Alberta’s United Conservative Party (UCP) has removed an MLA backbencher after he said he will vote against the government’s budget bill.
Lesser Slave Lake MLA Scott Sinclair was voted out of caucus on March 7, according to Chief Whip Shane Getson.
“MLA Sinclair has made it clear, both in his social media posts and in his conversations with colleagues, that he intends to vote against the budget. As an elected MLA he has that right, but may not do so as a member of the government caucus,” Getson told The Epoch Times in a email statement.
”Budget votes are confidence votes. The failure of a budget to pass results in an immediate election. All government MLAs are expected to vote in favour of a tabled budget.”
Sinclair described the budget, which was tabled by Finance Minister Nate Horner on Feb. 27, as “disappointing” and “unacceptable.”
”I don’t know who it’s meant to serve, but it certainly isn’t for me, my family, my friends, or my constituents,” he wrote in a March 1 Facebook post.
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Sinclair said he was upset at how much money is going to the cities as opposed to rural parts of the province.
“The continuous flow of our GDP to urban centers while rural Alberta—the backbone of this province—gets left behind is appalling. It feels like we’re dealing with a provincial version of federal equalization payments, with rural communities footing the bill for the big cities,” he said.
Sinclair said he’d like to see “real investments” in infrastructure projects in Northern Alberta, such as repairing roads and bridges, building new schools, and upgrading regional airports.
He said he could not support the budget or vote for it “without significant changes.”
In response to Sinclair’s post, NDP opposition leader Christina Gray said it was a “bad budget.”
”It’s unprecedented for a government MLA to criticize the budget their own colleagues have tabled,” she said in a statement posted on social media.
Sinclair is the second MLA to be removed from caucus in the last several weeks.
Airdrie-Cochrane MLA Peter Guthrie recently quit cabinet over his concerns with government-wide contracting processes. He has reportedly been banned from caucus meetings.
The accusations of problems with government contracting stem from a lawsuit filed by Athana Mentzelopoulos, former head of Alberta Health Services (AHS). She alleges she was removed from her role on Jan. 8 because she had launched an internal investigation into AHS procurement practices.
Premier Danielle Smith has said she wasn’t involved. Alberta’s auditor general Doug Wylie is investigating, and a third-party review has also been undertaken by the province.
In addition, Alberta’s RCMP recently launched an investigation into the complaints
The Canadian Press contributed to this article.
