NDP pushing lawn signs to oppose government plans for CPP
By Alejandra Pulido-Guzman - Lethbridge Herald on April 27, 2024.
LETHBRIDGE HERALDapulido@lethbridgeherald.com Lethbridge West MLA Shannon Phillips and the Alberta NDP have come up with a plan to help Albertans tell Premier Danielle Smith and the United Conservative Party to keep their hands off the Canada Pension Plan.After engaging with thousands of Albertans through a multitude of town hall meetings across the province about Smith’s desire to gamble with their pensions, Phillips said Friday the Alberta NDP has come up with a visual way of bringing attention to their message.
“One of the great ideas that came out of talking to Albertans at the town halls was the lawn sign campaign that we’re launching here today,” said Phillips.
She if Smith won’t listen to statistics, polls, letters, emails, public opinion surveys, the NDP survey, town halls, phone calls or newspaper clippings sent to her office, then Albertans need to be more obvious.
“Maybe thousands of lawn signs on voters’ lawns that tell her to keep her hands off our CPP will do the trick, or maybe it will let her fellow UCP MLAs know that their constituents and people all across this province take this issue seriously,” said Phillips.
She said Albertans need to work together to make their voices heard, which may be the only way they will be able to catch the UCP’s attention.
“Albertans time and again have rejected her plan. Every public opinion survey shows that fewer than 20 per cent of Albertans want to abandon the Canada Pension Plan. Even UCP supporters are not interested in this scheme.”
She said the reason Smith did not talk about it during her election campaign, is because she knows no one supports it.
“At that time, she said that this was no time to talk about pensions, but we know she had plans for it all along because just weeks after the election she gave her finance minister a mandate letter to kick start the Alberta pension plan.”
She said NDP MLAs received thousands of letters and emails and were regularly approached by Albertans concerned about losing a major pillar of their retirement plan.
“Folks came up to me on the street, in coffee shops, at the grocery store, frustrated because the UCP had not provided them a way to express their opinion about this new proposed plan.”
Phillips said Albertans told NDP MLAs the government’s telephone town halls were a sham because they were heavily moderated and citizens were shouted down by the panel chairperson when they dared to say what was on everyone’s mind; that leaving the CPP in favor of some new Alberta plan was a gamble.
“What did Danielle Smith in the UCP do when the temperature on the phone calls became too hot? They shut them down. UCP got tired of hearing real feedback from the real Albertans. They ran away and used a bunch of tired excuses to do it.”
She said the NDP understands Albertans need an outlet to express their thoughts and that is why the NDP launched a series of 16 in-person town hall meetings across the province, while the UCP cancelled their own.
It is from those town hall meetings that the idea of the lawn sign campaign was born.
Albertans can request a sign by going to Albertasfuture.ca 3
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