EDMONTON – The federal government’s parliamentary secretary to the finance minister was in Edmonton Saturday talking about the upcoming budget.
Francois-Philippe Champagne met with the members of the local business sector and community leaders during a pre-budget consultation.
Champagne said the purpose of the consultation was to gain an understanding of what Albertans want from the federal budget.
“We talked about how can Canada foster growth, you know, inclusive growth for our middle class, growth that will take into account our environment,” Champagne said.
“It was great to have this cross section of people talking innovation, productivity, export.”
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Edmonton Centre Liberal MP Randy Boissonnault said his office has held nine pre-budget round table conversations to get a clear picture from local business and community leaders what Alberta would like from the budget.
“We’ve heard a lot. We’ve heard about market access, we’ve heard about getting our market to access, we’ve heard about creating the context so that businesses can thrive, we’ve heard about valuing the arts and culture sector and the non-profit sector,” Boissonnault said.
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Saturday’s Edmonton stop is part of cross-country consultations being held by the parliamentary secretary.
“We all know that the price of oil is low, the Canadian dollar is low, but this is the time to make historic investment. We have the chance to be smarter, to make smart investments,” Champagne said.
“This was meant to be a broad based consultation, and I would say this was a very rich discussion that we had.”