The recent Provincial election dramatically changed the face of the Legislature for the Greater Edmonton Area with thirteen out of the twenty-four constituencies in the area changing hands. This is the fifth of a series of columns I’ll be writing as we get to know those new MLA’s. This week I spoke to Carl Benito, the new Progressive Conservative MLA for Edmonton Mill Woods.

During the recent election campaign you indicated that if elected you would not accept a salary but rather would donate it to setting up a scholarship for a youth to use for educational opportunities. Can you tell me what made you decide to do this?

Because when I arrived in this country on March 17, 1982 I only had $100 in my pocket together with my wife and over the years working for twenty-two years I was inducted into Century 21’s Masters Hall of Fame which is a very prestigious award and also I was inducted to the their Honour Society. That means that they recognize you as a very successful real estate agent and if not for this province – if not for Canada – I will not be able to afford to give to my family a very good and affordable life. So it is basically the concept of giving something back to the community. I know that if I went to the United States I might be more successful but I feel very, very happy in Alberta and I think it is a better place to live and raise a family and work.

You emigrated to Canada from the Philippines as a young man so I was wondering if you would mind talking about what you think of Canada’s immigration and multicultural policies. Are they what they should be or is there something else that needs to be done?

Of course there is always something more that can be done on anything at all but right now this is one thing that attracts me to Alberta and Edmonton specifically. I like this province and the multicultural concept and practice as it is done now because even if you have a colour or different accent it doesn’t matter. All you have to do is work hard and do your best and there is a good possibility that you will be successful.

I’ve seen places and been to those places where if you have a different colour you are treated differently and in my real estate practice or campaign on all the doors that I knocked once they realized that I am originally from the Philippines they would tell stories about an experience they had with another Phillipino person. So for example I would knock on a door and the lady that answered would say “you are from the Philippines, right?” and she would tell me that her nurse is a Phillipina or they would work with somebody from the Philippines because there are a lot of temporary foreign workers in Edmonton right now.

In fact we just gave them a reception at the Royal Glenora Club because the first batch of 900 nurses coming from the Philippines just arrived in the second week of April. Nine of them arrived and after a week there were another twelve. So this will fill our temporary workforce problem. I understand from the Minister that come January there will be a special permit for those international graduates of nursing coming from London or the Philippines so that they can accommodate these foreign graduates. We need to fill up the needs of the workforce of this province and this is really helping with this issue.

For the multicultural programmes meeting the needs and making sure the relations in the community are being done properly is a very good concept that this government is doing.

You are married to a Registered nurse and I believe your son is also an RN so I think you probably have had a lot of conversations over the years about how to improve the health care system. If you were allowed to make just one change what is the first thing you would do to improve the delivery of health care in Alberta?

My wife is a registered nurse and my son just finished his nursing degree but still has to take the Board exam to become a registered nurse and my daughter is at the University of Alberta taking up nursing as well. The government is basically, as far as I am concerned doing a good job. First of all I would like to recognize that. At the same time on health and wellness issues there is still more to be done.

I am very proud of the opening of the Don Mazenkowski Institute which we just opened a few days ago. This will be a very good centre for the health care that we would like to project all over the world. The general improving of access to health care just saw an 8% increase in grants to regional health authorities and 300 new long term beds for the Edmonton area.

But I guess the one thing I can say about your question is that I like the idea if we can develop the Edmonton Clinic faster. It is a new outpatient clinic where if you go there you will have access to all practices so the patient who needs something can be accommodated right away. So it is one stop shopping when it comes to being a patient. And I think that if there is one thing we can do to improve access to the healthcare system it would be the opening of this clinic in the University of Alberta area.

I believe you have worked in real estate and insurance for many years now and both are results oriented businesses. How are you adjusting to the pace of government which places such a premium on process even at the cost of results?

That is very correct. In real estate it is very result oriented. You know you do a deal here and there and after a couple of days or a week you get the result. You have a deal. In this situation you have other team members. We are just like a corporation. We are the members of the board of directors. You know though if you are one of the directors in this situation there are 72 of us in the caucus. So you have to consider other opinions so there will be debates and process. Process takes times because you have to be sure that the result is something that will be really needed in that situation. So that is one thing that I am trying to adjust to. It is a very time consuming process and I am still on the learning curve so I still don’t know how to function as an MLA but somebody told me I am only a rookie for the first two days and after that you are like everybody else.

So I followed that concept and the first day of the session I delivered my maiden speech right away on the first day and I am very proud that I was able to do that. And I delivered my maiden question right away as well and I am one of very few MLA’s who did that. I said to myself I am going to do this anyway so I might as well do it right away. And that was right when we held the reception for the nurses who came here from the Philippines and I invited everybody to watch my maiden speech so there was one guy from Capital Health who was there and he told me I made a very passionate speech. And that is because it is personal. You want to comment on the Throne Speech and the things you are going to do and I told the story about how I came from the Philippines with $100 and became successful in real estate and that is something that I am very proud of.