Doerksen wants $$ for naturopathy

http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Alberta/2006/11/24/2474281-sun.html

By DARCY HENTON, LEGISLATURE BUREAU

Victor Doerksen wants to invest millions of taxpayers' dollars into establishing a naturopathy fund.
The Red Deer Tory leadership candidate says that a $2 million initial investment and $10 million annually should be employed to research the effectiveness of natural, complementary and preventive medicines.
"Albertans are already speaking with their pocketbooks on the use of these complementary approaches," he says. "This fund will help support their choices and help our health-care system determine what alternative approaches have merit."
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Ted Morton says $36 million a day is leaving Alberta in the form of taxes and transfers to Ottawa and he's not convinced Alberta is getting good value from those dollars. He told a radio phone-in show yesterday that he's committed to reviewing that to make sure Albertans get a fair return. But he told a caller to CHED's Rutherford Show that he wasn't interested in pulling the province out of Confederation. "If you don't want to be a part of Canada, you can go join the Separatist Party," he said. "That's not what I am interested in." A new poll of party members suggests Morton is trailing front-runner Jim Dinning by a few percentage points.
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According to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, none of the eight candidates vying for the leadership has an ideal platform, but the organization liked what it saw in many of their responses.
Most of the candidates had specific suggestions for spending restraint. Ed Stelmach and Dinning vowed to end unbudgeted spending sprees, while Morton promised to cap spending increases at the rate of growth in the private sector plus inflation.
Stelmach, Dinning and Mark Norris pledged to give a greater role to all-party legislature committees.