Lethbridge-West MLA Shannon Phillips to focus on affordability, health care and economic resilience in 2023

“Here in Lethbridge, we have a health care crisis,” explained Phillips. “We have some 40,000 people in this region without a family doctor. We have lost many, many family physicians since the UCP [United Conservative Party] took government and proceeded to go to war with doctors, war with frontline health care workers, all during a pandemic.”

“That has had a particularly acute effect here in Lethbridge, to the point where now we don’t just have a family physician crisis, but we have a crisis in respect to many specialists, including only one OBGYN,” she said.

Phillips admits that while canvassing in neighborhoods across the community, health care was the number one issue she heard about from many people in Lethbridge.

She said, “I think too, people are really looking for economic resilience, and diversification and making sure we’re creating good jobs and we’re taking action on affordability.”

Phillips told LNN, “People in Lethbridge, just like people across the province, are facing 40-year high inflation. This has had a real effect on people’s bottom line.”

“You know government can’t do everything but certainly the provincial government could do something about the price of utilities, the cost of car insurance, certainly property taxes are going up due to cuts from the provincial government, school fees, tuition, you name it. There are a number of areas where the province has made the wrong decision when they could have made the right one to make people’s lives easier,” she stated.

Phillips said that in the past year, the NDP has put forward several solutions around healthcare and affordability and hopes that following the election, they can build an agreement with doctors and create policies to attract physicians in Lethbridge and in surrounding communities.

“Rachel Notley and I will have more to say about that in the new year, in terms of what our specific plans are around primary health reform and expanding health care access here in Lethbridge,” she noted. “But there’s no question that the UCP, after three and a half years of this chaos and uncertainty in health care, there’s a big hole for us to dig ourselves out of.”

The Lethbridge-West MLA also touched on the Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act that was passed in December, 2022.

Phillips said the NDP would scrap the Act immediately if they were given the chance to do so after the provincial election in May, 2023.

“This is a constant theme we see from the UCP, they worry about themselves,” explained Phillips. “They worry about their pet projects, they worry about their own internal drama, they spent the entirety of 2022 doing exactly that and not the real priorities.”

“Albertans are saying loud and clear what they want the government to focus on, and it isn’t the job-killing Sovereignty Act, and it isn’t their own internal drama. They want to see their provincial government solving real problems, that in many cases the UCP government created themselves.”

Phillips also criticized the current provincial party for not attempting to alleviate the homelessness crisis that many are facing in Alberta.

In Lethbridge specifically, a report released in December 2022 showed that the number of people experiencing homelessness has doubled in the past four years. The report estimated that there are 454 people who do not have a home.

Phillips claims that part of the reason for the increase in homelessness numbers is because the UCP has cut several housing system programs, they stopped investing in social housing, and have not created plans to ensure that rent supplement programs are adequately funded.

“They’ve done nothing on this,” said Phillips. “It is an absolute crying shame, and no place should see the kind of growth in homelessness that we have seen in a place as wealthy as we are.”

“These problems are complex, there’s no question about that,” she went on. “But certainly, the UCP have taken the easy way out, which is doing nothing and that has to be reversed, we cannot continue to tolerate this.”

While a portion of the blame has been put onto the provincial government, Phillips also put some heat on Lethbridge City Council for not taking more action.

“All we’ve seen is the City Council kind of passively and rather pathetically pointing the finger at the provincial government and being very half-hearted about it,” she elaborated. “Not bringing forward any real specific solutions of things that the province can fund, and you see the provincial government with their fingers in their ears, completely ignoring that there is a problem here.”

“Anyone who lives here can tell you there is [a problem],” said Phillips. “Certainly, I as the MLA am very, very focused on getting down to work with some practical, affordable solutions that we can get done in the short and medium term and set ourselves up better for the long term.”

Heading into 2023, Phillips will be embarking on her fourth election campaign in Lethbridge.

She looks forward to going out, knocking on doors, and talking to her constituents prior to the provincial election in May.

Read more Lethbridge News Now.

by Sarah Jones

Lethbridge-West MLA Shannon Phillips to focus on affordability, health care and economic resilience in 2023

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