EDMONTON – Danielle Smith will have a “very big fight on her hands” if she wins the United Conservative Party (UCP) leadership tomorrow and proceeds with efforts to withdraw Alberta from the Canada Pension Plan (CPP), says the president of Alberta’s largest worker advocacy group.
In an interview with CBC’s Sunday Scrum from 2019, Smith said she supports pulling Alberta out of the CPP to make sure “our money” is not being used “to support solar or wind or other experiments that the CPP – driven politically by the Trudeau government – might want to invest in.”
“Before her presumptive coronation tomorrow, I want to make it very clear that the money in question is not Danielle’s; it belongs to Albertans who rely on the CPP as one of the cornerstones of their retirement security,” says Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL).
“As she ascends to the Premier’s chair, she needs to come clean with Albertans,” says McGowan.
“Those comments were made when she was a right-wing radio host. But does she still take the same position today? Does she still intend to use the retirement savings of millions of Albertans to fund her own personal war against the international investment community? If so, we’re putting her on notice that she’ll have a fight on her hands. We won’t let her use the retirement savings of millions of Albertans as a slush fund to pursue her own agenda,” the AFL leader adds.
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Michael Hurley
Director of Communications
Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL)
Phone: 647-382-8002
Email: mhurley@afl.org