Alison Redford backtracks on election promises

It’s been almost a year since Alison Redford was elected premier of Alberta. At the time she seemed like a fresh start even though she led a party that had controlled the reins of government for 42 years. But her star power is fading fast.

No wonder. Redford has backtracked on so many campaign promises and carrots that she held out to Albertans before the election and right after that it’s hard to take anything she says seriously.

Her first big flip-flop involved a judicial inquiry. When she was in Premier Ed Stelmach’s cabinet, she publicly broke ranks with him and called for an independent judicial inquiry into allegations that politicians and high-level bureaucrats were helping well-connected patients to queue jump so they could get faster treatment in the health-care system.

She campaigned on that promise during both the leadership vote and the provincial election. But when it came time to follow through, Redford decided against the judicial inquiry and instead handed off the job to the government-appointed Health Quality Council of Alberta.

That broken promise could have been easily overlooked. Except in hindsight it looks like the beginning of a trend.

The flip-flop that has hurt Redford the most is the 180-degree turn she has taken on Alberta’s finances.

When she was campaigning, she made all sorts of gold-plated promises. She pledged a balanced budget for 2013-14, and even forecast a surplus of $5 billion by 2015. Money would be flowing into new infrastructure, health care, education and environmental protection. And to top it off, there would be no new taxes.

These were promises that a lot of Albertans wanted to hear. She attracted teachers, health-care workers, parents of school kids, and university students back into the PC ranks. Even more crossed over when some Wildrose candidates made racist and homophobic remarks.

Redford sounded like a Red Tory and that apparently fit with many Albertans’ aspirations for a provincial government.

But then reality set in and Redford discovered that oil revenues weren’t as plentiful as she wanted them to be. So now it’s a $2-billion deficit budget for 2013-14, cuts to government spending, and borrowing for infrastructure.

Teachers and school boards are angry about the government’s negotiating tactics. Doctors are locked in a fierce battle with the Redford government over fees. University administrators are wringing their hands over reduced funding in the face of increased student enrolment.

It’s all so bizarre because every Albertan can clearly see that the economy is booming. There is so much residential and commercial construction in Calgary it’s hard to avoid. A friend who recently spent some time north of Edmonton told me there was so much gargantuan machinery on the road heading for oilsands projects that traffic was delayed over and over again.

That brought to mind another broken promise.

During the election campaign, Redford pledged $3 billion to a government-sponsored environmental research program that would focus on cleaning up the oilsands. That’s been shelved and now Redford tells opposition parties that criticizing Alberta’s environmental record “is not good for Alberta, it’s not good for Canada.”

Last week she told reporters that the rest of Canada should follow Alberta’s example and levy a carbon tax. The next day she backtracked even though her remarks had been recorded word for word.

One publicly available opinion poll shows that Redford’s approval ratings have dropped dramatically.

A ThinkHQ online poll found that if an election were held today, 38 percent of respondents would vote Wildrose, 26 percent for the PCs. Fifty-eight per cent disapproved of Redford’s leadership.

In the meantime, Wildrose leader Danielle Smith is getting plenty of political experience as leader of the official opposition. She has been merciless in her attacks on Redford and the PCs. She certainly has an abundance of ammunition.

This time last year Redford was being hailed as the new Peter Lougheed, a premier who would give Alberta a positive presence on the national stage. She still has three years to go before an election — but at this point the stage seems to be collapsing beneath her.