After a whirlwind first session in the Alberta legislature which saw a number of campaign promises come to fruition, Drumheller-Stettler MLA Nate Horner is preparing to return to the fall session to continue working on a number of the UCP’s campaign promises.
Mr. Horner said he was “kind of thrown in the fire” with a seven week session just after he was elected on April 16, but he says his party got 13 pieces of legislation through, including a repeal of the federal Carbon Tax which he got to watch given royal assent.
“We crossed out a lot of campaign promises. Repealing the Carbon Tax was probably a highlight for me,” he says on the phone, returning from a family trip to his farm near Pollockville. “A lot of it you just learn as you go and learn on the fly, but it’s exciting and it’s been a good experience.”
This summer, he has spent a lot of his time working on a regional caucus to help get his constituents heard and to triage concerns and issues with other regional members. Mr. Horner also was picked to attend an international conference of state legislatures in Nashville, which had representatives from all 50 states and 17 other countries, giving him a chance to network with oil and gas and other industry professionals.
“It was a great opportunity to present Alberta’s case to specific elected people in specific states. I came back and have been saying we need to be organized and use conferences like that as a tool to get a point across to our southern friends,” he says, regarding the new NAFTA deal and oil and gas pipeline hold ups.
Mr. Horner and his team are now working on the opening of his Stettler constituency office, planned for September, and on finalizing the lease on a Drumheller constituency office which he hopes to be open before the fall legislative session.
As far as work-life balance is concerned, he said the first spring session after being elected was “hectic” as he was staying in hotels and often on the road, but says he looks forward to the fall session now that things have settled into a routine. He says he’s excited about his government's push to implement the TIER Fund (Technology, Innovation and Emissions Reduction) which he says is “basically a large emitters tax to replace the Carbon Tax.”
“It’s changed somewhat since the campaign. The industry overwhelmingly asked that we tax them a little, if you can believe that, but with the goal being that there’d be no argument from the federal government or Justin Trudeau to implement anything. They wanted it (the tax) to stay in Alberta. I’m excited to see it play out,” he says.
One initiative he seems personally passionate about is working to reduce, or at least keep stable, the transmission and distribution costs associated with electricity bills in the province. He says he’s trying “to bring attention to that constantly, and that, coupled with gas prices and issues facing producers, that’s where my energy and attention has been spent in these first few months.”
“We need to acknowledge it’s a problem and change our priorities going forward so it doesn’t get worse.”
The Kenney government touted their accomplishments in their first 100 days in office earlier this month, and Horner says for the most part feedback has been positive.
“There’s a lot of bones of contention out there but I think we just keep moving ahead and keep focused on making life easier for Albertans.”
