The rhetoric battle is ramping up in Airdrie-East in the lead-up to the provincial election this May.
During a press availability at Genesis Place Recreation Centre on March 6 with NDP Energy Critic and Calgary-Mountain View MLA Kathleen Ganley, Airdrie-East's NDP candidate Daniel Nelles took some shots at the UCP's recently tabled provincial budget, which was unveiled on Feb. 28.
Nelles called the UCP's high-spending budget “a smokescreen for Premier Danielle Smith’s true intentions” and revealed a double standard. He also argued it falls short of satisfying Airdrie and area's infrastructural needs, particularly in the realms of education and health care.
“We’re not seeing the support this community needs to serve its growing population – not even close,” he said during a scrum with local media on Monday. “We have a significant infrastructure deficit that this UCP government has done almost nothing to address. Schools in Airdrie are bursting at the seams, but while this premier has the cash for 27 ministers’ offices, she found enough for only one new school in Airdrie, and nothing for the Rocky View School division.”
UCP Finance Minister Travis Toews tabled the Alberta budget on Feb. 28, highlighting the province’s new fiscal framework and focusing on health-care and public safety. The total revenue for the province is estimated to be $70.7 billion, which is $5.4 billion lower than the forecast for the year.
The fiscal plan, which was tabled 90 days before the scheduled spring election and is Premier Danielle Smith's first budget, will see spending grow by just under four per cent. After years of reining in spending, the province will be investing a record $24.5 billion into health care, an increase of 4.1 per cent from 2022.
But Nelles, the NDP's newly appointed candidate for Airdrie-East riding, argues the budget still ignored the region's immediate needs for new schools and health-care resources.
“We’ve heard very clearly from stakeholders in Rocky View Schools and Calgary Catholic Schools District that there’s a space crisis,” he said. “We need to listen to those individuals and focus more on the allocation of dollars that we have in order to better serve the infrastructure needs of Albertans and Airdrie.
“[RVS has] been very clear what their needs have been for the last four years, and those needs have just gone unheard. The majority of Albertan students are in public schools and we need to make sure their needs are addressed.”
During his remarks, Nelles also brought up Airdrie's ongoing ambulance coverage issue and the NDP's FOIP-requested documents from 2022 that showed ambulances from some of Calgary’s satellite communities (Airdrie, Cochrane, Okotoks, and Strathmore) were dispatched to the larger city over 30,000 times in a three-year stretch.
“Just this Saturday night, Airdrie’s last ambulance was dispatched to the Grey Eagle Casino [southwest of Calgary], leaving Airdrie without a single ambulance unit in the middle of a snowstorm,” he claimed.
One area of the budget that referenced Airdrie was $3 million allocated over the next three years toward planning for a regional health centre that would service patients in both Airdrie and north Calgary. It was funding that Airdrie-East MLA Angela Pitt deemed a step in the right direction for the city's health-related woes.
“This funding from the province will allow us to start working on a plan for a health centre to meet the needs of our community for years to come,” wrote Pitt in her most recent newsletter to Airdrie-East constituents. “This funding will move the needle on the health-care challenges that have plagued our community for many years. I’m optimistic that with proper planning, we will see the North Calgary/Airdrie Regional Health Centre realized.”
Yet Nelles argued the $3 million commitment regarding the future regional health-care facility doesn't do enough to serve the local health-care demands of the community.
“The only thing we’re seeing with this north Calgary health centre that is related to Airdrie is the hastily added tagline at the end of the line of the budget, he said. “It completely ignores Airdrie’s needs, it doesn’t commit to any shovels in the ground, and it doesn’t address Airdrie’s needs today.”
—With files from Jennifer Henderson/Great West Media
