Westlock-area Wildrose Alliance Party of Alberta supporters were out in full force last Wednesday when party leader Danielle Smith paid a visit to the Memorial Hall.
The July 23 speech and question-and-answer session, dubbed “Dessert with Danielle,” was an opportunity for people interested in what the Official Opposition leader had to say about her party’s platform and ideas.
In total, more than 50 Wildrose supporters and interested onlookers were in attendance to hear her speak.
Smith spoke about the challenges inherent in campaigning in and representing Alberta’s northern communities. Vast distances separate the northern communities, which makes it difficult to visit them with the same kind of frequency and ease as the more southern locales.
Yet, within those challenges lie great opportunities and potential, she said. Roughly one-third of the provincial government’s revenue is generated by the northern communities, where only roughly nine per cent of Alberta’s population reside.
At the end of the evening, Smith said she found the chance to speak with potential voters rewarding.
“I always love coming to the smaller communities to hear their issues,” she said. “It’s the only way to know the pressure points in northern Alberta.”
Either because she brought them up in her speech, or because audience members asked about them, Smith spoke about such topics as healthcare, local decision-making, municipal funding, education, the federal Temporary Foreign Worker Program and the environment.
“These are all issues we’re grappling with at the Legislature,” she said.
While several topics were things she was prepared to hear about, others surprised her inasmuch as she said she should have anticipated them.
Among those quasi-surprises were electricity prices and natural gas prices.
“I should have expected those,” she said. “I need to remind myself how the market works.”
Much of her talk centred on contrasting her party to the 43-year-old Progressive Conservative government, calling the Tories “out of date.”
Whereas the Tories have had their so-called balanced budget myth “busted,” the Wildrose is committed to true balanced budgets.
The Wildrose is committed to transparency and integrity, Smith said, while the Tories are beholden to special-interest groups and will only do the right thing after they’ve been caught doing the wrong thing.
As an example, she touched on the donations municipalities made to the Tories, which were only stopped when the practice was uncovered.
The Tories tend to cut front-line workers and add to the high-paid senior management and executive ranks, she said, whereas the Wildrose are dedicated to having a strong front-line workforce.
All those issues are indicative of a party that has been in power for too long and is set in its ways, Smith said, adding it won’t matter who ends up winning the Tory leadership race.
“One person cannot change that culture,” she said.
In contrast, she said she feels the people who run as Wildrose candidates and those who are elected as MLAs have more short-term goals in mind when they run for office.
They all want to be elected, but once in they want to make changes to better the province and then leave office to return to what they were doing before, she said; they don’t harbour ambitions to become career politicians.
Albertans are “hardworking taxpayers who are dedicated to their communities,” Smith said, and that attitude and ethic was vividly apparent during the flooding in southern Alberta last year.
Tens of thousands of volunteers descended on the communities most ravaged by the floodwaters and selflessly committed themselves to helping clean up strangers’ homes, both inside and outside.
From talking about that sense of community involvement and caring, she said she heard from people in other provinces about how if such a disaster struck them, they would be more inclined to wait until the government came to help instead of getting the recovery started on their own.
Moving forward from the Westlock meet and greet, Smith said she intends to take what she heard and use it to hopefully turn her party’s fortunes around in the Barrhead-Morinville-Westlock riding in the next election.
