Wildrose continues to tout tax platform — Brian Jean makes campaign stop in Lethbridge

Tijana Martin
Lethbridge Herald
tmartin@lethbridgeherald.com
“We’re the only party that won’t raise your taxes and the more Wildrose MLAs that are elected, the lower your taxes will be.”
And that’s the party’s number-one priority, along with a balanced budget, according to Wildrose leader Brian Jean, who spoke about the five priorities their party has put forward at the Lethbridge Lodge Wednesday evening.
“We believe that we can keep taxes where they are and actually reduce the cost of tax burden to tax payers,” he said. “We’ve seen very clearly that we’re the most expensive government in Canada, by far. Two thousand dollars per person more than British Columbia, for instance. We don’t find that acceptable.”
Jean moved on to talk about health care and seniors care and stated that 46 per cent of the provincial budget is for health care, which he said is too expensive based on what other provinces are doing.
“It’s not a matter of the front lines, because we want to protect the front lines for certain because the more nurses and teachers there are, the better it is,” said Jean.
He said it’s a matter of management.
“Those senior managers and middle managers, they’ve exploded and that’s why over a three-year period we will be eliminating 1,600 positions in our health care, but they’ll all be managers and upper managers that have been hired in the last 10 years,” said Jean, adding it would be done over a three-year attrition process.
As far as education, Jean said “we used to be number one in the world 15 years ago and now we’re number five in Canada and that’s not acceptable.”
Another issue is the lack of transparency and accountability he feels there is in the current government, which he said his party would restore.
Lastly, Jean discussed the need for healthy communities “and that includes making sure that the agriculture and resource industries are strong and we will allow those communities to make their own priorities.”
“Ultimately we serve the people of Alberta and we only have one taxpayer and one boss and that’s the people of Alberta,” Jean added.