Alberta Minute: Consultations, Driver Testing, and Consolidations

Alberta Minute - Your weekly one-minute summary of Alberta politics.

This Week In Alberta:

• The House is still on break for Summer, but we now have the date of their return - October 8th, 2019 - slightly earlier than expected.
  
  
• Meanwhile, the Standing Committee on Resource Stewardship will be meeting on Thursday to discuss their review of the Public Sector Compensation Transparency Act, otherwise known as the Sunshine List.
  
  
• The province also has 7 consultations underway on Bow Basin Water Management, the Alberta Energy Regulator, Supervised consumption services, Caribou conservation, Alberta Health Services, Condominium rules, and Red Tape.

Last Week In Alberta:

• The government announced that, instead of returning to a free-market driver testing system, they will just hire 20 private driver testers 'temporarily' to try to clear a backlog of people waiting for a test. But, changing a 100% socialized system to a 90% socialized system isn't really a solution. When the previous government socialized Alberta's driver testing, the entire system fell apart almost literally overnight. Don't expect un-doing only 10% of that disastrous change to fix anything. Do expect more delays.
  
  
• The Parkland Institute, a left-wing think tank that receives government subsidies, called on the Alberta government to introduce a sales tax and raise other tax rates, falsely claiming that Alberta has a revenue problem not a spending problem. Can someone please explain why Alberta taxpayers are still funding a lobby group that gets involved in politics? To be clear, we believe groups should be free to advocate for whatever policy they want, they just shouldn't be using taxpayer money to do it.
  
  
• The province also announced that Alberta's Climate Change and Environmental Monitoring offices will be merged into the Environment and Parks ministry, with the aim of reducing administrative costs. The government claims all the existing work being done by the offices will continue from within the department, which is a shame.

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