Pensions, healthcare and housing are top concerns for Lethbridge-West MLA Shannon Phillips heading into the new year. She said her biggest victory in the past year was being re-elected to serve the community. As far as progress on the major issues, she did not have a lot of victories to point out.
“I have looked at all of these various efforts to recruit and retain family physician in particular, but also some other specialists, and there is all this high-minded talk about it from all kinds of corners of this city – nobody is taking patients so what are we doing here? Where are the deliverables because my focus is not on whatever the velvet fog that the government is talking about – my focus is on whether people can access healthcare,” Phillips said. “It seems to me that they have sort of settled on a strategy of trying to throw sand in our eyes rather than finding us new clinics and family doctors because at the end of the day that is what people need.”
BACKGROUND: Province to create four new organizations as part of a ‘refocused healthcare system’
According to Lethbridge Mayor Blaine Hyggen, 26 new doctors started working in the city in the past year. In 2022, the city spent $15,000 on an advertising campaign to recruit physicians.
The number one focus for Phillips is ensuring Albertans stay with the Canada Pension Plan.
“I have received an absolute tornado of correspondence on keeping Alberta within the CPP – no one support Danielle Smith’s plan to gamble with our Canada Pension Plan and our retirement security so we are going to put that idea to bed once and for all,” she said.
Phillips says affordability and housing concerns remain top of the list, items which she believes have seen little positive movement in 2023.
“You can’t spin the fact that people are facing an affordability crisis – folks just can’t catch a break. The costs have piled up one after another after another, whether it’s car insurance, electricity bills, natural gas bills, school fees, you name it,” Phillips said. “We are going into the winter with the same problems that we had a year ago and in fact, in many cases, like the housing crisis – they are worse.”
Phillips said there was little attention paid to the city during the election this year and needs have not been addressed.
“We have a massive budget surplus and yet we have overcrowded classrooms, no new doctors and a housing crisis. There is definitely a roll for a direct government spend and then there is a roll for really thoughtful, careful public policy on how we work with the private sector to more things quickly and overcome some of the barriers that we see at the municipal level and we see them in this city and they are infuriating. The fact that you just can’t get things built,” she said.
As far as victories in the city in 2023, she pointed out the opening of the Agrifood Hub and Trade Centre and new school infrastructure.
“I think overall, given the challenges around healthcare and post-secondary, we are still seeing some bright lights in both of those places. People are really managing through a lot of disparate challenges and we still have a lot to be proud of in this city,” she said.