The leader of the Province’s Official Opposition Rachel Notley joined us on the Trending 55 Hot Seat.
We talked with her about some of the biggest issues we’ve seen in Alberta this year.
One topic we covered was the emergency room closures in rural communities.
McLennan and Fort Vermilion had their emergency departments closed for parts of this week, and Notley says the “aggressive” approach the UCP government took with the health care system has played a role in those closures, adding that those problems started even before the pandemic hit.
“They declared war on doctors, they declared war on many front line health care professionals, they declared war in many respects on the health care system as a whole. Many of those policy decisions were maintained or continued through COVID once we found ourselves in the middle of a pandemic. Over time, what that resulted in is people burning out and just feeling unheard.”
We also talked about the province’s proposed school curriculum where Notley says the government has “lost the trust” of parents, teachers, students and education experts.
“They drafted this curriculum amongst a very small group of selected ideological political friends. When it was released, we determined that vast swaths of it were really bad for our kids. What they need to do is to restore that trust.”
You can hear our full interview below.
– Kyle Moore, Trending 55 Newsroom
