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Local politicians excited to get to work with new MLA

Residents flocked to the polls, with over 70 per cent of local registered electors casting their ballot in Alberta’s 2019 provincial election. UCP candidate David Hanson was elected MLA for the Bonnyville-Cold Lake-St.
Hanson
UCP David Hanson celebrates his win on election day.

Residents flocked to the polls, with over 70 per cent of local registered electors casting their ballot in Alberta’s 2019 provincial election.

UCP candidate David Hanson was elected MLA for the Bonnyville-Cold Lake-St. Paul riding, capturing over 73 per cent of the votes.

”I hope that I can live up to your expectations, and I’m going to work very hard to make sure that I represent this area better than they’ve ever been represented before,” Hanson told the Nouvelle following his victory.

With a UCP victory both locally and provincially, Hanson said it shows people were ready for a change.

”I think people realize how important, not only the party is, but the policies they’re presenting and the fact they listen to what’s best for Alberta... I think what we need to do is listen to Albertans, and we need to get our economy back up to thriving because a strong private sector can support all of our problems.”

Out of 30,062 registered voters in the local constituency, the unofficial results showed roughly 21,844 cast their ballots. This surpassed 2015’s numbers for the former Bonnyville-Cold Lake riding, when only 48 per cent of residents voted.

Hanson walked away with 15,626 votes, while his next closest opponent, NDP Kari Whan, finished the night with 2,985. Alberta Party’s Glenn Andersen had 2,176 votes, David Inscho of the Alberta Advantage Party ended the race with 199, Alberta Independence Party candidate David Garnett-Bennett had 207, and 161 votes went to independent Kacey Daniels.

Provincially, the unofficial results have a UCP majority government, with party leader Jason Kenney taking the seat as premier.

The party holds 63 seats, while the NDP have 24.

Following the election, Kenney announced he plans to call a legislative session in the third week of May, after he and his cabinet are sworn in on April 30. The new majority government campaigned on a promise to focus on jobs, getting pipelines built, and scrapping the carbon tax.

Outgoing MLA for the former Bonnyville-Cold Lake riding, Scott Cyr, noted the results send a clear message from the constituency.

”When you quintuple the nearest candidate, that shows that there’s a lot of strengths in the want to see a Conservative government brought back to Alberta. The unfortunate by-product of bringing in an NDP government has really affected our local constituency, and anyone can see down the road, all the for sale signs, all the closed businesses, and just to understand the extent of the federal Liberals and the Alberta NDP’s have for just making sure that we were depressed in this area,” he detailed.

”The polls were indicating it was going to be a majority win pretty much from the start in terms of polling numbers,” noted Town of Bonnyville Mayor Gene Sobolewski. “In this area, (Hanson) campaigned hard. He’s basically been campaigning for two years, and I was absolutely not surprised with the results in Alberta.”

City of Cold Lake Mayor Craig Copeland wasn’t shocked with either the local or provincial outcome.

”I was really happy with the resounding mandate that was given for a percentage of the vote, and I think it just speaks to the economy and jobs,” he detailed. “I think those were two big themes that Jason Kenney was pounding home was these are tough economic times, and I think the Bonnyville and Cold Lake area, especially here in Cold Lake, people are suffering.”

With the UCP holding the majority government, MD of Bonnyville Reeve Greg Sawchuk is looking forward to what it could mean for the riding.

”What we found, since we’ve been on council, is it’s difficult to work with the government when your MLA is in opposition. We’re happy to have an MLA who’s now on the right-side of government, and who we’ll be able to go to and hopefully get some quicker action,” he explained.

All three municipalities are looking forward to working with Hanson on projects that will benefit the Lakeland.

”I think there’s exciting times ahead, and we’re ready and eager to get to work on the next phase of projects we need to do,” noted Sobolewski.

Sawchuk added, “We’re encouraged by the comments made by the new premier that Alberta’s open for business. We’ve certainly had lots of folks in the area hit hard in the recent few years, and we really need some good news. We’re hoping that it starts with decreasing some of the regulations, we like the idea of that, and getting some of these big projects back on track.”

This year’s election saw a record-breaking 696,000 Albertans taking advantage of the advanced polls. Locally, 8,713 cast their vote prior to election day. Overall, the unofficial numbers from Elections Alberta show more than 1.8-million people cast their ballots.

”We had a high percentage of folks that got out and voted, which usually means change and that people are highly motivated and felt the passion to get out and have their voice (heard). It doesn’t matter which way they were voting, a lot of people got out there and voiced their opinions. That’s important. It’s nice to see the citizens are engaged, getting out there, and taking part in the process,” Sawchuk exclaimed.

With the polls officially closed, Sobolewski is optimistic looking to the future.

He said, ”As a town and a region, we have a number of things we need to accomplish, and it’s just a matter of starting to get down to the business of getting back to normalcy. The election’s over, and we’ll have to see what the new policies are looking like because there were a lot of promises made. Now, we’ll have to see if they’re ready to deliver, and the impact on the municipalities, particularly with the infrastructure funding.”

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