Putting more money into Albertan’s pockets. That is Wildrose Loyalty Coalition Candidate Bill Tufts’ main message to voters in the Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills riding.
“We are looking for solutions to an issue that seems to be in crisis for our province,” he says.
Tufts says the most significant issue facing Albertans every day is overreach from Ottawa, across a number of sectors, that has ultimately resulted in what he calls a relationship beyond repair.
“A lot of people are thinking that the system is broken, horribly broken, and we need to do something to repair it and turn it around,” he says. “The first issue, the first thing on the table is going to be the referendum that people have said- enough, and this is the first step to ensure that all people get a voice on the future of Alberta and not just the political elites.”
“Our party, we want to ensure that Alberta has a prosperous future for our children and our small businesses, energy workers, and agriculture – clearly, the overreach in Ottawa has had on our province, can destroy us.”
Tufts adds that he sees ensuring Alberta’s sovereignty as a way to move projects forward, and grow the province’s economy, independent of the nation’s capital.
“We need to be sovereign and have the ability to to grow our economy, Ottawa pushes climate change, taxation, and burdens us with policies that seem to be globalist. Certainly this is not in the interest of of our people,” he says. “We need to collect their own taxes, not wait like beggar from Ottawa to send us something back.”
Immigration
Tufts says he sees the province’s recent “explosion” in immigration as another reason for higher costs of living – saying the education, healthcare, and other systems simply can’t keep up with the growing numbers.
“That level of immigration would be like six Red Deers in just five years – think about the third largest city in Alberta, how many hospitals, schools, [and] homes would be required to rebuild that city, and we would have to build six of them,” he says. “It puts in jeopardy all all of our systems, healthcare, policing, education, because we have just not been able to keep up with the huge demand.”
He adds that now young people are starting to feel the impact too. Tufts points to recent studies that indicate a 14.1 per cent unemployment rate in Canadian youths – saying young people and immigrants alike have been sold a “fraud” about what it means to work in Canada.
“Our young people can’t find jobs – we’ve got an astronomical unemployment rate for the youth in Canada,” he says. “They’re competing with mass immigrants that are coming in and the immigrants, and they’ve been sold fraud too, and things are not quite what they were told before they were coming over.”
Holding politicians accountable
Tufts says that in recent years, governments at the federal, provincial, and even municipal level have gotten comfortable spending tax dollars on projects that might not necessarily line up with the ratepayer’s wishes – so pulling back on government spending and holding politicians accountable is a top priority for the coalition.
“One of the things that we feel strongly about is recall the ability to recall a politician who’s not doing their job – we give you a guarantee that if 51% of the voters in a riding want to get rid of us, we will appreciate and respect their wishes,” he says. “We have to eliminate the huge cost of government, both federal, provincial, municipal levels, focus on the priorities and get rid of that bureaucracy that’s such a burden on all of our systems, our healthcare system, education, the operation of our cities, and we just need to get back and start to control the cost of government.”
Vista Radio provided the opportunity for each of the candidates in the upcoming Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills by-election to have an election profile air on the news.
