Darrell Younghans, the Progressive Conservative candidate for Lac La Biche–St. Paul–Two Hills, has years of volunteering with the PCs under his belt, but that doesn't mean he sees his political role as a one-way street.
Darrell Younghans, the Progressive Conservative candidate for Lac La Biche-St. Paul-Two Hills, has years of volunteering with the PCs under his belt, but that doesn’ t mean he sees his political role as a one-way street.
As he began his campaign in Lac La Biche this week, one line he kept repeating was that he hopes to bring local concerns to Edmonton, if elected - not just bring Edmonton’ s line back home.
The opening of his Lac La Biche campaign office on April 14 was a low-key affair, where Youngans and a group of supporters prepared a small unfinished storefront on Main Street.
“Where do you find a lease, ever, for 28 days with zero budget?” remarked Maureen Miller, Younghans’ campaign manager, a former colleague on the St. Paul school board.
As they prepared the campaign office for its first official function, she and the candidate first knelt down to tape a carpet to the floor, then they took to decorating the wall with campaign posters. After unrolling five of Younghans’ portrait, they moved to tack up one of Premier Jim Prentice.
As locals started to trickle in, Younghans set to campaigning. He said he had some concerns about local issues, but a long phone call with Prentice two days earlier eased his mind on many of them.
“He just phoned to see how things were going, and we had a long 15, 20 minute chat...He’ s just checking on how things are going. He does care about the constituency,” Younghans said.
The candidate said the Premier showed him they were on the same page about what should happen to health care in the wake of the province’ s recent Rural Health Services Review, which is ushering in a switch from the current five-zone Alberta Health Services system into one with eight to 10 “operating districts” with more local autonomy.
“Everybody’ s saying it’ s a good idea going back to the districts, let’ s just make sure that it’ s not another layer of bureaucracy,” Younghans said. “I mentioned that to [Prentice], and he very much understood. That was encouraging.”
He was scheduled to give a speech partway through the campaign office open house, but opted to instead speak one-on-one with each voter who came through the door. He mentioned that much of rural Alberta was in an “infrastructure debt,” saying there’ s a real need to help communities update decades-old water and sewer systems. He argued that if a local board were making the decision, not AHS, Lac La Biche’ s dialysis facilities wouldn’ t still be in a bus outside the hospital.
Younghans acknowledged that he’ d heard some local antipathy for the province’ s ruling party - “I’ ve been hearing a lot of people saying ‘anything but PC,’ ” he said. But quickly countered by criticizing the Wildrose platform, arguing that their promise for increased municipal funding transfers would squeeze other concerns out of the provincial budget.
Provincially, the Tories are picking certain big issues to campaign on - re-jigging the budget, investing in infrastructure and trying to diversify the economy. But Younghans’ event veered into many other topics. Former Lac La Biche County mayor Peter Kirylchuk stopped in and spoke at length about his contention that Alberta’ s homeschoolers were getting short shrift from the Ministry of Education. Younghans mentioned his 12-year experience sitting on St. Paul’ s public school board, before promising Kirylchuk he’ d look into the topic.
Many prominent Lac La Biche faces stopped by to discuss the issues that mattered to them. Lac La Biche County Mayor Omer Moghrabi voiced his dissatisfaction with the PCs’ recent budget, saying that he would’ ve preferred for the government to make up lost revenue with industry royalties, rather than individual taxes. Younghans replied that royalties were a non-starter.
Throughout the evening, Younghans had a line to walk: he was there both to promote the PCs’ platform, and to hear out the local concerns he’ d take to Edmonton if elected. That Sunday phone call with Prentice became a frequent talking point - though he’ d held concerns about the budget and health policy, he was now a believer, and he hoped Lac La Biche would believe in his party too.
“Especially when we talked Rural Health Report...it was so nice to hear [Prentice] talk just like an average Albertan, and have the same kind of concerns and say, yeah, something’ s gotta get fixed,” Younghans elaborated to the POST in a later interview.
Younghans faced a difficult path just to become his party’ s candidate in the area. The Lac La Biche-St. Paul-Two Hills PC nomination race started with four contenders - and then was thrown into disarray when the local nominating committee was thrown out over mis-timing voting day, and another high-profile challenger, Westlock-St. Paul MP Brian Storseth, emerged. Over 1,800 party members voted in the race, which Younghans says is likely a record.
It took three rounds of runoff voting in order for a majority winner to emerge, and Younghans said he likely benefitted from a good deal of shared goodwill with Lac La Biche candidate hopeful Jeff Dechaine. After losing the nomination, Dechaine joined Younghans’ campaign team.
Younghans hopes the hotly contested nomination race will work in his favour come election day on May 5.
“If anything, it speaks to a renewed interest in the party,” he said. “We had 1,800 [votes], they’ re still PC members, and that should translate into nothing but good for us at the polls.”
