28/05/2022
If you’re in our area, you’ll probably know I’ve been writing articles for our local paper.
Here’s the latest one. My bit about Theo coming is at the end 🙂
This last while we’ve seen a lot of political drama. Certainly not the boring politics that we all wish for. The biggest splash comes from the leadership race results from the UCP. Premier Jason Kenney had stated months ago that he only needed 51% to win the race. If you’re not well versed in politics this sounds reasonable, as you can pass a test in school with that grade. However it’s a bit different when you’re leading a large group of people and half of them don’t trust your leadership. Previous leadership races had the leaders step down after receiving 77% of the popular vote. Great amounts of drama went into this vote in the prior months, seeing people buying memberships at record numbers. Clearly, there’s one thing we can take from this. People want their voices heard and people weren’t happy. Kenney surprisingly resigned after a 51.4 % approval rating. Great controversy ensued over who would be put in as interim premier and Kenney ended up basically un-resigned. His term just slightly shorter. I’ll let you guess what I think of that.
Personally I believe that Jason Kenney could have been a very well liked Premier had it not been for the covid crisis. I won’t go into what I think he did right or wrong, but I think we can all agree it’s been a divisive time and his vote reflected that. Now we will wait to see who may be running in the leadership race. We knew ahead of time that both Danielle Smith and Brian Jean would be running. Do they have what it takes? I can tell you from my time with Danielle from the Politics Uncensored event, she’s definitely smart and she’s taken her missteps along the way and learned from them. I’ve been very impressed with her.
However there’s other mla’s who many are hoping will put their name forth. MLA Todd Loewen who also spoke here, has a lot of rumors surrounding him possibly running. Many are hoping he’ll pick up the premiership baton and run with it. Todd has been a solid voice of reason over the last two years with very little drama surrounding him. My impression from when I got to interview him was that what you see, is what you get. He doesn’t have a hidden agenda nor is he interested in political games. He’s in politics because he cares. Now could we just clone several hundred more like him to take over our government? Then we likely would have boring politics again. And that’s a compliment. I could go back to gardening and attend less political events.
Speaking of political events, I was able to attend one in which Theo Fleury spoke. I went because I wanted to be sure he was the right fit for an event in our town. Perhaps it’s a bit late since half the tickets to Building Bridges have sold already! But regardless, I felt it important to continue with confidence. Theo can be very political but his talk at this event was also centered on mental health. I can tell you, the atmosphere completely changed as he spoke. The compassion and empathy he spoke with as he shared his story was palpable. I believe our community is in for a treat. Politics are obviously not settled yet. We want to position ourselves to have less division in our communities. If we can understand clearer why people behaved the way they did, that goes a long ways. People suffered over the last two years, it’s worth talking about.
I’m currently working with the businesses who wish to sponsor the event and also those who wish to contribute to the silent auction. Please contact me if you’d like to be part of this in some way.
