How bad does your post-secondary education platform have to be if, in front of a partisan crowd full of your supporters, NO ONE CLAPS. Once again, Premier Stelmach starts the campaign week by falling flat on his face, introducing one of the poorest excuses for a policy I have ever seen. While I feel sorry for those currently in the Albertan education system, I'm glad I'm through it if this is what the Premier has in store for students. Investment in our province's universities, colleges, and technical institutes means more teachers in Hinton, more nurses in Medicine Hat, more doctors in Peace River, more paramedics in Fort McMurray... you get the idea. The Premier's no-plan plan sells out the Alberta Advantage.
In comparison, the Alberta Liberals announced their policy last week. That announcement included a $1000 break on tuition and $300 textbook credit. Additionally, Kevin Taft announced that an Alberta Liberal government would return the control of tuition increases to the legislature, lower or eliminate property taxes on student housing, and reduce the interest rates on student loans. Combined, these policies would go a long way to making the province's post-secondary education system more accessible to all Albertans.
The Premier insists on using the term “realistic” when announcing policies such as his environment and PSE releases. Apparently, “realistic” is Tory-ese for “unimaginative” or “useless”. Well, of course it’s realistic! You set the bar so low it’s almost impossible to fail. Where would NASA be if Kennedy had proposed a policy for the space race that was this uninspired? It seems that Albertans can chalk King Ralph's promise of Alberta having the most affordable Post-Secondary Education system in all of Canada as just another broken Tory promise. If this province is going to embrace its future, we need leaders who can dream big, and who are willing to search for effective solutions.
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4 comments:
What a joke. Not even a vague mentioning of any sort of new form of funding for increased capacity, or better quality, or anything.
You can tell these guys are just out of steam.
This is what happens when you have a government in power for 36 years. They take the support of Albertans for granted, they aren't forced to work at developing their policies, so they just come up with this unimaginative drivel.
I was really disappointed with the PC post-secondary education plan. You'd think after having a few days to come up with a response to Taft's announcement, they could have done a better job replicating the Liberal plan (as they have done in other platform areas). All Stelmach and his advisors could come up with was lowering student loan interest rates to prime? Are you kidding? Alberta advantage, indeed.
You hit the nail on the head with your characterization of the Tories' post-secondary education policy as unimaginative and useless. It's too bad this description applies to the rest of their platform too.
As I've commented elsewhere: Bring on four more years of aspiring to nothing more than multiplying our oil and gas output for the benefit of foreign oil companies and their shareholders.
We are arguably one of the richest jurisdictions in the world, yet are we doing anything innovative, creative or far-sighting? Is there anything in the PC's platform that Albertans in forty years can look back on and think, 'Wow, I'm really glad earlier governments had the foresight to do this'?
What a spectacular waste of potential.
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