Premier Jim Prentice today dropped the writ for the next provincial election to be held May 5. Candidates for the Lac La Biche–St. Paul–Two Hills constituency are ready to campaign.
Premier Jim Prentice today dropped the writ for the next provincial election to be held May 5. Candidates for the Lac La Biche-St. Paul-Two Hills constituency are ready to campaign, with the Progressive Conservatives, Wildrose and NDP having all chosen political newcomers.
Darrell Younghans, the Progressive Conservative candidate, has spent years on the party’ s organizational side. He stepped down from his position as constituency association president to win the nomination in a tight race that required three rounds of runoff ballot ranking.
Younghans, a farmer from the Elk Point area, has previously held office on the St. Paul school board for many years. During the four-person race for the PC nomination, Younghans said he planned to advocate for expansion of educational facilities in the area.
Currently, he is a member of the Portage College Board of Governors, and he told the POST he is looking into whether or not he will resign from this post, take a leave of absence, or keep his position during the election campaign.
“While I am a member of the PC party, my biggest job in this whole thing is to represent the people of Lac La Biche, St. Paul and Two Hills. I think that involves a lot of listening,” Younghans told the POST from his campaign office.
“The budget, of course, seems to be the biggest thing on people’ s minds right now - and the effect that it has on them personally,” he continued. “When it’ s broken down, I think people are going to see that it’ s one of those budgets that had to happen. Nobody ever wants to put a budget out there where you increase any kind of taxes, but in the economic times we’ re facing it’ s something that had to be done. It’ s something that takes strong leadership to go out there and do that."
Younghans said he expects the race to be a learning experience for all candidates.
“I was involved in the organizational side of provincial campaigns before, of course, but this is a different aspect of it. We’ re looking forward to the challenges of getting our message out there,” Younghans said.
He hopes to open a campaign office in Lac La Biche in the coming weeks, and said he wants to get around to as many campaign functions in the constituency as possible.
He named education, infrastructure, and diversifying the economy as top issues for the constituency.
Current Lac La Biche-St. Paul-Two Hills MLA Shane Saskiw wrested his position from longtime PC MLA Ray Danyluk by a close margin in 2012. He recently announced he won’ t be running again, though, saying he plans to leave party politics to lobby for “small-c conservative” causes and support his wife Shannon Stubbs, a Conservative Party candidate for this fall’ s federal election in the nearby Lakeland riding.
Saskiw’ s departure leaves the door open for St. Paul County resident David Hanson, who was recently tapped to replace the incumbent Wildrose MLA in this year’ s election. Hanson, who has lived in the St. Paul area for the better part of 22 years, and worked in the oil and construction industries for a combined 36 years, is also making his first foray into the political arena, and said he is feeling good as the campaign gets underway.
“I’ m pretty pumped and ready to go,” he said, adding that he thinks the Wildrose has a good chance to bounce back from a tough session that saw 11 of 16 Wildrose MLAs cross the floor to the PCs. “The more people I talk to, the more excited everybody is that there’ s a chance of a real Wildrose opposition again.”
Hanson said the biggest issue in this year’ s election is the recently announced provincial budget. However, Hanson doesn’ t think Prentice’ s consumer tax increases were inevitable. According to him, the election platform for the Wildrose is rather simple.
“The Wildrose Party’ s platform is to repeal that tax increase that has been announced,” he said. “We’ ll have to get elected first.”
The Alberta NDP named Catherine Harder as their candidate for the constituency. Notley, a university student studying music in Camrose, says it's been awhile since she's been in the area, but she opted to run so that locals would have the option of choosing the NDP on their ballots.
"In the absence of a candidate from this area, I think it's really important every constituency, every riding in Alberta has the option to choose [Alberta NDP leader] Rachel Notley as their representative," Harder said.
Harder said she's been to the Lac La Biche and Lakeland Provincial Park area in past years for camping and hiking trips. She said it was "a little hard" for her to say what important local issues are, given how long it's been since she's visited the region. But she listed health care, education and seniors' care as issues that should matter to all Albertans, and top priorities for the NDP.
"Alberta families are paying for [the PCs'] mistakes, and that's just not right," Harder said. "We want to protect and improve our healthcare, education and seniors' care - that means not cutting it, but putting more towards it. We want to end the big corporate tax breaks and get fair tax reforms from companies, and we want to fight for fair value and more upgraded jobs from our resources."
The Alberta Liberal Party has not yet named a candidate, though they hope to “have candidates in as many ridings as possible,” according to Gwyneth Midgley, the party’ s director of political operations. Their candidate from the 2012 general election, current Lac La Biche County councillor John Nowak, told the POST he does not plan to run again. The Alberta Party has yet to return phone calls from the POST.
