A small crowd turned out for the pre-provincial budget meeting Athabasca-Sturgeon-Redwater MLA Colin Piquette held Friday evening in Colinton.
“What we’re looking for is input not only for the upcoming budget, which we’re going to be releasing in October, but also to help us inform the process going forward,” said Piquette. “Not everything that we discuss today is necessarily going to be feeding into this budget, but none of the information collected is going to be lost.”
The evening started with a brief overview of the situation that Alberta finds itself in currently — particularly the current downslide of the oil industry.
“This is not something that’s unusual for Albertans. We’ve been through these types of contractions (before),” he said. “How soon things are going to turn around? We don’t know.”
That said, according to Piquette, Alberta has a good set of fundamentals. So, when things do turn around, Alberta will probably be fine.
“We are in a bit of a difficulty, but the good news is for Alberta, we have really strong fundamentals,” he explained.
“We have a very well educated workforce, very well disciplined. We have the best technology in the world and expertise and we definitely have the infrastructure.”
In relation to the upcoming budget, most of it is pretty set in stone because of the platform the NDPs ran on, said the MLA.
“In a way we did have a pretty major budget consultation recently: the general election,” he said. “So, I think the broad perimeters of this fall budget are kind of set.”
That didn’t stop, however, those who attended to presentation from talking about what the priorities for the community are – or at least the priorities for those who attended.
Discussions began with complaints about the bridges both those owned by the county and the Athabasca bridge.
“Everybody’s getting scared to go across (the Athabasca bridge),” said Athabasca County Coun Dennis Willcott.
“They’re steady fixing the planks. Every two or three months, somebody’s in there. It’s a horrible bridge.
“To me, the government’s got to come out and say, ‘In two years or in three years, we’re going to fix this bridge.’”
Piquette agreed that the bridge should be a priority. That said, it’s not the only bridge in Alberta.
“The problem is you’ve got bridges that are falling apart all across the province and that’s the real issue,” he said.
“All I can say is as MLA, I’m doing my best to advocate for the priorities in this riding, but so are all the other MLAs.”
The discussions went on to include the Highway 63 rescue service, post-secondary education and the STEP program (Summer Temporary Employment Program) — a program that was discontinued by the Conservative government a few years ago.
“Bring back the STEP program,” said one of the attendees. “Get these students a place to get good quality experience in their field. That’s the key. We don’t want them working in a warehouse. We want them working in the field that they got an education in.”
Piquette concluded the meeting with a bit about what he plans to bring back from the discussions.
“(It’s clear) that this isn’t the time to do massive cuts that this is more the time to do some counter-cyclical stuff and that seems to be the message that I’m getting out of tonight’s discussion,” he said. “(And) I think part of the big message is some significant investment in infrastructure would be welcome.”
