In March, when Alison Redford resigned as Premier of Alberta, we thought that the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta might be able to pull themselves out of the muck of scandal and remember how to run a province.
Apparently, that won’t be the case.
Mere months after Redford’s resignation, the PC Party is once again the target of much backlash after a couple of controversial moves.
And this time, they can’t place the blame on Redford.
Sure, Redford is once again under fire regarding her travel plans for allegedly creating ‘ghost passengers’ to prevent her having to fly with others, but we already knew that Redford cared little for keeping Albertans’ trust or for policy when it came to travel.
More disconcerting is the government trying to play politics with licence plates, or quietly lifting the three-year wage freeze for senior civil servants implemented in February of 2013, a move the government was very proud of at the time.
It’s not like we thought bad government would end right away when Redford left, but we thought they would at least begin making steps toward a government Albertans could be proud of.
And actually, they did, to some degree.
Just last week the Lacombe Express commended the Alberta Government for implementing Bill 11, which lifted the automatic publication ban on children who died while in provincial care, only to have the government turn around and undo all that work by underhandedly breaking yet another promise to Albertans.
Have the members of Alberta’s PC government already forgotten they are trying to rekindle faith in an electorate that doesn’t trust them?
It’s not really something they can afford to do.
Already, Danielle Smith leader of the Wildrose Party, has taken to Twitter to use Redford’s latest scandal as a springboard to launch an attack on PC leadership hopeful Jim Prentice, telling Albertans to remember that Prentice had a lavish taste of his own when it came to travel.
It’s past time for the Government of Alberta to recognize that Albertans will only take so much of this.
You can only break so many promises before no one trusts you anymore and the government has already broken more than their fair share of promises.
It’s time for the Alberta’s Progressive Conservative Party to stop being unjust, unfair and underhanded and begin making the long overdue moves towards responsible, accountable transparent government.
It’s time for the government to start acting like a government, or step aside and let someone else do the job.