Legislature wraps up with partisan attacks as election looms

The Alberta legislature wrapped up its spring sitting Thursday with politicians on both sides of the aisle test-driving insults and expected attack lines ahead of the scheduled May 29 provincial election.

The Opposition NDP lambasted Premier Danielle Smith's United Conservative Party government for hiking fees, fighting with doctors, proposing royalty breaks for oil companies, firing educational support staff, breaking COVID-19 rules and failing to deliver promised economic stimulus to Calgary.

The UCP fired back, saying they saved Alberta after four years of disastrous NDP government that featured massive deficits, credit downgrades, nanny state rules and shameless kowtowing to Ottawa — all topped by a surprise consumer carbon tax.

“What a woeful group of provocateurs,” Energy Minister Peter Guthrie said as he squared off with NDP MLA Heather Sweet.

“The activist mentality of the NDP have a target: to end fossil fuel production.”

Sweet shot back, “Our record is (we delivered) one pipeline. UCP (delivered) zero pipelines.”

Finance Minister Travis Toews told the legislature Alberta's economy is back in the black despite intrusive retrograde federal rules imposed with the quiet complicity of Rachel Notley's NDP.

“I call on the members opposite to stand with the government on this side of the house against the Trudeau- Singh alliance which is pushing our nation's economy backwards,” said Toews.

“We're doing everything we can to position Alberta for competitiveness, investment attraction and growth.”

Where's the promised growth in Calgary, former NDP finance minister Joe Ceci needled Toews, citing high downtown vacancy rates.

“Why has the UCP spent the last four years holding Calgary back?”

“Every time the (former) minister rises I'm afraid of another credit downgrade,” Toews shot back, echoing previous UCP taunts mocking Ceci as “Alberta's worst finance minister.”

The NDP's Rakhi Pancholi offered crocodile sympathy for UCP candidates heading to the doors selling four years of fee hikes.

“(They'll) have to run on their record, their record of hiking utility prices, insurance rates, school fees, income taxes, property taxes, tuition (and) student loan interest all while handing out money to their friends and insiders,” said Pancholi.

Both parties have been busy in recent weeks with pre-election announcements. Cabinet ministers have been re-announcing budget initiatives while the NDP has rolled out its own policy ideas while hammering on perceived UCP weak spots.

Smith's government has moved controversial issues to the back burner. These include abandoning the Canada Pension Plan for an Alberta one, ditching the RCMP for a provincial police force and a proposal to reward oil companies with potentially billions of dollars in royalty breaks for cleaning up inactive wells that they are already mandated by law to do.

Notley, speaking to reporters in Calgary, said her government would introduce a bill to keep Alberta in the CPP rather than subject Albertans' nest-egg savings to the whims of a provincial government of the day.

“If Danielle Smith gets her way, political risk skyrockets. Smith and her UCP cabinet could change benefit levels or the retirement age in one cabinet meeting behind closed doors.”