SUNDRE - United Conservative Party (UCP) leadership candidate and former provincial minister of Finance Travis Toews says if elected party leader in October he would immediately move to provided enhanced support for cattle producers.
In Sundre and Olds on July 15 to meet with party members and to sell memberships, Travis is one of the perceived front-runners in the race to replace Jason Kenney, who is stepping down as party leader and premier following a recent leadership review.
Toews, a rancher in private life, says Alberta is in need of more packing plant capacity, something he says he plans to work towards.
“Right now what we need in Alberta is really competitive processors and, ideally, more capacity, another two or three processors,” Toews said in an Albertan interview. “We need to make sure that the business environment is such that that investment can happen, from a regulatory standpoint especially. The packers have all the market power right now and what we need is more competition in that sector.”
With the seventh wave of the COVID-19 pandemic now identified in Alberta, Toews was asked what his plans would be to meet the renewed health challenge.
“We need to learn to live with COVID,” he said. “We need to ramp up our health-care capacity and that’s a big challenge right now. We have deep systemic issues at (Alberta Health Services). We have a culture that I would suggested is even toxic and we have to remedy that.”
Asked if he would rule out introducing new masking mandates in the province, he said, “To say never, ever on any one of these things I think is irresponsible and disingenuous until you know what you are facing. We need to do all we can to make sure we don’t see government overreach into the individual freedoms and lifestyles of Albertans."
Asked if he believes masking mandates are government overreach, he said, “We would need to make decisions based on the threat and also under the core principle that I adhere to and that is maximum deference to individual freedom and liberty and limited government.”
Asked how he would help Albertans deal with the increased cost of living, he said, “As minister of Finance I was the one who suspended the province's fuel tax, the 13 cents a litre. Any time we have high energy prices in the province, the fuel tax would be suspended.”
Sundre-area UCP MLA Jason Nixon, who accompanied Toews on his visit to Sundre and Olds, said he plans to soon announce his formal support of the Toews leadership campaign.
The candidates in the UCP leadership race are Leela Aheer, Brian Jean, Todd Loewen, Bill Rock, Rajan Sawhney, Raj Sherman, Rebecca Schulz, Danielle Smith, and Toews.
