Voting begins tomorrow for UCP candidates; read statements from candidates

The three candidates vying to be the United Conservative Party nominee for the Bonnyville-Cold Lake-St. Paul spoke at a forum last Sunday in preparation for the vote which is fast approaching.

There is roughly 1,500 registered UCP members in the riding and the preferential ballot voting begins Saturday in Bonnyville and Glendon. On Sunday, Cold Lake voters will go to the polls, while on Monday, Elk Point and St. Paul residents will cast their ballot.

Voting locations and times are here.

Opening Statements:

David Hanson

“It’s my second term. I’m interested in running for a third term to represent you in the Alberta Legislature. So what I’m doing right now and what I’ve been trying to accomplish. I currently sit as the chair of the Northern Alberta Development Council, I’ve had that privilege for a couple of years. It’s very interesting. We’ll touch base on a couple of things there. 

“I’ve also chaired the standing Committee on Resource Stewardship, which deals with reviewing legislation and bringing people in that have concerns about that, fall underneath the purview of the resource stewardship. I’ve also been selected by the new Premier as deputy house leader, which was quite a privilege for me as well. 

“I’ve been voted by my colleagues, two years in a row, as the most knowledgeable parliamentarian. Not bad for a pipefitter. 

“A lot of people here know, but I spent 35 years in oil and gas up here, so I am a pipefitter. I know that this cold weather and just driving through it is easy. I used to spend 10 hours a day out there, with the welders working on that.

“I’m also the Parliamentary Secretary for procurement transition. Another very, very important job because of my background, working with contracts. 

“We’ve looked at some problems that we’ve had. I’ll talk about quickly Bonnyville Centralized High School. When the bids came out for that, we had two local companies here in Bonnyville that are qualified to work on provincial property, and they weren’t allowed to get bid on it. 

“I raised those questions with the government and the bureaucrats. It’s kind of frustrating. Also, in my opinion, we should be for projects like that, if it’s in your hometown, and you have a contractor that’s qualified, they should automatically be able to bid on that. Not ask for special privilege before that. But we should open it up. 

“A couple of major issues I’m working on, I’m actually going to speak up in Grassland on Tuesday evening at seven o’clock, is what’s called the IPCA or the Indigenous Protected Conservation Area. The one that is in question that is drawn to folks out here is up in the Wolf Lake area, not the CNRL Wolf Lake, but the actual Wolf Lake itself. It includes eleven townships land over 1000 square kilometers of land. It would fall away from provincial control as far as management as well as the M.D., so the M.D. is quite concerned. 

“We have a little meeting up in Willow Prairie Hall up by La Corey. In three days notice, we had over 550 people out there so very, very good. I stressed that night, how important it is for people to be involved in politics. So I commend you all for being here. That means I hope that you have a current membership that you can get out and vote. 

“These are really important things. I don’t want to really tie the IPCA into the Sovereignty Act, because we’re just in the middle of debates on that. But these are the kinds of things. The IPCA is definitely overreach by the federal government. They’re providing funding to the Metis Settlements General Council to do this feasibility study. The protection is already there, under the Caribou Act. I chaired the Cold Lake Subregion Caribou Task Force, so all of those things that were already covered in that, so I won’t spend a whole bunch of time on that. 

“The other one that’s a big deal, we’re trying to get some clarity on a big wind farm in St. Paul. It’s got people all worked up there as well. There’s been a number of meetings and the company hasn’t even applied for a permit yet. But we’ll deal with that. 

“Another couple of big ones that are put forward to the new Minister of Transportation, Highway 28 and 881. We’ve been working very, very hard between Brian Jean and I especially, we’ve been pushing for Highway 28. We’ve seen the plans, the plans are done. What was going on in 2018 was a three year study. The plans they’re both encouraging is the twinning between Bonnyville and Cold Lake. 

“So those are kind of what I’m working on at the moment. Some of the things, if I can just touch on a few things that I’ve accomplished as the MLA out here is you can register a vehicle in Bonnyville. That was a big one that we dealt with. I have to commend the Minister Glubish for helping me get that done.

“BCHS, a brand new high school rebuild, that was on hold when I got elected in 2019. And we pushed very hard and got that project going and helped them get into the C2 Center. And at one point, they were going to move the kids back into the construction zone in the middle of January last year, so we stopped that. We got some funding so that they could extend the kids to stay in the C2 till when the school was completely constructed. 

“The golf course, $500,000 for a new water system for the golf course. If you golf, that’s a big deal. 

“Another one of the biggest things, that I was actually discouraged from even talking about in my campaign in 2019, was the ID 349 deal. And I commend Greg and the other folks that were involved in that deal to put it together. I think it’s benefitted every community. A small town like Glendon, I was talking to a fella there and they’re having water and sewer issues, and it’s just about a million dollars that’s really helping them do that. I assure you that I will look into trying to help you guys out because the whole place is falling apart apparently, and they’re trying to do one street at a time, with that million dollars and it’ll take 20 years.

“Up in Cold Lake there was a development project that when I got elected in 2019 had been on the books for eight years. All the obligations had been done, environment impacts had been done, they had three extensions on the Water Act sitting atop of a bureaucrat’s desk. I went into the Environment and Parks office every week for a year and a half to finally get that work across the line. The speed of government drives you crazy when you’re used to working from the business world. 

“So that’s one of the things that I’m trying to work with the Parliamentary Secretary for procurement, to try to get those things changed. Get things moved up and get government up to the speed of business and also look at the pricing, because right now we’re not a customer of choice when it comes to the big business projects because of all the bureaucracy,and all it takes to get decisions made at the government level. People put out a 20 to 25 per cent contingency into their bids because they know that’s it going to end up being delayed because of problems or end up in court fighting for money back. 

“So those are three big things. I just want to touch on a couple more things. St. Paul we had a beautiful road built from Range Road 95 to Township 582, if you’re not aware of it, it’s on the north side of town. It’s kind of a bypass route. That was a big project that we got approved there. 

“CAP Arena ice plant, water treatment plant was finished, the skateboard park. We just got a $13 million upgrade to the ER that’s going to be taking place there as well. Seven new doctors, not bad. I’ll leave it there.”

Scott Cyr 

“First of all, I’d like to thank everybody for coming out. Because I’ll tell you, it’s been pretty miserable over the last few days. I’d like to thank Craig for moderating tonight. Thank you, Craig. 

“I also thank the CA board, Ron Young, please take a stand,, Ron here helped organize all of this, along with the rest of the committee. And I will tell you, it makes a big difference. For each one of them actually, for the board, can you please stand? They need to be recognized for the hard work that is put into this. It literally doesn’t happen on its own. For an event like this to be full, a roomful of people, that’s quite remarkable this far away from the election. We are actually quite far from an election. 

“I also would like to thank all of the cities and towns in the area that have councillors here, because I’ll tell you, the fact that we are seeing the municipalities interested in this race also is something I think we need to give them credit for. I also like to thank the fact that my family is such an important part of all this, if I didn’t have my wife’s support in all this, I wouldn’t have been able to move forward, or my two young children… But without their support, I wouldn’t have been able to move forward with this race. 

“Now, the next question is what have I done? And where have I been? And I think this is important. My good friend Dave here came up with that question as well.

“I was the former MLA for Bonnyville-Cold Lake from 2015 to 2019. This was an opposition position. I was elected underneath the Wildrose banner. Two years later, the party’s amalgamated. Dave and I went through that process. I’ll tell you, it was very stressful for everybody that was involved with that. But I’ll tell you, we had a resounding message from Albertans: get it done. And you know what, we got it done. And myself and Dave were both founding members of the party, as the UCP was created out of the Wildeose and PC party. We had two parties that were at each other’s throats for years. And I’ll tell you, we put our grievances behind us and we were able to move forward. And I think this is important to remember. It’s important for everybody, that in the end, we saw that conservatives needed to put things behind us and move forward. 

“Now for myself, during my time in 2015 to 2019, what happened was I was the shadow minister of justice. It’s kind of ironic, I was named the shadow minister of justice as an accountant, you would think that it doesn’t quite fit. But I will tell you at the time, it was explained to me, and this is important, because I can read legislation. Now, it’s tax legislation, but I can read legislation. I think that’s important, that the person that is going to be representing the area, as the critic for justice, be able to get through legislation and understand how the courts and the judicial system actually works. 

“Now, moving there, I was also the Deputy Whip. And I will tell you, that was quite the honour for the Wildrose party. And I was the Service Alberta shadow minister as well. 

“I sat on the public accounts as the chair of the Public Accounts. For those that don’t know what the Public Accounts Committee is, what that is, is a committee that is chaired by only one opposition member. What happens is that all the other committees have chairs from the government side. It was quite an honor to be able to chair that one committee. Now that committee has met for keeping the government to account. Sky Palace, all these other things that we have gone through, was a part of the process of trying to find accountability and figuring out where we went wrong as conservatives inside of this province. I’ll tell you that in the end, what happened is an incredible honor for me to be able to move forward, move forward with the constituency.

“Now you will all remember during that timeframe Bill 6, how many farmers here remember Bill 6? That’s the bill where the NDP literally were telling people, that if you have your children working on your farm, you’re a murderer. Clearly, that is not okay. And I’ll tell you when it comes down to it, kill Bill 6 became a real mantra for our area. And I’ll tell you that I took that message, as well as Dave, and the other Wildrose members to the legislature, and we filibustered and you know what? I found out I got a useless skill out of all this. 

“I found out that I can filibuster and I was able to do a lot of filibustering. I did hours and hours of filibustering to try to keep that legislation from getting on the table. You know what, we all have odd things that we can say that is a skill. 

“One of my other skills is being able to unite areas around getting things done. Now, what happened here is the water line from Cold Lake to Bonnyville had been shelved for 15 years. Fifteen years it had been shelved. What happened was, I sat with the Minister of Transportation, as it was under transportation and Water for Life. And I said, we need to have a water line here. And you know what, to the credit of the minister, he said, well, we might think about it, there’s not enough money. I said put money in, because we need to make sure water gets here.

“To the credit of our mayor, Mayor Copeland, to the mayor, Gene Sobolewski at the time, they were able to work together to get that water line, one of the single largest investments we’ve had in our region, for as far as I can remember. And this is something that is a real bonus, every cup of water that comes here came from that one deal. And it came from a whole lot of people working together to make it happen. This didn’t happen by accident. In the end, what happens is that it all took teamwork. 

“And I will tell you, we also have seniors facilities, Bonnylodge saw a bunch of infrastructure money go into that one. We had the seniors lodge in Cold Lake being built there. We had schools being done and renovated, we had a ton of work going throughout the constituency. If you look back, we had a ton of money going in. And that wasn’t an accident. I’m not taking credit for all of it. Because I’ll tell you, what happens is, it took a lot of people working together to make that happen. That’s the skill I bring to the table.

“I am a man that is able to see a focus and move forward without focus and try to bring people together under one tent if you will, to make sure that projects can move forward in our constituency. And I love the constituency I’m in. 

“I’ll tell you that we have a lot of respect when it came to the local area. We saw an incredible movement because the NDP did an astronomical amount of damage to our region. If you look at the oil sands, at least in our region… in 2015 and 2016, almost every third or fourth house was for sale. Now we’ve had low oil prices before, but nothing like this. We had the NDP go into the royalty review, that was about a year and a half. And I’ll tell you that instability that put our area through, is something that we would never want to go through again. 

“They also announced a carbon cap on top of our oil sands, which was another instability that came right after. Three years of instability in our area where our oil sands were not willing to put capital into this area. Clearly, that is a problem.

“I’ll tell you that whenever it comes to our region, I’ll be fighting to make sure jobs, the economy, and advocate for pipelines moving forward. They’ll also make sure that we start looking at inflation, because I think this is what’s on top of everybody’s mind, going through and making sure we combat inflation. We’ll also be making sure our health care system stops being bled off to Edmonton and Calgary. And we’ll look at rural crime. Those are the three big ones that I want to see addressed. And I’m going to start making sure that those move forward. Thank you very much.”

Greg Sawchuk 

“Good evening, everyone. Well, Craig stole my blustery word. Thanks for coming in tonight. And Scott, you did a lot of thank yous, but one thing you left out is for these guys. Thank you for your service, because I know that it’s not easy. And you guys have done the hard work for the region and I thank you. 

“It’s an exciting time in Alberta politics. The UCP is going through a very enlightened period. And I guess it would come back to is we have a new Premier and that new premier was elected fair and square. We know that she’s doing the job because the liberal media down east are losing their minds. They are going crazy. We have Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Singh and they are speaking about Alberta. And they’re trying to say that they know what’s best for Albertans. I don’t agree with that. 

“I think that Premier Danielle Smith is on the right track. I think she’s going to be a strong leader. And I think that she has them on the run a little bit. The Sovereignty Act, it’s going through its phases, getting smoothed out, I fully support that. I think that Alberta does need to stand up. I think that we do need to certainly make sure that our constitutional rights are protected. That whenever those pieces that the province actually controls are stepped on, we need to step back and take the fight up against that. 

“I took part in the anti-pipeline and resource development bills and we were unsuccessful. All of the fight fell on deaf ears. It was as if nobody wanted to listen in Ottawa from the very beginning. But I think with our new Premier, I think she has them on their back foot right now and I’m excited to see how this goes. 

“The party is united. I was lucky enough to be down in Edmonton at the UCP AGM, Mr. Hanson was there as well. And to our astonishment, we were overwhelmed, because we had over 100 delegates from this riding alone attend that AGM. And for most, it was the very first time some of you were there. And it was exciting that they made that trek down. They got a chance to take part in the process. So a lot of people have talked about all this top down control and all of this, they got to see that on the floor of the conference, that you make a vote on governance and policy, you get to vote on the board members, and they got their votes, and they got their voice heard. 

“We were lucky enough that in the room, where’s Mark Hunt in the back of the room, was elected Northern Director, so it’s great to have him in the area and pull him for us. You guys made the trek, you paid the price. And you got to vote and your voice was heard. Thank you for doing that for all of those.

“Now, I’ve been listening to people and their issues for the last several years. You can’t avoid it. As a municipal politician as Reeve wherever you go. Be at the grocery store, the gas station, the post office, people are always there, and they always want to discuss the issues. And they’ll always tell you what’s going on. And over that period of time, I heard a lot of things. We worked on a lot of things. But I want to touch on the things that are at the front and center right now. 

“Rural health care being number one, it’s almost unanimous. People are bringing it up everywhere. We’ve had a continual decline in rural health care under successive governments. They talk about a two-tier system that people are worried about. We already have a two-tier system. Rural health care in Alberta, urban is another. In the city, no problems getting health care. Out here, you guys know all the hurdles. 

“We’ve had our emergency rooms closed. We’ve had problems with obstetrics during the summer. Lots of people don’t have a family doctor. This is unacceptable. We need to fix this. One of the big things we need to work on is the staffing shortages. We need more doctors, we need more nurses. Some of those things are being addressed by the current party. I’m excited to see that there are more doctors coming into Cold Lake. It sounds like there’ll be a full complement in about February. 

“There’s some changes to how nurses are brought into the country, which is going to make that easier also to fill some spots. But I would like to see more of our rural kids having the chance to fill those seats. Now there has been some work done on getting students into the medical programs and making sure that those doctors come back out to the rural. I’d like to see the same thing with the nurses. 

“I have a couple of daughters both who would be great nurses like their mom, but they didn’t have that 92 per cent average to get in. I think being a nurse is more than just a high percentage, right? A high score. I think there’s a whole lot more to the job. So we need to work on that one. 

“I’ve heard from a lot of people inflation, affordability, it’s gotten expensive to live. But a lot of that can be blamed on our federal governments around the world and basically, printing tons of money, keeping interest rates low. And I love to study macroeconomics. So if you want to talk on this one, give me a day, and we can share some stories. 

“The big thing everybody talks about, everybody wants more programs, more things being done, more things being built. That happens when you’ve got a good economy. So jobs and the economy, and I think the UCP are in the right direction. Let’s keep this low tax platform there, so that we attract corporate investment and keep bringing those companies in. We need to keep our people working. If you’ve got everybody working, you can afford a lot of programs. 

“There’s a ton of other issues out there. Some have not gone away. I was worried about crime five years ago and it’s still there. And our highways. Highway 28, the same highway that we send all of these people down the road with ambulances on to get tests, when they could be tested right here, is horrible. It’s wearing out our ambulances and I’m sure that Mr. McEvoy knows that very well. 

“Other things we’ve got going on. Our classroom supports and agricultural programs, both of those are extremely important to this riding. And we’ve got to stay on top of those. Being a farmer, I know that it is a roll of the dice every year, and that we don’t know what’s going to be around the corner. And it’s great to have a government that you know has your back, and are going to be there in a time of need. And I believe the UCP are that party. 

“I’m going to finish up there. I’m looking forward to lots of questions. And there is one thing I’m going to touch on that all of us agree on up here, and we don’t want the NDP back. 

“As Reeve, one of the things I would do, I’d like to do cold calling on businesses in the area. Just show up one day and say hello. Early on when I would enter those oilfield service companies, I was greeted by a friendly face behind a nice desk and allowed to talk about the issues, and usually the owner or the manager would come up around a room well down the hallway. 

“After a few years of the NDP, I would go to those same oilfield service companies. That smiling face was gone. There was a bell on the table. You would ring that bell and someone from three doors down would come up and answer your call. It was devastating to the area. We lost 1500 people in the M.D. alone. We had 400 homes put up for sale. We had shops, we had businesses go under. Some of those businesses I visited only two or three days before they closed the doors. It was devastating. We can’t let that happen again.”