With less than two weeks to go before Albertans head to the polls, the leaders of the four main political parties in Alberta participated in a televised debate Thursday evening.
The four leaders: Brian Jean for the Wildrose Party, David Swann for the Liberal Party, Jim Prentice for the Progressive Conservative (PC) Party and Rachel Notley for the New Democratic Party (NDP), debated a number of topics, including funding for schools, corporate taxes and healthcare.
During the debate, Notley accused Prentice of helping the corporate sector, at the expense of funding for schools with a budget that didn’t include funding for expected classroom growth.
“You’re prepared to send 12,000 new kids into the classroom next September without a teacher because it’s more important to you to protect your corporate tax giveaways,” Notley said, addressing Prentice – the PC leader said that was “not the case.”
In response, Prentice said a PC government spends $1,500 per student more than other Canadian provinces. He called the coming years ‘tough’.
“We would ask school boards to work with us,” Prentice said. “We will watch and ensure that we get successful outcomes for our kids.”
Swann also took a run at Prentice, saying the PCs were not preparing Alberta students for success in school.
“This should be the number 1 priority,” Swann said.
During the campaign, Prentice has been criticized for a budget that increased personal income taxes and user fees, without touching corporate income taxes – the lowest in Canada at 10 percent.
In the debate, Prentice addressed Notley over corporate taxes – saying that hiking those taxes as the NDP is suggesting would cause problems for an Alberta economy struggling with low oil prices.
“It will destroy investments and destroy jobs,” Prentice said.
Jean agreed an increase in corporate taxes would be self-defeating, but said the Alberta budget could be balanced without increasing taxes and user fees.
“How many times did [Prentice] go after families [with hikes]?” Jean said. “Fifty-nine times. How many times did he go after corporations? Zero.”
The other leaders attacked Jean in the debate for his plan to reduce wait times for five surgical procedures using, if necessary, more private clinics, or by sending patients to other provinces or south of the border to the United States.
In the proposed plan from the Wildrose, the province would cover the cost of the procedure, but other costs would be paid by the patient.
“Unlike the PCs, we don’t think Albertans should be waiting a year to get a knee or hip replacement,” Jean said. Meanwhile, the other leaders said the Wildrose plan would create a two-tiered healthcare model.
Prentice said the solution would be to “fix the Alberta system.”
“It’s not to do what the Wildrose is proposing, which is to simply fund wealthy Albertans to go to the United States to secure their health care.”
The debate fell in the third week of campaigning, a campaign that has polls pitting the Wildrose, NDP and PCs against each other for support from the electorate, with the Liberal Party in a distant fourth.
At dissolution, the PCs had claimed 70 out of the total 87 seats in the Alberta Legislature. The Liberals and the Wildrose had five each, with four in the NDP.
There were two vacancies (seats left by two former PC MLAs), and one Independent MLA Joe Anglin.
Albertans go to the polls May 5.
With files from The Canadian Press
