Lethbridge-West Candidate Profile – Zac Rhodenizer- Alberta Party

“Supervised consumption sites work, they keep people alive, and that’s the bottom line. I know there’s a lot of businesses that have their concerns, and so we want to try and help make that situation better, but the bottom line is we’re keeping people alive. The hard part though is getting people to treatment and keeping them there. The Alberta Party wants to look at increasing the number of beds for mental health needs. Another thing we’re looking at involves marijuana sales. The tax revenue for marijuana sales is going completely to the provincial government even though it’s municipal governments that are doing a lot of the work in drug rehabilitation in the consumption sites. Municipalities, like the City of Lethbridge, should be getting a bigger chunk out of marijuana sales so that that money can be used specifically for harm reduction and treatment. I’m a phycologist, and I’ve worked in addictions, and I know we need to start thinking outside of the box. We’re keeping people alive, but we’re not doing a great job getting them better, so that’s what we need to focus on next.”

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

“Yeah, because that’s part of the problem. You have to look at giving people proper housing because it helps them have a little safety and dignity. The opioid crisis is a symptom of a deeper problem which is disconnection for the most part. Our society is very disconnected; we’re fragmented, we’re not on the same page, so part of that is just providing a vision that unites people. We want to help community-based resources like non-profits to do more work in the community and bring people together to increase what sociologist Robert Putnam calls social capital. You invest in those things, and quality of life gets better so that we’ll see fewer people turning to drugs and alcohol to medicate their woes.”

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’re very pro-business. We want to support our small and mid-sized businesses, and to do that we would double the small business tax deduction from $500,000 to $1,000,000. We would lower the corporate tax rate from 12.5 percent to 10 percent, and our leader Stephen Mandel is a businessman. He’s the only one out of all the leaders so we understand how business has to drive the economy so we can pay for the social programs that we want. We’ve got some cool ideas too, as far as oil and pipelines go. We’re the only party that’s talking about building a railway and a pipeline to Valdez, Alaska. We announced that and just three hours later the Governor of Alaska was calling up President Trump to do the same thing. We need to get our product to market, and we believe the quickest route right now is to go north.”

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?

“Diversity is an essential part of our platform. We believe there are some big opportunities out there, with the film industry as an example. We have an incentive to bring film here, and we believe it could be a billion-dollar industry every year. We have a Welcome to Alberta program where we would take any company that employs over 250 people and moves their headquarters to Alberta a two-year tax holiday from corporate taxes. If they come here from B.C., we’ll give them three years. There are huge opportunities in the forestry industry, and we want to support agriculture as well. We’re looking at all sorts of options, not just to be riding the oil roller coaster, but to look at other industries that have excellent room for growth so that we can bring more jobs to Alberta and Lethbridge specifically.”

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

“We want to have best in class healthcare, it’s super important, but we do believe there are some efficiencies to look into. The Auditor General reported in 2017 that there are some duplications and poor communications between healthcare professionals that is resulting in a lot of inefficiencies and it costs us money unnecessarily. I was talking to a group of pharmacists on the weekend, and they were saying there are just a few changes we could make particularly in just educating people about what pharmacists can do, and it could reduce a lot of the strain on emergency rooms, clinics and physicians. Pharmacists, EMS services, dentists, and even nurse practitioners and midwives, you allow them to do more work that they’re trained to do, and it reduces the cost, gives us better service and reduces wait lines. We don’t have to do everything in the hospital. There are some preventative measures that other health care professionals can do will help make our system more efficient.”

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?

“This is a difficult issue because the science is clear, people are causing climate change, the issue is getting people to change their behaviour. What we have found is there’s a reason to believe through the carbon tax, if you look at B.C. as an example, their emissions haven’t dropped at all. There’s reason to believe that the way our carbon tax is set up, it’s not changing our behaviours. We want power; we need to charge our iPhones and heat our homes. A carbon tax on homes I don’t believe is going to reduce our carbon emissions. We would look at taking the carbon tax away from homes, most businesses, and schools. You have schools paying huge carbon taxes, and that’s less money for teachers. You take that off the economic pressures of those organizations, and you keep it on the large emitters to try and motivate them to clean up their act because there does have to be a price on pollution. But from there you have to look at other behavioural interventions, and this isn’t something that Alberta Party is necessarily pushing, but there are ways to get people to change their behaviour without adding a tax to their gasoline. If we’re going to mitigate the problems of climate change, we’re going to need innovation.”

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?

“As far as I know we will continue to support those industries. The sun shines here a lot, and the wind blows here a whole lot, so it makes sense. We wouldn’t want to change that at all, but I think there isn’t much in the way of a clear vision for when the solar panels die out in 20 years. What are we going to do with them because of the waste and economic impact of that, so we have to have a more long-term plan to keep that going. Of course, there’s an issue with storing that power too because it’s costly to store. When the sun is shining, and the wind is blowing it helps add to our grid, but when it’s not, we still have to rely on our fossil fuels. It’s just the nature of the beast.”

Recently comments have emerged from some 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?

“On the topic of the LGBTQ community, for example, we believe in being fiscally responsible, but we think we don’t have to ditch our conscience either. GSAs save lives; it’s the way it goes. I started a GSA in Taber like six years ago, and it was a very positive experience. A government’s job is to look out for everyone, but especially for the marginalized folks. I used to work for Immigrant Services as well, so I’m very passionate about making sure newcomers come with the proper settlement services and are connected with the community. That’s how I got involved, I started volunteering there, and I got matched up with a family from Nepal, and we became good friends. We need more of that. We need more people connecting with other people, the more we take care of ourselves, the less the government has to. When we have people taking care of each other, we get healthier mentally, healthier physically, and we don’t rely on the government as much. You talk about decorum, and I’m 100 percent convinced that the Alberta Party will be the only party that will provide a vision that unites most Albertans. We’re so divided politically right now that it’s like the American style two-party system, and there’s so much mudslinging and fear mongering. There are rational reasons to vote for the UCP and the NDP, but the problem is that the parties are trying to paint the other as this evil entity, so we’re turned against our neighbours. The Alberta Party is a party that you and your neighbour can vote for and you’re not going to be ashamed of it. We’re willing to work with people no matter what, it’s ideas over ideology. That’s the government I want, and that’s why I’m running.”

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

by Aaron Mahoney (@Mahones93 on Twitter)

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Lethbridge-West Candidate Profile – Zac Rhodenizer- Alberta Party

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