AB Today – Daily Report February 13, 2019

Quotation of the day

“The assumption that all youth are working for a bag of chips and a bottle of pop is misguided. We know youth have financial responsibilities because they might be saving for university, supporting their own family or contributing to the larger family budget.”

Labour Minister Christina Gray slams UCP Leader Jason Kenney’s suggestion he would lower minimum wage for youth workers, if elected.

Today in AB

On the schedule The legislature will reconvene on March 18 for the government’s final throne speech before the spring election.

Premier watch Premier Rachel Notley gave a campaign-style speech to the Calgary Rotary Club on Tuesday, where she outlined her government’s greatest hits since entering office.

UCP Leader Jason Kenney announces slew of pro-business promises as Restaurants Canada launches lobbying effort against labour laws

United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney told the crowd at a Restaurants Canada conference in Edmonton Tuesday that his government would open up the province’s labour laws to promote small business.

Kenney said, if elected, Bill 2 under a UCP government would be the “Open For Business Act.” (Kenney has previously said Bill 1 would scrap the carbon tax).

The UCP leader said the act would reverse “a number of NDP attacks on job creators” by:

● Repealing statutory holiday pay requirements, which currently apply to businesses not open on statutory holidays; ● Bringing back legislation to return the Workers’ Compensation Board’s surplus accident funds to employers. (The NDP changed the Workers’ Compensation Act to retain surpluses of up to 128 per cent rather than return them to employers, following a review); and ● Considering a graduated minimum wage for youth workers and a lower minimum wage for alcohol servers. (The NDP phased in an across the board minimum wage of $15 per hour in 2018).

Kenney says his party has not made a final decisions on a graduated minimum wage, which would mean a lower hourly rate for youth, but said it is taking the recommendations from the restaurant industry seriously.

He said youth do not require a living wage, since they do not have dependents or the same expenses as family breadwinners. “What they really want is a job,” Kenney said.

He contended the NDP’s higher minimum wage for alcohol servers has led to workers having their hours cut back or their jobs eliminated entirely.

At the event Restaurants Canada, which represents 30,000 businesses in the food service industry, launched a new “Restaurant Realties” campaign video featuring interviews with restaurant owners detailing how NDP policies and tax changes have hurt their businesses.

“You can’t tax businesses to death. You can’t tax business out of business,” said Scott Winograd, the owner of Calgary’s Bear’s Den restaurant, who says being forced to pay employees on statutory holidays contributed to the decision to announce the closure of his restaurant.

Labour Minister Christina Gray was scheduled to speak at the event but said she decided not attend after she found out Restaurants Canada was launching a campaign to “roll back workers’ rights.”

Speaking to reporters in the legislature’s rotunda Tuesday afternoon, Gray slammed Kenney’s proposal to cut wages for young people. “You don’t help youth by cutting their wages,” she said.

She defended her ministry’s update of the employment standards legislation, saying Alberta was out of step with the rest of Canada.

According to Gray, the NDP considered proposals for implementing a different minimum wage for liquor servers and youth but ultimately rejected them. Instead, her party opted to bring back the Summer Temporary Employment Program — a wage subsidy for employers who hire students.

“Each worker deserves fair and reasonable pay,” Gray said.

Restaurants Canada actively campaigned against Ontario’s plan to hike its minimum wage to $15 per hour; the hike, as well as a number of other labour protections, were scrapped once Premier Doug Ford took office.

Today’s events

February 13 at 7:30 a.m. – Edmonton The Resource Diversification Council will host a breakfast event in the Federal Building to encourage Alberta’s political parties to make energy diversification an election issue.

February 13 at 9:15 a.m. – Edmonton The NDP Spring Legislation Policy Committee will meet in the cabinet room of the legislature.

February 13 at 10 a.m. – Lethbridge Environment and Parks Minister Shannon Phillips will tour the recently-completed “Destination Project” at the University of Lethbridge on behalf of Advanced Education Minister Marlin Schmidt.

February 13 at 1 p.m. – Edmonton The NDP Economic Development Policy Committee will meet in the cabinet room of the legislature.

Topics of conversation

● Taking a page from Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s populist playbook, UCP Leader Jason Kenney said he wants to “free the beer,” if elected Alberta’s next premier. ○ Kenney said now that cannabis is legal, it’s time to end “prohibition-era restrictions” around liquor and to allow people to carry open booze on the street, citing similar laws in Europe. ○ Kenney also said he wants to loosen inter-provincial trade barriers on booze and to keep liquor taxes low. ○ He promised to open a comprehensive review of Alberta’s liquor laws, which had been previously launched under the former PC government. ○ “Let’s grow up,” Kenney said. “We don’t need prohibition-era liquor controls anymore.” ○ Premier Ford campaigned on a “buck-a-beer” promise to allow breweries to sell their grog for one dollar per bottle — but, once implemented, only three beer companies took him up on the offer. A few months later they have all raised their prices.

● When asked by reporters to respond to the Wilberforce Project’s claim that a Jason Kenney-led UCP government would be the most pro-life government ever elected in Alberta, Kenney said even amongst social conservative candidates, he has not spoken about the issue. ○ “They just want the government to leave them alone when it comes to certain constitutionally-protected freedoms of conscience and religion,” Kenney said of the pro-life group’s members. ○ Kenney said he will take the same approach former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper took to abortion by promising not to open up the issue for debate. ○ “A United Conservative government will not address this issue, will not engage in this debate, will not initiate legislation,” Kenney said.

● A new CBC investigation looks at the role foreign Twitter trolls have played in driving the national online conversation on topics such as pipelines and immigration. ○ Analyzing data released by Twitter about now-deleted foreign influence accounts from Russia, Iran and Venezuela, the CBC determined roughly 21,600 of the 9.6 million tweets sent from the accounts targeted Canadian issues. About half of those tweets were spread in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to greenlight the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines in January 2017. ○ One tactic of the foreign trolls was to retweet controversial tweets from The Rebel and its founder Ezra Levant.

● With the province’s 31-year-old Police Act under review, legal experts are calling for police forces to give officers more discretion over whether or not to execute arrest warrants, the CBC reports. Mark Cherrington, who works with youth in the criminal justice system, says current rules allow officers who do not execute warrants to be charged — but this dissuades people facing outstanding warrants from calling the police when they are in dangerous situations. ○ Cherrington cited a recent situation where he assisted a woman and her toddlers after her partner threatened her. The woman did not want to call the police for help because she had an outstanding warrant for her arrest stemming from a theft of tampons. ○ What other changes could be coming to the Police Act? The Edmonton Police Association says it wants faster timelines for police disciplinary hearings, which can drag on for years.

New briefs - Governmental

Alberta Education releases guidelines for students with Type 1 diabetes ● Alberta Education Minister David Eggen introduced new guidelines designed to help school authorities cater to the medical needs of the approximately 2,300 students in Alberta with Type 1 diabetes. ○ The new guidelines are designed to complement existing policies.

New briefs - Non-governmental

Alberta Party and Freedom Conservative Party slam changes to official party status threshold

A fiery debate broke out at Tuesday’s meeting of the Special Standing Committee on Members’ Services over changes to what constitutes a recognized political party in Alberta.

The NDP-majority committee passed a subcommittee report establishing a four-member minimum threshold for parties to receive official party status. Previously, a caucus was only required to have two members to receive official party status.

The subcommittee report, which was also supported by the committee’s UCP members, also makes changes to how much annual funding is allotted to the government caucus, the official Opposition and non-recognized parties.

The content of the report and the formula it used to calculate the new budget breakdowns has not yet been made public. According to numbers provided by the Alberta Party, if the makeup of the legislature were to remain unchanged, the caucus budgets for the government and the UCP would be largely unchanged, but the coffers of smaller parties would suffer.

The three-member Alberta Party would no longer qualify for official party status and would see a whopping 60 per cent reduction to its annual budget (down from $791,576 to $312,712). This is due to the elimination of the $273,042 in leader’s funding and a $205,000 cut to its research funding.

The legislature’s Independent members and the one-member PC Party and Freedom Conservative Party caucuses would each see $70,000 cut from their current research funding budget.

NDP MLA Thomas Dang says the changes are required to make the caucus budget system “clear, consistent and fair.”

“I think when Albertans look at how we receive our funding, they want to know that there is a set of rules that they can say: we know what taxpayers are getting the dollar value for,” Dang told the committee.

Alberta Party House Leader Greg Clark, who is not a member of the committee but appeared at Tuesday’s hearing, called the move “anti-democratic” and accused the NDP and UCP of “trying to create a two-party state in the province.”

Clark noted that smaller parties use funding to create shadow budgets and to propose effective amendments to legislation.

FCP leader Derek Fildebrandt echoed Clark in his address to the committee, saying the changes are an example of “continued collusion between the government and official Opposition parties to monopolize all voice and all power in Alberta’s democratic arena.”

Fildebrandt called the passage of the report “a very shameful point in the democracy of this province.”

NDP MLA and committee member Nathan Cooper told the committee the change to the party threshold “has nothing to do with a two-party system and has everything to do with recognizing that in order to have the benefits of being a party, you actually need more than just a couple of people who happen to get elected together at the same time.” He suggested there are opportunities for Independents to pool their resources.

The members’ services committee is tasked with approving the annual estimates of the Legislative Assembly, as well as setting MLA allowances and constituency office budgets.

Funding Announcements

Environment and Parks Ministry increasing fishing access on Bow River ● Alberta Environment and Parks Minister Shannon Phillips announced $2 million towards the Bow River Access Plan, which aims to give anglers and other river users better access to the 52-kilometre stretch of waterway.

Nominations Freedom Conservative Party ● Matthew Morrisey was acclaimed as the FCP candidate for Airdrie-Cochrane.

Alberta NDP ● Gulshan Akter was acclaimed as the NDP candidate for Calgary—West.

Alberta Party ● Braham Luddu was acclaimed as the Alberta Party candidate for Calgary—Cross.

AB Today is written by Catherine Griwkowsky, reporting from Alberta's legislative press gallery.

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