Thread by @RachelNotley

Albertans, you’re frustrated, you’re confused, you’re angry and you’re scared.

Premier Kenney's announcement should have helped, but instead it’s created more questions.

#ableg 🧵

First and foremost, do the measures that apply today, apply across the province or are they are still on a regional basis as was put forward last week?

If it’s the latter, it’s a profound failure.

The Premier is continuing to make false promises and create false hope, setting up for further challenges and disappointment in the weeks to come.

He’s undermining peoples’ ability to plan.

These new measures will have an immediate impact on Alberta small business owners struggling to stay afloat and to ride out this massive third wave.

They do not have adequate support. I again call on Jason Kenney to act on our calls to provide support to them through a $25,000 grant with broad eligibility and to enact many other measures we have called for at AlbertasFuture.ca

Today, we’ve heard that a number of Alberta schools — it’s not clear if it’s all of them — will be closed effective Friday.

Jason Kenney minimized the problem in our schools — for months — and now today hundreds of thousands of students have been forced out of their classrooms.

He claimed schools were safe and sat on his hands while school boards, teachers and parents begged for help.

He’s failed each and every student in our province.

Many of them are getting sick now, and their peers are in isolation, forced to learn from home yet again.

We didn’t have to be here. The number of cases in our classrooms is the result of Jason Kenney’s failure to provide schools with the resources to keep students and staff safe.

I call on Jason Kenney — again — to immediately establish an Alberta Learn From Home fund to support families as students move online.

We also still have so many Albertans who will continue to work, with record COVID-19 cases in our communities.

They will be in our hospitals, in our grocery stores, in our meat-packing plants, running our gas stations and more.

These workers still do NOT have a sick pay program.

I fear so many will still be forced to choose between staying home to help prevent transmission and paying their bills.

We would pass a bill on sick pay in a matter of hours, if only the Premier would take the padlock off the legislature.

And finally, on enforcement, the Premier’s declaration that you have to be a repeat offender is only to invite further non-compliance.

I am also concerned that tomorrow morning, we will hear from UCP government MLAs telling Albertans that they oppose these new measures — as they have done several times already.

I condemn this behaviour in the strongest possible terms — and I call on Jason Kenney to finally have the guts to throw these MLAs out of his caucus.

If you can’t support keeping Albertans safe — then you can’t sit in the government caucus. Period.

It’s as simple as that. /🧵