Alison Redford says her campaign for the Progressive Conservative leadership is about a significant change in the way the party, the government and the province do business.
Redford made the comments last week during a lengthy discussion with the Gazette's editorial board.
"To me, this is about transformative change, and I am more confident that Albertans want that now than I was when I began this campaign in February."
Redford said transformative change means a party that makes decisions with more consultation, but then moves quickly to do what it promised the public it would do.
"We are not going to get elected and will not get elected unless we are delivering leadership that Albertans want."
Redford, who has only one PC caucus member supporting her, said the type of change she is proposing is part of the reason she hasn't garnered more support.
She said that will likely play out in party nominations after she is elected leader.
"I think one of the things that is going to happen is, if I am elected leader, you are going to see a lot of interest from people who haven't been interested before."
Family focus
Redford has put a strong family focus on her platform promising to open more day care spaces, allow income splitting when one parent stays at home and promising family care clinics. The clinics would be open between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m., and while some would be staffed with doctors, nurses and nurse practitioners would also work in the clinics and be able to bill Alberta Health Services directly for the work they do.
Redford said this would ease pressure on emergency rooms and on family physicians while lowering costs.
One of Redford's most significant platform planks for young families is a promise for all-day kindergarten. She said the program is about giving parents an option.
"I know a lot of people who have two parents working would really like, by the time their kids are five, that they would have the option of being able to put them into something more than day care."
Redford has promised to implement the program within a year of being elected. A proposed similar program in Ontario is being phased in over several years, but Redford said Alberta could easily bring in the program in a year if the political commitment is there.
"One of the things about government right now is that it takes forever to change everything and the only reason that it does is because people have taken very conventional approaches," she said. "I know we can hire more teachers — we shouldn't have laid off 1,000 teachers this year. Let's be serious about what we are committed to."
Redford said she expects arguments about such a program being too difficult to implement, about the capacity of kindergartners to learn and about the program amounting to little more than taxpayer-subsidized day care.
She said she is open to the idea parents might want to continue with half-day programs, but she doesn't want to give up on the idea before trying it.
"I think there is the ability to be flexible in terms of what you do, but I don't like the idea that we don't have it all because of the anecdotal reasons that it might not work."
