The provincial government has not wavered in its commitment to build the police college in Fort Macleod.
Livingstone-Macleod MLA Evan Berger said Friday there is no question the college is needed, and that Fort Macleod is the right place to build it.
“It’s in Fort Macleod when it happens, and it will happen,” Berger said.
Berger predicted that was the message Fort Macleod council would receive yesterday when it met in Edmonton with Solicitor General Frank Oberle. Oberle started a fire storm Feb. 9 when in responding to his first question in the Legislature as the new solicitor general, he put both the future of the college and Fort Macleod as the site in doubt.
“The minister misspoke,” Berger said firmly. “He has apologized profusely.”
Oberle, who took over as solicitor general from Fred Lindsay, was responding to a question from Liberal MLA Kent Hehr.
Berger said the well-worded question from the Liberal MLA caught the rookie solicitor general off-guard.
“It’s never been said by the province anything but that it’s happening in Fort Macleod,” Berger stressed.
In an interview Friday at the Livingstone-Macleod Progressive Conservative Association annual general meeting in Pincher Creek, Berger stressed the delay in building the police college is due only to the downturn in the provincial economy.
“It’s a money issue,” Berger said.
The province announced in August 2006 that it would build the college in Fort Macleod to train 1,400 police and peace officer recruits each year. Estimated in 2006 to cost $110-million, the college would create 75 to 100 permanent full-time jobs in Fort Macleod.
The Alberta Police an Peace Officer Training Centre is not the only major project on hold over which the government is getting heat. New hospitals in Medicine Hat and Grande Prairie are also stalled for lack of funding. The public, as well as the MLAs for those areas, are clamouring for the government to fund those projects.
“Everybody is sick of hearing that and I don’t blame them at all,” Berger said of the response from Fort Macleod and district residents when told the government doesn’t have the money to build the college.
Berger said the government has shown its commitment to building the college in Fort Macleod by funding $7.2-million of a $9.09-million sewage treatment plant being built big enough to serve the college.
“There is no thought of it ever going anywhere else,” Berger said in response to claims by Fort Macleod Mayor Shawn Patience the college would already be built if Red Deer had won the bid. “It’s a simple matter. Find the money.”
To that end, Berger is pressing the new solicitor general to make another call for bids for a P3 partnership to build the college. Berger said the economic downturn could work in the project’s favour, with a lower cost for materials and companies hungrier for work than they were at the height of the boom when the call first went out.
“Let’s put it out again,” Berger said.
The Livingstone-Macleod MLA is also proposing to build the college in stages in order to move it forward soon.
Berger also said people have misconstrued comments by former Finance Minister Iris Evans that the police college project is Fort Macleod’s to fund.
In a meeting with council and other officials from the region, Berger said, Evans was encouraging the town and its neighbours to use their collective leverage to move the project forward.
Berger urged Fort Macleod residents to have faith the college will be built in their town as promised.
“Fort Macleod is still it,” Berger said. “As soon as we have the money, it happens. I’ll take the word of the premier on that.”