The NDP may have voted down an amendment put forth by Wildrose MLA Angela Pitt exempting charities from the carbon tax, but there was one MLA that was surprisingly not included in that vote – Marie Renaud.
The NDP MLA for the riding of St. Albert is the former Executive Director of Lo-Se-Ca, a non-profit organization that provides services like day programs and employment placements for adults with disabilities. She even went out of her way to criticize the Progressive Conservative government for cutting charitable tax credits in tweets. In fact, she seemed pretty upset about it at the time just about a year before she was elected as an NDP MLA.
So where was Marie Renaud when it was time to vote on exempting charities from the carbon tax? You know, places like the Calgary Food Bank that will have to come up with a combined $52,000 extra to cover disposal costs in 2017 and 2018.
Marie skipped the vote on Pitt’s amendment. She doesn’t make an appearance on the Hansard transcripts for A-13, the exemption for charities.
For someone that held a job doing charitable work, you would think this MLA would have wanted to vote the amendment up. She didn’t.
Canadian party politics is based on an assumption that there is a one size fits all policy that is an acheivable goal. Regardless of party affiliation elected members should be free to respond to and represent the riding that elected them when there are issues that might conflict with party dogma.
Party whips should be treated like any other thug who intimidates elected officials. There would be a more meaningfull expression of “second choice” of the voter if we simply got rid of party whips than there could ever possibly be by monkeying with the ballot system.
I think you are right on this. She will push her term for a full 5 year until 2019.
And for as mean spirited as conservatives have been portrayed as being I cannot imagine that such an idea would be a hard sell to them if the shoe were on the other foot.
Myself & many of my associates are already BROKE! When I become a refugee – believe me – I will become the ugliest ever observed.