Thread by @SPhillipsAB

In an alternate reality, UCP:
✅ Gave direct transfers to laid-off workers & easy-to-navigate, straightforward $ to business, instead of waiting for Ottawa to do it
✅ Laser-focused on testing, rapid testing, contact tracing and isolation benefits
✅paid sick leave
(Thread)

https://twitter.com/markusoff/status/1380614547904495621

✅ Hired EAs, teachers and used community space to rethink classrooms and social distancing in Sept 2020, instead of sitting on their asses March-August and then somehow being surprised when parents &teachers were worried & outbreaks spread in Nov-Dec

✅ Eliminated the mind-numbing stupidity of the bureaucracy around the critical worker benefit, and just gave it to as many folks as possible, as soon as possible, because more money circulating in the economy makes sense both for the bottom line and everyone’s mental health

✅ Moved job training funds ($185m!) that came in December from Ottawa as soon as possible in January, to help employers with the new skills they always say they’re looking for, helping productivity and innovation

✅ Built the Green Line so that Calgarians could see 20,000 jobs - many of them skilled trades - on the horizon

✅ Spoke with one voice on the value of the health care system, health care workers, and the sanctity of the responsibility to keep elderly people in long-term care safe, instead of picking fights with doctors, ignoring LTC and steamrolling ahead with health system restructuring

✅ Spoke with one voice on value of science and public health, instead of driving the province in to a dead end of facts being dismissed as mere opinions, pandering to far-right disinformation, coddling anti-maskers/deniers, and who could forget that racist attack on Dr. Tam...

✅ Responded to every spike in cases with what we know works: targeted, substantive support people to isolate, so fewer of them have to, same for business/non-profits who have to close so fewer of them have to.

✅ Advocated effectively to the federal govt in Nov-Dec with full attention on the vaccine delivery schedule&conditions, ensuring that if Ottawa did drop the ball every effort would have been taken to avoid that, instead of just yelling at them Because Politics More Important

Here’s the thing. The @albertaNDP asked for the above measures, in some form, pretty much every week for a year. We held press conferences. We helped Albertans tell their stories. We did research on the best ways to respond to the pandemic, unemployment and economic insecurity.

It’s not like UCP didn’t know there were better choices. But they chose a path of discredited, irrational, far-right nonsense instead. So we got a callous, chaotic covid response. Solutions weren’t complicated or even that expensive when compared to the cost of UCP incompetence

And now, people are angry. They’re alienated from the UCP because they haven’t heard consistent messages or seen evidence of consistent support or response.

Who pays? The AHS workers up north, now terrified to go to work. The front-line health workers, still not vaccinated, watching runaway community spread bear down once again on their mental health and well-being

Who pays? If things get much worse, a virtual certainty given the trajectory, the schools will shut again. So parents will once again be left scrambling. Kids’ routines& learning suffers. Teachers&EAs working their butts off to prevent the worst outcomes for the most at-risk kids

Who pays? Small biz owners and those who work for them, just trying to make a living with no help, no certainty - just a disconnected UCP who mouth words of support while not lifting a finger to do simple things that make life better.

It didn’t have to be this way.