Photo by Chris Schwarz
Story by Claire Okeke
On Thursday June 7th Premier Rachel Notley held a round table with different ethnic media outlets in Edmonton. The Minister of Labour Christina Gray was in attendance, to discuss topics ranging from Trans Mountain pipeline, the steps taken to get to a ‘Yes,’ update on Alberta’s economy and changes made to Occupational Health and Safety Laws, tackling racism, and support for ethnic media in Alberta. The event took place at the Government House in Edmonton, Alberta’s Capital.
The floor was opened to journalist to ask the question; Diversity Magazine asked Premier Notley what progress has being made in relation to the long awaited Minister for Education MLA David Eggen’s report on racism in Alberta, how the government intends to tackle it, and whether it will be part of the 2018 budget.
Premier Notley response was that progress was being made, “… in fact I was reviewing it just yesterday and I believe we are going to be able to roll it out next week or two. It’s a broad ranging report, there is a couple of pieces of it that we will implement right away and there are some small monetary elements to that and there are other pieces of it where we are going to go back to the community talk to people over the summer to make sure we got it right then we move forward in the fall…”
Another question put forward to the Premier by Diversity Magazine was support for community media called, ethnic media as a growing platform for showcasing multiculturalism in Alberta. She goes on to say that on a general level that ethnic media plays an important role, “…It’s a labour of love for many people in the industry in terms of promoting multiculturalism, multicultural stories, and supporting the communities not only within itself but with others…”. She goes on to say that it will be touched on in the report due in a couple of weeks and that there is a need to be delicate when talking about government funding and media but there is room for more conversation on the topic.
The round table began with open remarks from Premier Notley, “…We all understand, I think Albertans more so than anybody, understand why this is an important issue across communities within Edmonton and outside of Edmonton, people of all demographics because our energy industry contributes so significantly to our economic prosperity from which we draw the resources through primarily tax revenue to support the important public services which matter to Albertans; the education system that we all care about and our health care system…,”.
Premier Notley, “…People need to have access to good, long-term mortgage paying jobs where they can plan for their future and go to sleep at night with a sense of security…,”. She added that the economy and the province of Alberta is very much linked to the energy industry and that access to tidewater is important in continuing the growth and development of the energy industry. “By failing to get access to tidewater, by failing to get a new pipeline built we lose roughly $40 million a day from our economy. By way of the differential in price we able to receive for the product that we sell. We need to be better as a country in terms of maximizing the value of the economic assets that we have in this country and so being able to nibble around the markets that we sell our products to is fundamentally important”.
Minister Gray, “We were the only province that didn’t offer sick days, job protection, everyone else had that. Everyone had stat holiday pay or stat holiday benefits. Alberta was the only place where you could be a worker and a stat holiday would happen and you will receive nothing. Making sure that we were up to the minimum standard of all the other provinces was really a guiding principle when we update our employment standards”.
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