Wildrose Finance Critic fires back

Miriam Ostermann

Times Associate Editor

 

Strathmore-Brooks MLA Derek Fildebrandt said he was unfairly portrayed, after he found himself in hot water when a Globe and Mail article quoted him saying the NDP government duped Alberta voters by keeping their promises.
Fildebrandt said he never used the words duped, hoodwinked, or promises, all of which were attributed to him in an article by Carrie Tait, with the headline ‘NDP duped Alberta voters, Wildrose finance critic says.’
The Shadow Finance Critic answered questions from numerous reporters during a press scrum following Premier Notley’s speech to the Calgary Chamber of Commerce. According to Fildebrandt, his response to a question about the minimum wage increase, meant that when the NDP wrote their platform their odds of winning the election were 1,000 to one, and that they probably figured they’d never have the chance to implement it.
“What I said was, they never expected to win power and when you come to power you need to be very careful on how you do things,” he said. “You should study the economic impact of your policies as you’re implementing them. Somehow a reporter unscrupulously said that I said that a party should not keep its promises.”
The article states that the Wildrose MLA said “the NDP platform was never intended to be implemented. The NDP platform was a hard-core ideological document” that was meant to pull the then-ruling Progressive Conservative Party “in a particular direction,” which matched up with the official transcript and which Fildebrandt acknowledged he said. However it was the interpretation and quotations of certain words, such as duped and hoodwinked that bothered Fildebrandt.
“The article severely twisted what I said out of context, created new words and incendiary phrases that I never actually spoke, and attributed ideas to me that I didn’t have,” said Fildebrandt. “I’ve got a pretty thick skin, but twisting my words so badly out of context and outright creating new ones, got under my skin a bit. It was bad reporting, but I will just take it as a lesson and learn from it.”
Yet, when he was questioned about his comments on social media, some of his remarks rubbed Albertans the wrong way. Mount Royal’s department chair of Policy Studies Duane Bratt tweeted Fildebrandt asking whether he was suggesting that had the Wildrose Party won the election, they wouldn’t have a mandate to implement in their campaign platform.
In response, Fildebrandt answered by saying that a B-list reporter wrote an intentionally torqued story, and added, an ideologically-charged platform that needs a reality check. He later tweeted that Tait was auditioning for a job as the latest press secretary in the Premier’s Office – a comment that he later removed. The tweet had been posted shortly after Fildebrandt refused to answer more of Tait’s questions, saying “sorry, we’re not taking questions from political journalists” and interrupted her question by adding, “I’m not taking questions from people who don’t conduct themselves professionally.”
His actions baffled some constituents who are now questioning his behaviour. Fildebrandt stood by his B-list reporter comment, but apologized for his later tweet on Twitter.