Alberta Party plans to build entrepreneurial-friendly province
By Gillian Slade on July 27, 2018.
Stephen Mandel, leader of the Alberta Party, gears up Thursday morning to join the Stampede Parade. The Alberta Party hopes candidates in all 87 ridings will help them build success.--NEWS PHOTO GILLIAN SLADEgslade@medicinehatnews.com @MHNGillianSlade The Alberta Party is hoping to position itself for success in the next provincial election with a candidate in each of the 87 ridings. Party leader Stephen Mandel was in town Thursday to meet constituents, potential candidates and to celebrate Stampede — Medicine Hat style. The party has a strategy for the election, expected to be called between March and May next year, says Mandel. “We think ours (policies) will be quite different … innovative, creating more jobs, obviously creating more housing … and creating a more entrepreneurial province, which I think has been lost,” said Mandel. “We’ve got a forward thinking party and some creative ideas.” With the NDP on the left and the UCP on the right, Mandel says the Alberta Party is “the middle guy,” but that alone is not enough for success. “You have to have good ideas and good policy. Being in the middle doesn’t say much,” said Mandel. The Alberta Party will hold a convention Oct. 20, at which time it will define its policies. After that it will determine a platform for the election. “We’re a party that deeply believes in the entrepreneurial spirit, believes in this province and why it has been successful,” said Mandel. He says the province is comprised of people with the capacity to soar on their own, feeling government should provide an environment in which they can be successful and thrive. By the same token there are other Albertans who need support from government in order to be successful, he explained. The Alberta Party did not run a candidate in every riding in the last election, and it is a time consuming process to achieve that this time. At this point, just 18 ridings have a candidate that has already been endorsed, including Brooks-Medicine Hat, where Jim Black has declared himself a contestant. There are no contestants listed for the Cypress-Medicine Hat riding as of yet. “We’ve been contacted by a few people and we’ll meet some of them today,” said Mandel. “We’d like to have all of our candidates in place before the end of the year.” He says it can take several months from the time hopefuls declare intentions to voting and choosing a candidate. “We’ve probably got 45 or 50 candidates right now going through … the process,” said Mandel. Most of these will be processed by mid September. The plan is to accomplish the rest before the end of the year, he said. Mandel says the Alberta Party will focus policies on three levels — rural Alberta, mid-sized cities like Medicine Hat and the two major centres, Edmonton and Calgary — with different needs for each region. “(We plan) to develop policies to reflect the needs of those communities, what they have and want.” 19
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This middle guy took Edmonton taxpayers, as mayor, from a $400 Million debt to a $2.6 Billion one while he catered to his developer friends, putting taxpayers in a huge mess, while our roads continued to fall into a terrible state of dis-repair. He literally gave a billionaire a $675 million arena at the expense of taxpayers and destroyed an airport that was savings the lives of Northern Albertans, just so his developer friends could build high-rise apartments downtown in Edmonton, even though the streets can’t handle the volumes of traffic they will bring. Jim Prentice made him our Health Minister, even though he admitted he knew nothing about health care and Edmontonians showed what they thought of him in the last election where he lost by a huge margin. Now he wants to look after his rich Alberta friends by getting control of the province’s oil wealth. You would be a fool to support him.