Alberta election: What promises has the UCP made?

Albertans are heading to the polls for a spring election on Tuesday, April 16.

As a way of helping you make an informed decision on election night, Global News is keeping track of all the promises made by the main parties vying for your vote.

Here is a closer look at the promises made by the Alberta UCP, and here is the party’s platform.

Health care

• Feb. 20: Work to reduce bureaucratic bloat in Alberta’s health-care system and explore private delivery options
• March 11: Scrap plans for a medical superlab in Edmonton
• March 28: Open more beds and expand treatment programs to help people battling drug and opioid addictions
• March 28: Not approve any new supervised drug consumption sites without extensive consultation
• March 28: Review health spending to find $200 million in administrative savings
• March 28: Explore ways to have more day procedures done by private clinics under the public system to improve service and save money

To see where the parties stand on health care, click here.

Education

• March 25: Reinstate the former PC’s unproclaimed Education Act (with GSA provision)
• March 25: Lift cap on number of charter schools in Alberta
• March 25: Review NDP’s curriculum overhaul
• March 25: Ensure consent is taught in all sex education classes
• March 26: Double the number of schools offering vocational training, increase courses to 1,000 from 500 and quadruple the number of students placed with employers.

To see where the parties stand on education, click here.

Infrastructure

• March 30: Maintain existing Capital Plan for 2019/20 through 2022/23
• March 30: Pass Alberta Infrastructure Act to provide transparency on prioritization criteria
• March 30: Use alternative financing (ie: public-private partnerships) for procurement of capital projects
• March 30: Limit use of cost plus contracts for procurement of capital projects
• March 30: Release annual infrastructure report
• March 30: Release 20-year strategic Capital Plan for Alberta
• April 3: Create Crown corp. called Aboriginal Opportunities Corporation, backstop $1B in Indigenous investment in natural resource projects, infrastructure

To see where the parties stand on infrastructure, click here.

Spending, taxes and the economy

• Jan 30: Fight the housing stress test imposed by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.
• Jan. 30: Create ministry to identify “unnecessary dead-weight” regulations that hold back investment and job creation
• Feb. 1: Make changes to allow auditor general to prohibit government ads deemed to be partisan, and extend ban on non-essential advertising to include not only the campaign period, but the months leading up to it
• Feb. 12: Seriously consider reducing the minimum wage for youth and alcohol servers. Kenney said the UCP would roll back Alberta’s $15-an-hour minimum wage to $13 an hour for those 17 or younger.
• Feb. 20: Try to cancel Alberta’s $3.7-billion deal with Canada’s two largest railways to ship more oil by rail
• March 4: Cut Alberta’s corporate income tax rate from 12 per cent to eight per cent by 2022
• March 6: Cut “red tape” by one-third in order to create jobs and spur economic growth
• March 7: No changes to the personal income tax rates
• March 12: Repeal legislation that ensures workplace safety and employment standards for farms and injury coverage for farm workers. Kenney would bring in legislation that ensures basic safety standards while providing more flexibility for injury coverage
• March 21: Launch a constitutional challenge against Bill C-69 if it becomes law and hold a referendum on equalization if there’s no major progress on market-opening pipelines. The matter would be put to voters on Oct. 18, 2021.
• March 22: Call an inquiry into foreign-funded anti-oilsands campaigns. Kenney said the inquiry would have the legal authority to compel witnesses to testify and would start with a $2.5-million budget
• March 30: Get books out of the red and into a $714 million surplus by 2023 — a year earlier than the NDP. The party plans to raise Alberta’s debt level to $86 billion over that time period. Kenney said he promises to cut the corporate tax by a third, to eight per cent.
• April 2: Set up legislated targets to cut wait times on energy projects
• April 2: Guarantee in law that once a well was given a permit, royalties taken from it wouldn’t change for the life of the project
• April 8: Bring in a law to turn off the oil taps to British Columbia. Kenney added to the promise on April 12, saying he’d “turn off the taps” of gasoline “within an hour” of being sworn in as premier

To see where the parties stand on spending, taxes and the economy, click here.

Carbon tax

• Scrap the Alberta carbon tax
• March 30: Kenney said he’d end the carbon tax and replace it with a program called Technology Innovation and Emissions Reductions, targeting large emitters of greenhouse gases.
• April 1: UCP will file formal court challenge of federal carbon tax no later than April 30.

To see where the parties stand on the carbon tax, click here.

Crime/violence

• Introduce a bill to allow police to warn partners of someone’s violent or abusive past, including $2 million to expand the use of specialized electronic monitoring technology
• $5 million to support survivors of sexual assault, $3.5 million of which will be directed to grants to sexual assault service centres. The rest will go to improving service to victims in remote and rural areas
• March 27: Unveil a 16 point plan to crack down on rural crime that would include $10 million to hire 50 new prosecutors and provide more funding for the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Team.

Public contracts

• Feb. 1: Review all contracts signed by Rachel Notley’s government between Feb. 1 and election day to make sure they are financially reasonable and in the public interest

Election reform

• Feb. 14: Launch democratic reforms on floor-crossing in the legislature. Kenney’s government would put forward a motion to have all members vote on whether an MLA who wants to cross the floor should first resign and run in a byelection
• Feb. 14: Bring in a fixed election date

Fight human trafficking

• Feb. 22: Fight human trafficking in Alberta. Kenney unveiled a nine-point plan, which includes the creation of a provincial task force and public awareness campaigns about the reality of human trafficking with a focus on vulnerable populations

Promises will be tracked throughout the election campaign, so be sure to check back here for an updated party platform.