On the road with Jim Prentice in southwestern Alberta
The bus carrying the PC leader around Alberta in this election campaign has already hit some parts of the province which are very familiar to Jim Prentice.
Edmonton, Calgary, Grande Cache. On Friday, the bus rolled into southwestern Alberta.
Jim Prentice was able to stop in and shake some hands at the beef jerky shop in Longview he recalls visiting frequently when he was a young lawyer in the area back in the early 1990s.
Further south, he stopped in Maycroft to catch up with Ted Smith, one of the landowners Prentice legally represented as they battled energy companies exploring for oil in the scenic Whaleback region.
On the bus ride down, there was time for a Q and A with CBC News. (Answers edited for brevity).
On the early election call
CBC: One of your predecessors, Mr Stelmach, was chided for months for not calling an election, for riding on the coattails of the mandate of the guy before him (Ralph Klein), and you have faced a fair amount of criticism for calling an election a year earlier than you really had to. Has that struck you as an odd situation?
Prentice: Well, I'll leave others to analyze that. But you know, listen, this election is going to cost exactly the same whether we do it in eight months or whether we do it now. It's going to cost exactly the same. The difference is if we do it now, it will be Albertans who make the choice. It'll be Albertans who choose the future. It's their election and it's their choice and I've always believed that. In the world that we're in now, that nobody expected, the government needs a mandate. And you can only get that mandate one way and that's go to Albertans and get their support.
On Alberta's mounting public debt
CBC: 20+ years ago, there was a tremendous amount of concern in Alberta about Alberta being $22 billion in debt. In the budget, we see Alberta could ultimately be $31 billion in debt (by 2020). How is it different having that kind of debt on the books now versus what we had two decades ago?
Prentice: Any public debt that we take on in this province needs to relate to capital investment. It needs to relate to the building of schools, the building of hospitals, the maintenance of our capital, the building of roads and bridges and seniors facilities and so again, the advice that we received was that given the economic downturn in Alberta, we should maintain capital spending for the next three years. We should protect jobs in Alberta by making sure that we've got construction-related jobs that you know, depend on us continuing to build out public infrastructure. So for three years, four years, we'll continue to do that and then we'll start to pay that down. If we stick to a plan which involves building public infrastructure now, we'll get good value for the money because prices are down and frankly our debt costs are down obviously as well, but then we have to start applying future revenue increases to pay that off and we'll be back, pretty close to debt-free within ten years.
On facing off against weakened political parties
CBC: It's been a fairly turbulent political time in Alberta in recent months. Do you have any concerns about the state of democracy in Alberta?
Prentice: None whatsoever. I think Alberta democracy is strong and it'll flourish in Alberta. I look at the team of men and women that we've put together. Other parties can talk about their candidates but you know I look at people like former (Calgary) chief of police Rick Hanson who's stepped forward to run for our party. No one could realistically ask someone like chief Hanson to serve in public office after all he's done for the people of our province but he agreed to step up and serve.
Democracy is strong and we're getting really good people stepping forward and compared to where we were in other times in Alberta history, I'm really delighted with the group of people who are stepping forward. It's real renewal for our party. About a third of our caucus has changed over so it's an exciting team of new people.
