Affordability, healthcare, and jobs are top of mind for Lethbridge-East MLA Nathan Neudorf as he seeks re-election. Neudorf says the United Conservative Party government has invested in healthcare, and he hopes to continue working on it if he is elected to keep his position.
“Lethbridge has seen 17 family doctors hired for the area, although their onboarding has taken a little longer than expected there is still some fallout from the pandemic and some of those systems and people moving still have delays into them,” Neudorf says. “We have added more than one billion dollars into the 2023 budget for healthcare. Some of those are for access in some rural areas, which we will see here in Lethbridge, we have got significant funding for the surgical initiative to upgrade our surgical capacity at the Chinook Regional hospital.”
His government recently announced a $1 million commitment to working on design for cardiac service expansions at Chinook Regional Hospital. This was something the mayor had hoped to see in the original provincial budget when it was announced in March.
Neudorf says he has a strong relationship with mayor and council and adds he has fulfilled many of the asks the city has had in his term.
“The top five asks of the city, we have achieved all of those in the first two years — Exhibition Park, airport renovations, the U of L deferred maintenance on their boilers, those were 15 years over their life expectancy, broadband investment, Highway Three twinning and then we have invested so much more beyond that,” he said.
Neudorf says his role as deputy premier and infrastructure minister often takes him to other parts of the province and he works to engage with residents in his riding as well.
“I love the role, I particularly love the minister of infrastructure role, given my background. The challenge is really that we have a large province and I can’t be everywhere,” he says. “When I can and over the last four years, I have had hundreds of events on Lethbridge, I have had thousands of personal interviews with constituents on a range of topics and I have answered tens of thousands of emails. We have one of the busiest offices for emails in the entire province.”
Neudorf says his party’s actions to combat affordability problems can be seen in the 2023 budget.
“We have paid down debt, we have put money into the Heritage Savings Trust Fund, we have increased spending to meet critical infrastructure needs but within a reasonable increase,” he says. “Probably the best solution to that is a thriving economy where people who are able and willing to go to work can find a job and we have got a huge number of jobs available across a full spectrum of industries.”
Election day is on May 29.