(Watch Above: Alberta Premier Jim Prentice talks about licence plates)
EDMONTON – On Thursday afternoon, Alberta Premier Jim Prentice cancelled the previously-announced licence plate redesign.
“This is Alberta’s new licence plate,” he added, holding up a current plate, complete with its ‘Wild Rose Country’ slogan.
“There will be no more work on the redesign of the licence plate,” said Prentice. He said the issue was not a priority for Albertans.
“Albertans spoke loudly and clearly over the course of the summer,” he explained.
“The cost of rolling out new licence plates, however, for the 4.8 million vehicles that we have in Alberta would have been in the vicinity of $15 million,” said the premier.
“I believe that money is better spent on schools and other priorities of Albertans.”
He added very little was spent on the redesign process up until this point. The premier’s office said $800 was spent on the survey and announcement in July, while the former premier’s office spent $9,745 in 2013 for “work on an alternative design that was not carried forward.”
WATCH: Alberta premier announces the licence plate redesign will not go forward
Prentice said the minister of Service Alberta will make sure the plate is up-to-date in terms of safety features.
“Minister Khan, who is in responsible for Service Alberta will work together with the policing authorities to ensure that the composition of the plate matches with what policing authorities need, and if there’s reflective coating that’s needed on it, that will be applied.”
In July, the government announced it would roll out a new licence plate design. It offered Albertans three designs to choose from, and asked the public to vote online for their favourite.
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In all three designs, the ‘Wild Rose Country’ slogan was replaced with the province’s website address.
The proposed plates also had new safety features and new background art.
READ MORE: Alberta rolls out new licence plates
Service Alberta revealed the licence plate survey webpage became the most viewed alberta.ca webpage ever in a single day.
The survey page received more than 500,000 page views, and the survey received more than 100,000 votes.
To compare, on June 26, 2013, during the floods, alberta.ca saw 126,339 page views.
At the July 9 reveal, Minister of Service Alberta at the time, Doug Griffiths, said the plates would be available next spring.
“Our current licence plate is more than 30 years old, and lacks features to help make our roads and communities safer,” said Doug Griffiths, Minister of Service Alberta, in a statement. “This new plate will make it easier for police to spot vehicles that are unregistered, uninsured, or stolen.”
WATCH: Albertans react to the proposed licence plate design change
However, critics were quick to call the slogan change a politically-motivated move, something the PCs denied.
And, Albertans flooded social media with licence plate design suggestions of their own.
Click here to view a gallery of different province’s licence plates.
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