EDMONTON - Liberal Leader Stephane Dion is pitching for votes in Tory-dominated Alberta, promising to help the province catch up with much-needed building projects if his party wins the next election.
"You can count on a Liberal government led by me to help you address these challenges with significant infrastructure investment,'' Dion told a chamber of commerce luncheon Wednesday in Edmonton.
He offered help for Alberta's severe shortage of skilled workers, while offering repeated assurances that his party's environmental policies would not put a drag on the province's current energy boom.
"Let me give you the two bottom lines of this plan: there will be no carbon tax and the money will stay in Alberta,'' he told the crowd. "If there is a place in the world where there is much to gain in bringing the environment and the economy together, it is Alberta.''
While the Liberal environment policy would penalize industries that don't reduce emissions, the money would remain in the province to pay for research, he explained.
"High calibre research institutions like the University of Alberta and the Edmonton Research Park have the potential to become ground zero for a revolution in environmental innovation.''
Alberta companies and universities could also make money by creating new ways to reduce emissions, he said.
"If we make Fort McMurray sustainable, we can export that know-how to the world, and by cutting megatonnes of emissions, we are going to make megatonnes of money.''
Dion estimates the overall impact of his party's environmental plan would add only about $1 to a barrel of oil.
The Liberal leader also used the election-style speech to promise new workforce and immigration policies to bring workers to Alberta. In the last quarter of 2006, 62,000 jobs went unfilled in the province.
He also slammed Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Tory government for having weak environmental policies and for allowing many of Alberta's strongest companies to be taken over by foreigners.
"Last May, we urged the government to do something about foreign takeovers and they completely ignored our call, accusing us of being protectionist,'' he told the crowd.
"Finally, yesterday they started to move because they know we were right.''
The Liberals were shut out in Alberta in the last federal election, in which the Conservatives won all 28 of the province's seats.
