LAKELAND – Now that the dust has settled following the late-night election results that finished rolling in on May 30, Bonnyville-Cold Lake-St. Paul NDP candidate Caitlyn Blake reflects on the 2023 Alberta election and results.
“We accomplished many of our goals,” she told Lakeland This Week. “We wanted to run a full campaign here. Give people an option because going into it, I've never really felt represented in our area. So, we wanted to give people a choice and representation and we definitely accomplished that.”
Blake received only 25 per cent of the vote in her race against UCP candidate elect Scott Cyr, who won the riding with a 75 per cent majority.
“I was a little bit disappointed in the beginning, but once we really looked into what we had accomplished, I think that we ran a really good race. We campaigned for months, and I think that we have proved a point here to both parties that when you give rural Alberta an option, we are far less rigid in our voting habits.”
Sharing a congratulations to Scott Cyr on his win, Blake said, “I hope that Scott goes into the next four years in the spirit of representing ‘us’ and not in pushing his party's agenda.”
While the margin between the two parties was significant, the 2023 election did mark a substantial growth in the number of ballots cast for the NDP party.
In 2019, the UCP received 73 per cent of the vote in the riding with 15,943 ballots, the NDP received 13 per cent of the vote with 3,061 ballots, and the Alberta Party received 10 per cent of the vote garnering 2,223 ballots.
With only two parties running in the Bonnyville-Cold Lake- St. Paul riding for this election, compared to the six who ran in 2019, voters had a lot less options to choose from.
This may explain the drop of more than 4,000 voters deciding not to head to the polls this year compared to the previous election.
While on the campaign trail, Blake noted that many residents expressed feelings of disenfranchisement in regard to the current state of politics in Alberta.
“There were a lot of people who have never voted in this area, or who didn't see the point in voting,” acknowledged Blake. “We also had quite a few people at the doors who were either abstaining from voting because they didn't feel represented by the NDP or the UCP.”
Many Alberta Party supporters also had to decide whether they would put their vote behind a different party, abstain from voting, or spoil their ballot.
Blake added that when people see an individual candidate or party that represents them, they are far more inclined to vote.
Feeling a lack of representation is the reason Blake made the leap into politics in the first place.
“In 2020, my youngest son lost his PUF funding (Program Unit Funding) for early intervention services. It was at that point that the decisions being made were directly affecting my family, and it's a bit selfish but that is what lit a fire under my ass,” said Blake.
First steps into politics
Blake has always had an interest in politics but diving into her first election campaign “It was like drinking through a firehose,” she laughed.
There was a lot to learn in a very short amount of time, she said, suggesting that she will be more prepared in four years should she decide to run again.
“It's going to have to come down to what my family feels at the time,” Blake said. “We got into this assuming we would lose, so it felt like there was very little risk to our family, but as we went along, we were like, ‘Oh, wow, maybe there is a better likelihood than we thought’.”
In the end, the UCP party still walked away with a landslide victory, but that hasn’t deterred Blake.
“One of my goals going forward is to get our [NDP] constituency association to a place where it's functional. I have our last candidate, Kari Whan and her husband David, to thank for setting it up in the first place.”
Over the long term, Blake would like to see the local NDP constituency association start submitting resolutions to the party that would better represent rural NDP supporters.
“I think that both parties are lacking when it comes to rural platforms and that's something that I want to see changed,” she said.
Blake encourages anyone interested in joining the Bonnyville-Cold Lake-St. Paul NDP Constituency Association to reach out to her.
