workers infected by COVID at work, and to provide Alberta seniors with an independent advocate.

“We have also set a bold target for Alberta to create at least 60,000 new jobs by modernizing our electricity grid to net-zero carbon emissions by 2035 on the way to a province-wide net-zero by 2050,” Notley said. “This is where the world economy is going and we must move aggressively towards where those jobs will be. 

“We’ve got detailed proposals to create jobs in hydrogen development, geothermal, new bitumen products, and many many others. I’m excited to continue this work with Albertans this summer, and I encourage everyone to visit AlbertasFuture.ca to check out our proposals, and to join the conversation for the proposals still in development.

“We are past the halfway mark for this government. I’m looking forward to developing a plan for prosperity with Albertans in 2023 and beyond.”