Our NDP government has been spending the week travelling the province during their constituency break to provide updates on the work they've been focused on.

Yesterday (May 24th) Infrastructure Minister Sandra Jansen connected with Building Trades of Alberta in Red Deer.

(Infrastructure Minister Sandra Jansen at the Building Trades of Alberta executive board meeting yesterday in Red Deer)

That group promotes the interests of 16 Alberta trade unions whose 75,000 members work in the residential, commercial and industrial construction, maintenance and fabrications industries.

Jansen was touting the NDP's investment in infrastructure in the province, and she acknowledged the needs here in central Alberta.

“For Red Deer like many other places we need highways, we need hospitals, we need a courthouse, we need all of these things.  We look around the province at all the infrastructure needs, whether its healthcare facilities etc. and we look at making that investment in the lean years”.

The Minister is definitely aware of the needs at the Red Deer Regional Hospital.

“Certainly we take our direction in infrastructure on healthcare facilities from the Health Minister and that’s an ongoing conversation that we’re having, but certainly that facility and many others in the province that we need are on the agenda and certainly part of our discussion”.

Jansen pointed to conversations with David Dodge, the former Governor of the Bank of Canada , and his countercyclical approach to spending, making those investments in needed infrastructure in the lean years.

Moving forward she notes it's important now to remove the impediments to growth, looking at all the areas where we are starting to see growth and making sure the province encourages that.

And with just a week left under Kinder Morgan's deadline on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, when asked, Jansen was confident the province is taking all the right steps to get it built.

“We are making it very clear to the province of BC that opposition to this pipeline is costing this country 15 billion dollars, we need that money.  When we build pipelines and we have that increased revenue, we get to build more infrastructure in this province”.

She added the project doesn't just benefit Alberta; it's going to benefit the entire country.