EDMONTON, AB – Wildrose Shadow Innovation and Advanced Education Minister Wes Taylor raised concerns that while Alberta’s economy is facing its most trying time since the Great Recession and the province’s major online university faces insolvency, Jobs and Advanced Education Minister Lori Sigurdson is busy campaigning for Tom Mulcair in BC.
Athabasca University is one of Alberta’s four Comprehensive Academic Research Institutions (CARI), and serves over 15,000 Alberta students and employs over 1,350 faculty and staff members within the province.
“There are pressing issues right here in Alberta that need to be addressed by Ms. Sigurdson,” Taylor said. “Instead, this NDP government seems to be on summer break while Albertans are bracing for the province’s current economic conditions to get even worse.”
With insolvency facing this institution, Taylor said the minister should either be showing more leadership or providing more oversight as opposed to campaigning out-of-province.
“The NDP are delivering continual body blows to Alberta’s already reeling economy, we don’t need the government to be missing in action in other important portfolios,” Taylor said.
Wildrose will continue to be the voice for those affected by the economic downturn, and hold the government to account for risky economic ideas and bring stability by introducing budget before the end of the federal election.