An Open Letter to Premier Rachel Notley

Dear Premier Notley:

You did the impossible, toppled a dynasty that had begun rotting from the centre out, the top down, the bottom up and the outside in. 44 years and done. Yet in the time your new Government has been in power it has been the same cycle of petty partisan politics, and not the new day we hoped for casting our votes for change.

This is an open letter to your government to refocus on Albertans in such a way that partisanship no longer matters. Business should not longer be conducted as the Tory-tatorship did it.  It needs to be open, party branding becoming irrelevant, and getting the best MLA’s regardless of party affiliation for the job.

It is not just about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, oil economies have cycles of ups and downs, but during downs stimulus and change need to be the focus.

What does this mean? This is simply one Albertans’ perspective:

1. Time to let the Skeletons out of the Closets, a full audit of government by an outside body. Time to clean house of cronyism, backroom deals, forced through legislation, hidden taxes (the Government calls them user fees), and bringing all laws in line with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Constitution Act 1982, and the Health Act. Yes in a far sweeping inquiry some Dippers may go down as well, but if they are not focused on the full good of Alberta then so they should.
2. Term Limits: Hard and fast for all elected officials…that’s right MLA’s limited to 3 elected terms in their life times; and for the Civic Elections your government oversees, 2 term limits only. Time to abolish the idea of politician as a career and get it back to true public service. Oh and shrink the size of the Legislature seriously we are at least 20 MLA’s to large (MLA Greg Clarke would be great to spear head these changes)
3. MLA Pension/Severance Packages—seriously???? Simply put, follow your party’s conscience with Raj Pannu’s votes on these issues: NO!!!! Abolish retroactively.
4. Health care: this should be a no brainer for a NDP government with the proud history of Tommy Douglas–a true one pay system is the cheapest most efficient–time to get Alberta back on track with public health care, and stretch it to include dental and optical.  MLA David Swann would be great to take on this portfolio.
5. Charging for parking at hospitals—this is a ridiculous fee for service that keeps low income Calgarians away from accessing care, and families financially challenged for accessing the Children’s Hospital.
6. AB Works/AISH/Human Services—the greatest inefficiencies as it is a system designed to keep people out, not work with the person at the community level to ensure proper care for Albertans….and seriously who decided that $323/month was an appropriate rental allowance for a person on social assistance?
7. Pay Day Loans–seriously, we still allow legalized loan sharking—a 6% rate drop is not even a start of a solution-let a Wildrose MLA Derek Fildebrandt  take on this cancer.
8. School boards—Okay, huge bureaucracy, huge expenses on elections, and elected boards which are minimally duplicated twice in the public arena by Public and Catholic boards, then multiple fundings for private schools, etc…  Hmmm…what a quagmire? Perhaps it is time to realize that school principles can handle budgets, every child is appropriately coded, and each building has a need of a care taking staff for up keep with centralized trades people for bigger issues than that…yet what we have is schools falling apart, private schools admitting they get monies for special needs kids but direct the money away from the child to the general pool (YES HERITAGE Christian Academy Calgary I am looking at you and your admission 4 years ago at a Renfrew School Parents Recruitment Night, at least unlike the other Special Needs Private School you had enough common sense not to refer to our kids with the “R” word)…and so on… so what does all the excess bureaucracy give us? A craptacular education system, that needs to be reduced to simplicity…a few accountants in the Education Minister’s office doing money transfers to the schools to manage their finances. Abolishing all boards and folding into one local public school, oh and the tax money paid through taxes? Calgary Board of Education never collects it all—bad money management, that can be pooled. What does a localized strong public school give to a community? A central gathering point of celebration, learning and growth. As communities cycle through ages, and school attendance numbers drop do not sell off the capital, reinvigorate it with ideas for changing demographics, using different spaces for different community programs i.e. seniors clubs, social clubs, etc.
9. Busing, lunch room fees and school fees…. seriously! Constitution Act 1982–Free Public Education—have you read it recently? And as a family with a special needs child, we have no choice in where our son goes to school, so then we get dinged for busing when I can’t take him to his local school.
10. Utility companies—California failed with deregulation–then Klein deregulated—it is time to end this horrible experiment that punishes families financially.

Alberta is a great province to live in. But the cost of living is going through the roof, look at the high level of access of community meals, food banks, those opting out of the illegal school fees, making tough choices on paying the utility bills, internet (yes it is no longer optional in an education world that drives more to have everything online) or rent.

This is an open letter for there was hope when the Government changed…but that hope needs to be reignited…are you a Premier that will move beyond ideology to solutions that will help Albertans? Solutions that will correct decades of errors and punishments on the working classes?

Remember, the Alberta Government is not the NDP Party, it is made up of 84 MLA’s from across 5 parties currently, and it is a mixture of this wisdom that Albertans want guiding our province forward. Are you willing to actually show that Government can work for the people?

Sincerely,
Ty Ragan

A Parent, a Taxpayer, someone wondering where more money is to miraculously appear from.

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