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Fair Deal Panel attendees in Lethbridge - LNN

Fair Deal Panel finds concerns in Lethbridge run the gamut

Dec 13, 2019 | 9:58 AM

LETHBRDGE — “I think Alberta needs more than a fair deal!”

That was just one of the comments heard Wednesday (Dec11) night, as Alberta’s ‘Fair Deal’ Panel visited Lethbridge.

The panel is comprised of nine members, including former M-P Preston Manning. It’s mandate is to listen to Albertans and their ideas for Alberta’s future. The Panel should focus on ideas that would strengthen our province’s economic position, give us a bigger voice within Confederation, or increase provincial power over institutions and funding in areas of provincial jurisdiction.

A couple hundred people were drawn to the panel’s Lethbridge visit, and while there was a specific list of measures to focus on, some of the speakers from the audience went off topic. One young man explained he was a born and raised Albertan, who was there to ask the the province to decriminalize sex work and have it fall under the jurisdiction of Alberta Health Services.

Fair Deal Questions — LNN

Panel member, Donna Kennedy-Glans, says what they’re trying to do, is ensure the town hall, is an opportunity for citizens to feel comfortable speaking up, and that was certainly what they got.

She says the biggest surprise is how people figure out who makes their decisions – is it a federal government, a provincial government? It’s people’s understanding of how decisions are made. She also related to LNN what they have been hearing.

“The pension plan question has come up quite a bit, people’s understanding of, you know, we’re going to switch from a Canadian Pension Plan to an Alberta Pension plan – what does that look like? That’s come up a lot.”

“Things that we didn’t expect, like Senate representation and MP representation and the unfairness of that – as Alberta has limited representation compared to other jurisdictions, especially in the east – that’s come up a lot more than we expected?”

Kennedy-Glans noted that conversations are going to be different in every location that we go to, Edmonton is where we started and it was unique, Red Deer was unique, and Calgary was unique. And I think that’s really, really important – this is not an exercise that you could do sitting in Edmonton and calling people, you really need to go where people live.”

“Sometimes it’s the economic drivers in those particular communities – certainly in the case of Red Deer, it is very impacted by oil and gas and agriculture – a lot of people who are farming came in to speak to us. Calgary was lots of energy issues, as you would expect, lots of renewable people, and academics as well. It was just a different mix.”

Josh Andrus, the Executive Director Project Confederation, also attended the Wednesday night town hall, and felt it went pretty well, but the mood in the room was definitely one of frustration.

” I don’t want to say it was angry but it’s definitely a sense of frustration on both sides of the aisle but the one thing I will take away from this is that there were a lot of speakers that were talking about the triple-e senate and how important getting constitution or reform, which is something that we advocate for. As you’re probably aware 199 of the 338 seats in the House of Commons are based in Quebec and Ontario and what Preston Manning advocated for as leader of the Reform Party from 1987 to 2000 was a triple-E senate and one of an equal number of senators across Canada.”

“Some people said today, it’s tyranny of the majority, where a large percent of the population, based in eastern Canada, dictating to those of us in western Canada what we can do and what we can’t do.”

Andrus said he noticed there were a lot of teachers and other public servants in attendance.

“They seem to be the most ardent federalists – I don’t know what that says for the state of the political discourse in this province but, that’s definitely a take-away that I had and surprised me a bit. I just hope the panel comes back with the strongest recommendations possible by their March 31, 2020 deadline, but given he personalities on the panel, I have a lot of confidence that they’re going to succeed in that.”

Retired Alberta teacher, Greg Hales, found the evening interesting.

“An absolute 180-degree of ideas, perceptions, positions were presented and from that point of view, it was a very interesting evening, and positive, I think.”

“Southern Alberta is a kind of hotbed for conservatism and I guess I was surprised that there were as many divergent views from conservatism expressed by the speakers as there were today, said Hales, “I guess that gives me hope because I’m not particularly keen on these points that the community is apparently discussing.”

But, there was one point Hales, and others were adamant about.

“There’s absolutely no way that Alberta should create it’s own pension plan – it makes no sense financially, it would cost us a fortune compared to what we would get out of it – the Canada Pension plan is a huge plan with enormous bargaining power when it comes to investing – why we would want to create an Alberta pension plan is beyond me, particularly if the people in charge of it are going to be the Conservatives, who have taken the Albertan Heritage Trust fund, which (former) Premier Peter Lougheed established, and basically frittered it away to nothing.”

Kennedy-Glans explained there are six more town halls, one next week in Grande Prairie and then after Christmas and into the New Year, there are five more.

“We’re also going to be talking to experts, asking interest groups if they want to present to us. A lot of what we compile will be put up on FairDeal.ca website so that the public can go there and get answers to some of their questions.”

Fair Deal panel — LNN