Lethbridge-West Candidate Profile – Pat Chizek – Alberta Liberal Party

“There’s a multi-faceted approach to this. You have to deal first and foremost with the people who have the addiction. People are saying ‘well, giving them free needles isn’t going to help,’ but it does in the long run. By giving them that clean needle, they are now not going to get HIV or hepatitis, and one of those people getting hepatitis means $100,000 for the year to help them get over it. We want to prevent the disease, but that’s only one part. We also have to have enough treatment beds. When the SCS came out, there it was, that was it. There was no explanation, and then they came out six months later talking about more treatment beds and adding more beds to the hospital. They keep going one step at a time because I don’t think the NDP had a full plan. For the Liberals, it involves counselling, treatment centres, the Safe Consumption Site, but also being more preventative. What is causing those people to turn to drugs in the first place? If we don’t address that all the money we’re putting into the SCS and treatment will be a waste, so we must be more preventative, and that’s what our party platform does.”

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 are championing a sustainable economy for our province. This is because in the oil and gas sector our economy is either boom or bust, and in past Conservative governments when it has been a bust, they cut spending. Social programs don’t get funded, hospitals don’t get built, roads and bridges don’t get built, schools don’t get built, and then we have to play catchup. Then when the NDP came in, and it was a bust economy for oil and gas, they spent anyways, so the result was massive debt. The Alberta Liberals, we think we have a plan that’s going to reduce this boom and bust. You’re still going to have ups and downs in the economy, but we have provided a platform that is going to lessen the impact of all these boom and bust cycles.”

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?

“We have proposed an HST. This tax, we calculated using UCP finance people, using bankers from the major banks, to propose this tax and people say it’s going to destroy business. Well, I want to point out the other nine provinces have the tax, and it hasn’t destroyed them. This tax will provide stability so businesses can come into the province knowing we’re not going to be in a boom and bust cycle. I’ve heard on the news about people who are going out, they’re going under, and their business is gone because they haven’t been able to weather the downturn because it’s so drastic. That’s what we propose.”

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

“One of the ways is we have to look at the efficiency of the programs that are being delivered. Right now, most of our healthcare is being delivered in big, huge centres. We think that some parts of the healthcare system can be delivered in smaller centres. For example in Lethbridge-West, we need an urgent care centre over there. We need to have an actual clinic associated with the emergency department on the east side, not everyone that comes into emergency needs to be there, but they’ve got nowhere else to go. They need a clinic that has a doctor and a nurse right there, where they can be triaged into ‘you go to the emergency, no you go to the clinic.’ To me, that’s making the system more efficient than what we’ve got now. That is where we’re going to get an improvement in wait times and get more worth for our money.”

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

“I think it’s about the efficiencies. To ask a politician what changes are needed is wrong, we should be asking the people who work in that system. They are the professionals; they should tell us how this system can be more efficient. Think about the amount of work that nurses have to do just on paperwork. They’re spending at least one-third of their shift writing instructions and results. It’s such an inefficient system, and we might have to invest more in technology to make the 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?

“I’ve said at other platforms that I think people are our greatest resource. The same goes with the farmers, they know the land, and they know what’s there. If you take people out of the equation, our most valuable resource in this country is our water. How can we protect it, and how can we use it effectively, that’s first and foremost. We have a specific plan to protect areas that are very vulnerable, to protect the watershed areas that are going to drain into our system here. If you look at what the river is like right now, wow, I can’t remember seeing it this low for many years. If we ignore the fact that there is climate change, that is ignoring that 1+1 equals 2. I can remember years ago going to the Athabasca Icefield, and they have markers outlining what year they were planted, and it is shrinking. Someone wants to debate what the actual cause is and how we can impact that, we can have those discussions, but we must protect the environment. We must.”

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?

“We want to expand it. We want to expand it with better technology because in some ways our wind and solar technology is in the Commodore 64 era. It’s there, but it’s not at the greatest capacity. Even the Alberta Energy Regulators realize that we can only store our wind for a short amount of time, and we’d like it longer. We want to encourage more technology so that we can store that wind because it doesn’t blow every day, so we’re not creating electricity, but we’re using it every second. We need to get to a place where we can use what we need and store the rest, for weeks and not hours. That is where I would like to see any government go. We’ve got to invest in that technology. The advantage oil and gas have is we can put it in a container and move it to where it’s needed. It can sit there for months and be stored. The other thing when it comes to wind and solar is the technology needed for those industries, is it being manufactured here? Not enough as we’re paying other countries like China and Germany for their goods where I’d like to see more made in Alberta.”

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?

“We have very specific platforms on this issue from supporting gender identity, the LBGTQ community, to new Canadians. We have platforms designed to help them get up to the level whether it’s education or skills. If a new Canadian is coming in how can we quickly get their credentials approved here in Canada. We have specific platforms to reduce the marginalization of these groups that haven’t had a voice or someone to advocate for them. The Alberta Liberals are that party.”

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

by Aaron Mahoney (@Mahones93 on Twitter)

Lethbridge-West Candidate Profile – Pat Chizek – Alberta Liberal Party

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