Dear Editor;
The Alberta Advantage so often boasted by our government continues unabated for Alberta workers and public service employees providing them with the strongest year-after-year financial growth in wages earned, out-pacing their counterparts in every other province. (Statistics Canada)
In the meantime, the seniors on fixed incomes, and the disadvantaged Albertans who must rely on government subsistence to survive with their standards of living deteriorating greatly year after year due to the inflationary rises in our province have lost all hope that they too would be included in the Alberta Advantage.
Following his announcement late in 2004 that our government had achieved debt-free status, then Premier Klein, in keeping with his promise made in 1993, returned one of the programs lost to seniors involving the Health Care Premiums. With Stelmach replacing Klein as leader of the Conservatives, seniors have been patiently waiting with expectation that the government would, with the billions and billions of dollars pouring into government coffers, return the remaining senior support programs thus fully fulfilling the promise made to them in 1993. This has not taken place.
With the recent introduction of the Demographic Planning Commission and its limited mandate of only studying what future retirees needs may be to subsist, the pioneers who built this province have given up all hope that Premier Stelmach, who promised to do the right thing, would fully fulfill the promise made to them in 1993.
From changes in policy that have taken place under Stelmach’s leadership, it is evident that the promise made to the pioneers who built this province, although partially fulfilled by Premier Klein prior to his retirement, will not take place.
S. Michael Marlowe
Vice Chair,
The Association of Seniors Helping Seniors
Edmonton, Alta.