The Rachel Notley Alberta NDP Majority Government’s Missing Platform Found

Broken Alberta NDP Platform Link

2:51pm MT, May 8th, 2015 Update: It appears the Alberta NDP government has finally put the platform page back up (see screen capture) on its website. Albertans will have to make up their minds if they will forgive their newly elected government for this rookie mistake. The way this reporter sees it, no one is perfect and everyone makes mistakes sometimes, it is more important we face up to these mistakes quickly to fix them. Since in the future, with the passage of time, the government will have legitimate reasons to modify its website and post new information, this reporter has decided to permanently keep the NDP 2015 election platform (PDF file) for the record and future research purpose. It is important to be able to hold our elected government accountable to their promises and if they deviate from their promises to seek their reasoned justifications.

May 7th, 2015 Update: It appears the newly elected Rachel Notley Alberta NDP government could possibly be seen to have deliberately deleted their platform as the previous posted archived link does NOT work anymore and their platform is still nowhere to be found at the NDP’s website. As a result, this reporter has uploaded a full PDF copy of the NDP platform and will keep it there permanently as part of this report and for other Albertans’ research purpose. This reporter believes the uploading of NDP 2015 election platform (PDF file) is well within the Copyright “fair dealing” protection by the Supreme Court of Canada case “CCH Canadian Ltd v Law Society of Upper Canada, [2004] 1 SCR 339,[1] 2004 SCC“.

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The Alberta election 2015 results are in and premier-elect Rachel Notley‘s Alberta NDP has swept across province in a historic win of 53 seats (at press time). Note that there may be one more seat because at press time, according to Elections Alberta, Calgary-Glenmore riding is at a statistical tie with NDP’s Anam Kazim and PC’s Linda Johnson both having exactly 7,015 votes, 33.17% of total votes. Incidentally, a lesson to voters everywhere that it is real and important that “every single vote counts”.

As an NDP majority government was not expected by many Albertans in the beginning of the election (and possibly even now), many Albertans may want to find and read up the Notley NDP platform. Well, those who want to find NDP’s platform to read on election night (and at press time) are definitely out of luck as it was missing/removed from NDP’s website completely! Not a good sign for a brand new government and may give people the incorrect/bad impressions that the promises in the platform are just election promises not meant to be kept.

After a bit of searching around and the great Internet Archive, this reporter was able to track down and find an archived version of NDP platform web page and an archived PDF version of the Notley NDP platform file. Of course, the most likely scenario is technical mistakes by the NDP web tech team and not a deliberate attempt to remove premier-elect’s promises & platform right after election.

At the end of the day, in a healthy democracy, it is the jobs of opposition parties’ MLAs, Albertans, reporters, media, and many others to keep the government in check and honest. After all, “restoring honest and open government” is promised in the platform (PDF) and it makes sense for Albertans to get to know their new government’s platform. Have a read.

Note: This article is cross-posted to examiner by this reporter.