UAEM Alberta’s Position on the 2015 Alberta Provincial Election (Post 4: Diversity and Equality)

Edmonton (Treaty 6 Territory)-Welcome to our fourth and final part of UAEM Alberta’s position statement on the upcoming provincial election! Today’s post considers how each of the major parties stands in relation to issues of diversity and equality. If you need to catch up before reading this new section, you’ll find part one here, part two here, and part three here.

As always, feel free to connect with us here or via Facebook and Twitter. And one final reminder to vote on May 5!

Diversity and Equality: The Liberal Party platform features several measures aimed at supporting respectful treatment of Alberta’s diverse population. Some of their proposed policies include the teaching of consent in sexual education classrooms, as well as greater enforcement of the Human Rights Act as a means of combating the continued wage gap facing women in the work-force.

Both the PC and NDP parties also stress the need to build better and more respectful relationship with the province’s Indigenous populations. However, their proposed methods for cultivating such a relationship are distinct. The NDP platform promises Indigenous communities better access to safe drinking water, more substantial representation of their histories and cultures in school curriculum, and the repealing of Bill 22 (a levy imposed on First Nations businesses by the PC government, which was passed without the consultation with or consent of those groups). The NDP also notes that they will lobby for a federal inquiry into Canada’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.

The PC platform of course makes no mention of Bill 22. While they too promise an increase in safe drinking water, the PCs notably emphasize providing support for Indigenous peoples wishing to enter trades careers. There is a certain irony in this promise, given that many Indigenous groups have been highly critical of how industrial projects like the Keystone Pipeline ignore Indigenous land claims and treaty rights, as well as damaging natural resources.

The Wildrose Alliance Party has famously employed several racist and homophobic candidates, and are currently in favour of repealing Section 3 of Alberta’s human rights legislation. Neither their policy briefs nor their primary platform make any statements expressing support for diversity and equality in the province.

UAEM Alberta is rooted in a concern with how inequalities related to geography, race, income and gender (among other factors) play a primary role in shaping whether or how persons have access to the medicines that they need. We believe that by stressing the needs of the market over the specific needs of the world’s most vulnerable populations, these inequalities are perpetuated, often with deadly results.

While issues like the status of Indigenous peoples and nations or more accurate sexual education might seem peripheral to our aims, then, we are in support of such measures because they work to address the impacts of the same types of systemic problems that plague the global health system. As long as particular populations remain marginalized, the health care they receive can only continue to reflect those oppressions. We believe that a truly global health care necessitates equality at every level.

Other relevant topics include: Child care, United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, women’s shelters.

UAEM Alberta’s Position on the 2015 Alberta Provincial Election (Post 3: Environment)

Edmonton (Treaty 6 Territory)-Welcome to part three of UAEM Alberta’s extended position statement on the upcoming provincial election! If you need to catch up, you can find part one here, and part two here. Today’s post takes on the environment, a topic that has played a crucial role in leader’s debates and party platforms, and which is also relevant to UAEM concerns.

As always, feel free to connect with us here, or via Facebook and Twitter. And remember to vote on May 5!

Environment: As a province, Alberta comes consistently under fire for our damaging influence on the environment. And it’s hard, perhaps impossible, to argue with the fact that the tar sands and our reliance on coal make us a huge contributor to greenhouse gases and other violences perpetrated on our environment.

As an attempt to manage some of these effects, the PC government instituted a Carbon Capture and Storage program in 2008. The program, which has been widely critiqued by many including by the current leader of the PC party, essentially paid large energy companies including Shell to attempt to contain carbon dioxide within the ground.

The PCs themselves may even be moving away from this approach, but Prentice remains emphatic in his support of the energy and resource sectors, which are a key source of employment in the province. Both the Liberal and NDP parties agree on this point, but they are also, as Notley noted in the recent leader’s debate, critical of the stance that we cannot make shifts toward more environmentally sound practices without negatively impacting these industries.

The NDP’s platform includes a green retrofitting  loan program, the phasing out of coal as a source of energy in the province, as well as support for research into alternative energy and other environmental standards. The Liberal Party proposes similar measures, including a price on carbon emissions and elimination of coal-fired plants. Their platform also emphasizes the need for the protection of Alberta’s water, deeming it a public good in need of the utmost protection.

The Wildrose Alliance’s policy statement on the environment (another discussion placed separate from the party’s “5 Priorities” platform) calls for the protection of Alberta’s land, water, and air, largely through an alignment of current practices with existing policies and regulations. The document constantly stresses the province’s responsibility to private landowners, a stance which evades the fact that areas like the tarsands have environmental effects that are massive in scope and scale. The somewhat vague commitments of the document also reflect the party’s longer history of de-emphasizing environmentalist concerns, which played a major factor in the last provincial election particularly when then-leader of the party, Danielle Smith, expressed disbelief that climate change is legitimate phenomenon.

In a previous post related to our participation in Earth Hour, UAEM has stated unequivocally that climate change and its wide array of effects is a global health issue. On this matter, then, we are pleased to see two major parties emphasizing the need to reduce Alberta’s carbon footprint and protect its natural resources. We are also supportive of the ways in which these conversations are framed by both the Liberals and the NDP as global responsibilities. Conceptualizing ourselves as global citizens responsible for more than the environmental health of just our province or our country is a crucial step toward reckoning with the global nature of many contemporary health struggles.

We might then propose that these parties consider treating their discussions surrounding climate change and environmental policy as a model for how they might frame their positions on other issues. The environment is, perhaps, a more obviously and visibly global challenge than others. But not only does climate change directly relate to some of the other topics on which these parties are campaigning, but those other issues (including the two we have already discussed above) would benefit from a similar approach that asks Albertans to consider how their choices impact the world around them in a way that far exceeds territorial borders.

Other relevant topics include: Transparency in building and enforcing environmental standards, gas drilling, use of fresh water in deep well injections