Monday, June 4, 2007
kevin taft offers albertans a plan.
I know I already posted one of the videos already, but four new online videos have been released with Alberta Liberal Leader Kevin Taft speaking about the Alberta Liberal plan for affordable housing, Alberta’s Creative Economy, Alberta’s Water, and Sustaining Alberta’s future.
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Wow...
ReplyDeleteThe Alberta Liberal's proposed solution to the rental housing crisis is to introduce a one-time, one year cap of 10% rate hikes?
This is just the worst idea I have ever heard! This policy would hurt both Alberta's rental tenants as well as the rental market.
Why a 10% rate hike? Who pulled this number out of a hat? Does Dr Taft think that sounds good because he's only getting 4% on his GIC's down at his local bank?
Let's talk about a real plan, like the one proposed by Alberta's NDP.
Instead of offering renters a bad policy that will hurt their long term interests, Brian Mason's crew has come up with a sound strategy to fix this problem. In the short term, rental increases will be capped at the consumer price index (CPI) rate of inflation + 2%.
This what real policy looks like. It understands that you probably won't fix this problem in one year, and that the economy is so fluid right now that inflation could skyrocket at any moment. Tying rental caps to inflation, via the CPI rate, allows the owners of rental units to be assured that they will continue to get fair rental profits... not the huge unfair ones of today's market, but also not a fixed amount decided by Dr. Taft's daydreamers.
Over the longer run, we will only solve this problem by having government participation in the building of low-income housing. Federal and provincial participation in that realm dried up in the 90's, and we are just now starting to feel the effects. Alberta's NDP are the ONLY provincial party that wants to get this province building again.
As long as this current "oil boom" lasts, and it looks to be for quite some time, private construction will focus on the maximum profit areas, such as single family houses. The government needs to step in and take an active role in building the multi-dwelling units that can be used for lower income rentals.
Alberta's NDP want to actually fix this problem, not just campaign on it as Dr. Taft & his Liberals are doing.
Hahaha. The NDP? Led by Brian Mason? This Brian Mason?
ReplyDelete"While there are a few incredibly hard working and highly electable politicians within the NDP—Edmonton-Calder MLA David Eggan and Strathcona candidate Rachel Notley, for instance, could probably be elected in almost any riding in the province—the party is seen, whether accurately or not, as at odds with the values of mainstream Albertans. Their leader is another obstacle: Brian Mason is probably the least likeable politician in his party (and besides, you have to wonder how bad he really wants it: rumour has it that he refuses to do interviews in the morning because he—seriously, I have this on good authority—doesn’t like to get up early)." VUE WEEKLY May 30, 2007
The solution is somewhere in the middle. Both the NDP and Liberal plans are okay. But as anonymous NDP blog posters take shots at the Liberals, the problem still remains that the Stelmach government is still in power and still doing nothing. The NDP don’t stand a hope in hell of winning anything more than 2-5 seats in the next election in an 80+ seat legislature. So when it comes down to it, I’ll support the Liberals and Kevin Taft who at least have some semblance of growth potential.
ReplyDeleteI would love to vote for a common sense competitive NDP (I did in Manitoba for 10 years) but I can’t support the loud mouth antics of a four MLA party led by Brian Mason.
Sorry, but I'm actually interested in a real change of government.
The affordable housing crisis is not going to be solved by Stelmach and crew, so we need to change government.
Not bad video clips. Taft does better with the casual peices rather than the usual politician canned stuff. It's nice to see an Alberta political leader using online communication mediums.
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