UPDATED: Trudeau trashes Alberta govt as ‘ridiculous’ in surprise visit to Calgary
https://www.westernstandard.news/alberta/breaking-trudeau-trashes-alberta-govt-as-ridiculous-in-surprise-visit-to-calgary/55181
“Ridiculous.”
That’s how Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is describing Alberta’s attempts to circumvent his government’s attempts to directly fund municipalities with Bill 18.
In fact, he literally sputtered the word when he said procedural moves to legislate Ottawa out of the picture with the so-called Priorities Act were in bad faith, if not strictly illegal under the constitution.
“For the provinces to then say we have to legislate so the federal government never spends on municipalities again? That's ridiculous,” he stammered.
And though he admitted municipal governments are under provincial authority under the Constitution, he said denying the federal government the right to support municipalities was essentially unconstitutional. Without naming Alberta Premier Danielle Smith by name, he said “certain governments” want to siphon tax dollars from Ottawa without any of the accompanying accountability for how they’re spent.
He also said it was undermining his attempts to address the housing crisis.
“In Alberta, the provincial government has decided that not only do they not want to to the federal government to be investing in their municipalities, it should be illegal for the federal government to invest in their municipalities. It's not like they're planning on replacing that lost revenue from the federal government. That'd be an entirely different story. That's going in the wrong direction.”
Trudeau reportedly flew directly from D-Day ceremonies in Normandy, France to address the Canadian Municipalities Conference — one of the largest in the country — which he has done every year since 2015.
None of the 3,000 or so delegates even knew he was coming. Neither did media, which were only notified of his itinerary less than hour before he showed. Conference organizers said it was his decision to attend, not theirs.
Inside staff admitted all the hush-hush secrecy was due to concerns over protests. And indeed, there was a heavy police presence on Stephen Avenue outside the Telus convention centre before his motorcade arrived.
But it was mostly friendly territory for the PM at the conference, which was hosted by Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek and sponsored by labour groups including the Canadian Labour Congress, among others.
However, he was heckled and even booed at several points, when asked about the carbon tax and why he hasn’t visited the Peace River oil sands region.