Melinda Hollis, Liberal
A Liberal candidate wants to stop the wasted time getting patients to Edmonton hospitals. Melinda Hollis says the government’s hospital infrastructure in Edmonton is slowing down the emergency system for northern patients. Hollis says Fort McMurray patients are often stuck in big city traffic.
“Even though you’re getting you’re helipad and all that, the issue is when you’re coming this way, there’s still is about an hour and a half ride to the hospital,” she says.
She says a trauma and birthing centre are long overdue in Fort McMurray, and so is a provincially funded study examining elevated cancer rates in Fort Chipewyan. Hollis blasted provincial regulators and policies regarding First Nations and says they’ve been failing for years.
“We have to look at relooking at the Aboriginal Consultant Levy Act of 2013, Bill 22. That’s a terrible act and it needs to be gone. We need to have Aborginal People to come into a say with Crown land or any of the lands up there,” she said.
Hollis met with Wood Buffalo First Nations last month for work, but hasn’t been to the region since being named a candidate. Hollis says she doesn’t even bother reading the Tory government’s books, because she gave up on the party’s word a long time ago.
“I have never known the PC government to keep their word. It’s maybe lasted a year or two and then they think and fall right back into their own patterns. Words are not kept. I don’t even hear it anymore, I don’t even listen. My focus is our platform.”
Hollis is a psychotherapist and the director of a holistic counselling centre in Edmonton. She ran in the 2013 Edmonton Municipal Election in Ward 6 and finished seventh with 469 votes.
Brian Jean, Wildrose
A 10-year career in politics was supposed to come to an end when Brian Jean resigned as Conservative MP for Fort McMurray-Athabasca. Last January, his plan was to come home, be closer to his family and help with its business. Meanwhile Alberta’s political landscape started to change. Alison Redford resigned and Jim Prentice was running to lead the party. Jean even contributed $10,000 to the Prentice campaign, but he says the broken promises and lies made him want to enter the provincial race.
“If they can’t tell the truth to their constituents, then bluntly, they need to go. And that’s where I’ve seen, not just locally in our local candidates, but also in Jim Prentice. He gave his word he wasn’t going to call an election with a fixed election date, he gave his word that he was going to come up with a plan for healthcare within 90 days,” said Jean while on the road in Alberta.
After winning leadership of the Wildrose Party, the Fort McMurray-born lawyer vowed to fix a broken health care system. His priorities include a balanced budget, savings strategy and creating jobs. Jean also says he brings the advantage of bringing the roads, hospitals, and tax breaks to the region.
“As premier, I will make sure that we actually get treated with respect in Fort McMurray. And with respect knowing that we pay more tax dollars than anybody else in the country and we have the worst infrastructure in the country. And that’s not fair and that’s not right,” says Jean.
Opposition parties say he’s foolishly promising new infrastructure in announcements every week. Jean says the funds will come from trimming the fat in areas such as communications and Alberta Health Services executives. He also wants to get rid of corporate grants and get the books in order to pay for big budget promises.
“We’re going to bring in an auditor general and independent officers of the legislature to make things more efficient and to audit it and make it more transparent. And that’s a money audit. And we’re going to establish a waste buster program. Now that’s $845 million, so together that’s just a billion right there in the very first year,” he said.
Jean has promised to build infrastructure in Fort McMurray, as well as projects such as Calgary’s $1.5 billion dollar ring road.
Ariana Mancini, NDP
One Government of Alberta Bill was all it took to reel Ariana Mancini into politics. Last year, Alison Redford’s Progressive Conservatives tabled Bills 9 and 10. The Ecole Dickinsfield teacher says the pension reform bills would have been devastating to her family and it would have forced people of retirement age to stay on the job or use social services. Mancini points to a clause in the bill.
“So even though under the new rules you might think that you would be receiving a certain amount, again that could change at any time. And if they decided to change those rules, pensions could have been completely lost,” says Mancini.
Now the Fort McMurray-Conklin candidate is wearing NDP orange, hoping to break ground in a battle of political heavyweights. She has been active a member of the Alberta Teachers’ Association Local 48, and is fighting the government’s education budget. The funds were criticized by the Fort McMurray Catholic School District and 18 other boards across the province for not considering projected student growth. Mancini says it’s not fair to ask boards to dip into their reserves.
“That money has already been allocated towards other things, including emergencies. So is this the solution that the people of Fort McMurray want to see in terms of funding their childrens’ education? Absolutely not,” she says.
The NDP is surging across the province, but it’s facing major criticism for its corporate tax hike. Critics and opposition parties say it will drive down Alberta’s competitive advantage and have corporations shying away from doing business in the province. Mancini defends the plan as a small increase from 10 to 12 per cent, the same rate as Saskatchewan.
“Let me be clear, we do not have a spending problem. What Alberta has is a revenue problem and that’s why when [oil] crashes, cuts have to happen to public services. So in order for us to fix the revenue problem we need to increase taxes moderately and progressively,” she says.
Mancini also touted the NDP as the only party with a job creation plan. On April 9, Party Leader Rachel Notley announced plans to create 27,000 jobs by rewarding businesses that hire new employees in Alberta.
Don Scott, PC
When the election was called, Don Scott was the Minister Innovation and Advanced Education. Scott says he was in talks with universities in Edmonton and Calgary to find a way to improve healthcare in partnership with Keyano College.
“We have a very aggressive physician recruitment program going on right now, but really what I need to do is, I need to make sure that we have young people from this region who are being trained as physicians and then coming back to Fort McMurray to live here,” says Scott.
It’s his second cabinet portfolio since he moved from council chambers to the legislature in 2012. He recently came under fire for expenses racking up $24,100 during a government trip to Poland in 2013. However, a long running issue for him has been his involvement in Fort McMurray’s long-term care. The Aging and Place facility at downtown’s Willow Square and Alberta’s plan for a Continuing Care site in Parsons Creek are easy targets for opponents such as Wildrose Leader Brian Jean, who was a Tory MP when Scott was working on getting the land from Ottawa.
“If he’d really wanted to see progress on that property than he should have aggressively got that property transferred to the province. I wrote him letters, I had meetings, before he quit on the region he just didn’t get it done. Once he was out of the way we got the opportunity to work with Premier Prentice,” says Scott.
Last November, Scott announced the province purchased the land, but he says it was disappointing knowing how much money was spent acquiring it. Regarding the PC campaign, Scott is touting the government’s budget as the only solid plan to get the province out of a slump. He says it’s not all tax hikes, it’s part of the plan to keep it from following tumbling oil prices.
“I don’t want to see every decision that OPEC makes having such a huge impact on our region. So right now we are very dependent on the oil revenues that we receive. We have a 10 year plan we put out and I think it’s a balanced plan. It makes sense,” says Scott.
Don has worked for more than 10 years as a lawyer in Fort McMurray and founded the McMurray Law Office in 2006.
