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I tried once more this past week to bring the issue to the leadership’s attention, and it became clear to me that they weren’t going to do anything substantive to address it. When I brought up the idea of transparent cabinet interviews the Premier’s Chief of staff visibly tried not to laugh in my face. This, and the accumulated effect of all of my experiences has lead to my choice to go public.

Many documents exist in which previous elected officials talk about this culture of fear and intimidation that exists within party politics in Canada. That they have felt unable to do their jobs, as they understood them. However, the vast majority of elected officials choose not to talk about it until after they have left- (usually from the safety of exit interviews) when they have little opportunity to make any changes. I felt that I would deeply regret it if I chose to say nothing in the time I had remaining.

I am sending a letter to the Speaker and the House leaders outlining some changes I believe could be made right away, and that would be a good start to addressing my concerns. However, I believe more substantive changes are necessary to curtail the power of the Premier’s office before the next election. This should be an election issue. I believe there should be an end to the practice of whipping votes all together. If you have to convince a majority of MLAs your legislation is worth passing it will be better legislation. Secondly, I believe there needs to be a transparent process for hiring cabinet ministers. Given that I have been told qualifications and skills have nothing to do with being appointed to cabinet, and that a way leaders control MLAs is that they decide who is promoted, if there were an independent panel that interviewed and chose Ministers from the pool of elected MLAs it would serve to both remove power from the Premier and to have the most qualified elected officials serving the people of Alberta.

It is my hope that members might consider these changes as worthwhile. I think that the Alberta public would be supportive of these changes. I’d like to see the government make Jason Kenney whip his caucus into abstaining or voting against more transparency and increased freedom for elected officials.

But you can’t do that if you’d vote the same as him.

I have chosen to abstain from the legislature because I wanted to draw attention to the lack of representation and fear and intimidation I felt. I was also hoping coming forward would lead to changes. By choosing to remove me from caucus, the NDP has doubled down on their commitment to not addressing this issue- and as long as it remains unaddressed, the legislature will continue to be a tragedy of democracy. Over the coming constituency break I will be consulting with constituents and holding a town hall meeting to discuss their concerns and ideas for me moving forward. Until such time I will continue to protest, and will not be sitting in the legislature.