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What did the Alberta Advantage do for thousands of teachers and health-care workers who lost their jobs and went off to other provinces, never to return? What did it do for the children at the northeast Calgary school who had to be moved elsewhere before their school roof caved in – all because Klein’s cuts meant the most basic infrastructure repairs had to be put off?

And what did the Alberta Advantage do for ordinary Calgarians when hospitals were blown up or sold, when there were continual hospital bed shortages and closures, or when their children had to be crammed into classrooms with too many other kids because of education cutbacks? What did it do for Albertans who had to travel to Fort McMurray on a highway dangerously in need of twinning that should have been twinned years ago during Klein’s tenure? What did it do for cancer patients, their doctors and nurses, and researchers who pleaded for 10 years for Klein to get on with building a new Tom Baker Centre? It was only the NDP who saw to it finally that the desperately needed new cancer centre would be built.

When Notley said recently that Kenney’s proposal would lead to reckless cuts, Kenney fired back with, “I’ll tell you what’s reckless, driving us towards a $100-billion debt.”

He conveniently failed to mention, of course, that the NDP had to incur debt because there was no other way to clean up the mess that Klein left. Just like some future government will have to do someday if Kenney is the next premier and sets about re-creating that very same mess. Which just goes to show that the UCP might not have a single new idea to offer Albertans. The fact that Kenney is content to parrot Ralph’s memes about freezes and deficits doesn’t bode particularly well for the rest of the planks in his party’s platform to offer any kind of thoughtful approach on the issues.