Lethbridge-West Candidate Profile – Shannon Phillips – Alberta New Democratic Party

Where do you stand on the Supervised Consumption Site, and how do you believe the drug crisis in Lethbridge can best be resolved?

“Well you know, some years ago, families, first responders, law enforcement, city council and the business community and health care providers came to the province with a proposal for a safe consumption site for Lethbridge, just one piece of the puzzle in response to the opioid crisis. In the subsequent years, we have also made commitments to new detox beds, new intox services, housing services and more different kinds of health care services to combat this crisis in addition to making sure we had the law enforcement resources we needed in place. For example, we restored some of the law enforcement’s ability to do investigations – the ASIRT funding and ALERT funding, which was scheduled to be cut under the previous government. So, those are some of the various responses to the opioid crisis. It’s not one answer, it’s many answers. There is no question that the safe consumption site has saved lives, hundreds of them, and there’s no question that there remains work to be done.”

Do you support the funding announcements made in December 2018 about supportive housing, and intox/detox spaces?

“Yes, I do support those funding announcements because I made them. That was part of our government’s commitment to more than one solution to this, particularly complex problem. You can’t just have supervised consumption without expanding our detox, without making sure we’ve got intox services available, without making sure that we’ve got other health care supports available for people, and the biggest thing is of course housing. There needs to be many different kinds of investments of affordable housing in Lethbridge and throughout Alberta, but those 42 units that we announced (are) for a high level of supportive housing, so that we can take action in kind of our two main issues, which is homelessness and addictions issues in Lethbridge.”

Lethbridge has been sheltered compared to other parts of the province when it comes to the economic downturn, but jobs remain a key issue in this election.

What is your party proposing when it comes to economic issues and what policy, in particular, are you championing as something that will help the people of Lethbridge?

“We were able to attract the largest private sector investment in Southern Alberta history to Lethbridge by working cooperatively with the city and making sure that we could make the infrastructure investments that were required to attract that investment. We worked very closely with them, and we were able to accomplish that goal together. Now there’s more that we can do there if we continue to work collaboratively with cities and if they continue to have the funding in place to be able to meet those kinds of infrastructure questions when we have large companies that want to make investments. In addition to that, of course, we expanded the university, which will bring more researchers, more students, to the city. We have also opened up the largest and most competitive renewable energy opportunities, really, some of the largest in North America and many of those investments are coming right in here to Lethbridge and Medicine Hat, two-billion dollars so far, with a private sector investment. That’s just through straight policy, right, the government’s various policies to attract those investments. Finally, more locally, we have pledged to redevelop the airport by making sure that we have funding in place. The province has promised 7-million dollars to redevelop the Lethbridge Airport because we have a lot of more value-added upgrading and refining of both our agriculture products and our oil and gas products that we can do. Airports are not just about passengers, they’re also about cargo and Lethbridge can be a key hub and a key player in some of those activities, and we need to be positioned for the future.”

How can you take the positive experiences in Lethbridge when it comes to a diversified economy and try to translate that to the whole province?

“That’s exactly where we need to play to our strengths. Lethbridge has a number of agricultural strengths so attracting the Cavendish foods investment and working with other agri-food companies to attract those investments is going to be key for Lethbridge. Of course, as I talked about, the renewable investments are key for Lethbridge, and that’s throughout the value chain, from large companies to servicing companies to smaller entrepreneurs who are doing more small-scale renewables, Lethbridge has a real opportunity to be a clean technology hub – so does Alberta for that matter. We have a lot of energy professionals in the province, and we’re an energy province in every sense of the word. I think more broadly, we need to make sure we’ve got the infrastructure in place so that our bridges and our roads and all our transportation networks are in good shape to be able to attract and maintain growth, so that’s why we’re doing things like replacing the Highway 3 bridge. It’s more than fifty years old, and that work needs to be done. There’s no question that the province can help the city in planning for a third bridge whenever down the road that happens. There’s no question in my mind that the province has a key role to play in continuing to expand the college so that they can take advantage of some of these value-added agriculture opportunities and some of the key strengths that they see in the region. My focus as an MLA is on how we make sure that Lethbridge has a seat at the table and we are getting what we need out of Edmonton, for a long time we were ignored.”

How do you view the health care system in the province in 2019, and what would your party do if elected to improve it?

“First and foremost, no one is asking for American-style two-tiered health care, and yet that’s exactly what Jason Kenney has put on offer to Albertans. I’ve never in my life heard someone ask me whether I should be able to pay for health care, and that’s his proposal. That is not helpful, and privatization experiments only end up costing both government, and patients more and certainly can cause a lot of hardships for families as well. So, what we’ve said is stable, predictable funding to our health care system, and we need to make sure we’re making key investments to attract more specialists and make sure we’re meeting needs in the community, and that’s why as a government, we have pledged to make sure the hospital has a cardiac catheterization lab. That will mean we can attract more specialists to Lethbridge and people can get care closer to home. That’s an important investment that I’ve heard certainly from people that work in health care but also from patients on the door-step, and I’m going to be very proud to be an MLA who continues to advocate for specifically targeted investments in Lethbridge in places where we need them.”

Are cuts in funding needed, are additional funds needed, or is it a matter of finding efficiencies?

“Well, I think we ensure stable and predictable increases to our health care and education systems that keep pace with inflation and population growth. We do not need to engage in these wild swings in spending as the previous government did, you know, they spent money like water in the good times and they didn’t plan for when the price of oil would go down, and people would be left with nothing. That’s not Rachel Notley’s approach at all. Her approach has been, as we emerge from this recession, that our work is not done until it has reached every kitchen table and that this recovery will not be like previous recoveries. We are going to diversify the economy; we are going to grow the economy and bring the budget back to balance with modest and careful efficiencies in some areas and with ensuring that services in others. There is no need for drastic cuts to the services that people need. Jason Kenney alleges that there are, but that’s because he wants to turn around and give a four-and-a-half billion-dollar tax cut to profitable large corporations. That’s why he’s selling so many cuts to health care, education and so on because there’s no other way to balance the budget, but what it really shows about his character is that he’s interested in special deals for his friends and insiders. He’s not interested in the rest of us.”

From three weeks of the polar vortex to grass fires at the start of spring, Lethbridge and Southern Alberta are bearing the brunt of climate change.

Where does your party rank dealing with the climate as an issue and what are your plans to protect the agriculture and farming industries that will be impacted?

“There’s no question that climate change is real and there’s no question that we need to invest in our infrastructure to be able to deal with what you point out are more frequent and severe weather events that will affect our food security and our agricultural income. So, we need to make sure that our irrigation systems, for example, are better able to weather those kinds of weather events, quite frankly. That’s where we need to have a climate adaptation framework in place, and it needs to be appropriately funded through re-investment of the price on pollution. There’s no question that our oil and gas sector needs to be resilient to the fact that we are going into a world where it is carbon-constrained, and our trading partners are going to have questions about our climate policies and how we extract our oil and gas. We believe, Rachel Notley believes, that Alberta has the answers to those questions. We can compete on the global scale with clean technology, lowering the carbon in the barrel and being that energy producer of the twenty-first century. You can’t do that if you don’t even admit climate change is real, and that’s what Jason Kenney has said, either by himself questioning how much of it is anthropogenic or through welcoming in climate ire candidates. That will not help Alberta as an energy province, certainly not in renewables and energy efficiency and clean tech but not in the oil and gas sector either. All he’s opening it up for is repealing our made-in-Alberta price on pollution and rolling out the red carpet for Justin Trudeau’s approach, and I don’t think that’s good for Alberta’s energy industry, for our oil and gas workers, and I think Albertans agree with me on that.”

Southern Alberta has been described as a leader when it comes to green energy, from wind turbines to solar panels.

Will you commit to keeping and improving Energy Efficiency Alberta, and if not, what are your plans for the industry?

“The simple answer to your question is yes. We need to continue to invest in energy efficiency. People have saved in Southern Alberta alone about 500-million dollars in energy costs due to energy efficiency Alberta’s investments. It’s not just in homes – it’s in small businesses, medium-sized, light industrial operations, manufacturing operations. Certainly, our agricultural producers had strong uptake in the agricultural programs, whether it’s irrigation pivots, solar panels, barn retrofits, you name it. Those programs would disappear with Jason Kenney’s approach, and I don’t believe that’s good for anyone.”

Recently comments have emerged from candidates about homophobia, white nationalism, and anti-muslim/refugee rhetoric.

What is your party doing to raise tolerance and civility in regard to public office, and what are your views on the LGBTQ community?

“My view is that human rights should never be on the ballot and it’s a damn shame that Jason Kenney has put them there. It is unconscionable that people are seeking public office who have made racist or homophobic remarks, not a long time ago either, we’re talking about candidates on the ballot right now who have written position papers that gay people should be fired, and Jason Kenney didn’t fire them. That is just eye-poppingly outrageous in my view. We need a multiculturalism ministry. Rachel Notley has committed to that. We have funded specific hate crime units for law enforcement because we know that there’s been a spike in hate crimes. There is no place for that kind of discrimination for my Alberta, and there ought not to be in Jason Kenney’s Alberta either. As for gender identity and LGBTQ issues, we have human rights in this province and this country. We have equality, and we have diversity; those are our constitutional rights. Jason Kenney thinks they’re a distraction, which he has said, or they’re not important. He’s got another thing coming. Hundreds of people the other night (April 10) were out protesting him, and he hasn’t even been elected yet. People are having none of it, Albertans aren’t. We are deeply committed to diversity and inclusivity, and no matter what happens on April 16th, Lethbridge can take one thing to the bank – their MLA, if I’m elected, will be committed to diversity, inclusion and human rights for all. That’s what makes us who we are.”

For more details on the specifics of the New Democratic Party platform, you can go here.

by Justin Goulet

Lethbridge-West Candidate Profile – Shannon Phillips – Alberta New Democratic Party

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