With one week to go, all three of the remaining Progressive Conservative leadership candidates are pushing to the finish line.
Education funding was a hot topic this week with candidate Alison Redford pledging to put $100 million into the education budget within 10 days of taking office. The $100 million is the amount school boards said they are short this year, which has lead to teacher layoffs.
Redford said even though the school year has started the funding is worthwhile.
“Our discussions with school boards have told us that if we can do this quickly it can still have a positive impact.”
Candidate Gary Mar said he believed in more funding to education, but he doubted Redford could push $100 million into the hand of school boards that quickly.
“You can’t simply make the commitment to snapping your fingers and producing a cheque on 10 days notice … treasury board process doesn’t work like that.”
Redford said she has plenty of government experience and the goal is entirely achievable.
“If that is his view of how he would lead a government I think that speaks to whether or not he should be leader.”
Local MLA Doug Horner said he supports the idea of more funding for education, but questions whether it make sense to simply push it into the system in mid-October. He said the government has to decide what it wants to achieve in education and the budget for that, rather than setting an arbitrary number.
“Is the right number $100 million or is it $150 million or $200 million? What I have said consistently through the campaign is that we need to put more money in education.”
Redford also pledged more funding for the safe communities initiative and fixed election dates. Mar also promised to have former candidate Doug Griffiths look into how to re-invigorate the party from the grassroots.
“It is quite important that we have party members who can share their good ideas with the party so that the common issues we can all identify, we are able to solve collectively, because all of us are smarter than one of us, ” said Mar.
Horner didn’t release any new policy this week, but hinted there would be some announcements in the last week of the campaign. He said he heard from a lot of his supporters who didn’t make it out to the first ballot and he’s working hard to make sure they are there for the next vote.
“We have been pretty steady on the phones, we have been pretty steady travelling around the province.”
Redford said she is going to continue to talk about her policies because the public is paying more attention to the campaign now than they have through the last eight months.
“What I am asking Albertans to do is to think about whether they want to take the time to buy that membership and engage to ensure that the issues they care about are part of what the new premier is thinking about.”
Mar had 41 per cent of the support on the first ballot and has since acquired the endorsements of the other three candidates, but he said he is taking nothing for granted.
“Every one of our supporters will be getting a message from us saying this is a whole new race, that the vote you cast on the first ballot doesn’t mean anything on the second ballot so you need to come out again.”
