Former MLA to relax after election
Elections 2019: Helping flood victims a highlight for Anderson
By Bruce Campbell
As of today the Highwood MLA will be done with the dog days of provincial government and will worry more about the day to day duties of working at his Foothills County acreage.
“Now that I am home and I have time on my hands I have a pretty extensive ‘honey-do list’ at my acreage after four years as MLA,” said Wayne Anderson, who’s last day of work as MLA was April 16. “I’m disappointed, but I’m not sad.
“Considering the current environment, I am glad I can sit back and see what happens.”
Anderson’s four-year MLA career came to an end when he was defeated by RJ Sigurdson in the Highwood nomination race in October 2018.
Anderson earned his seat as Highwood MLA as a Wildrose candidate in 2015, downing former Okotoks town councillor Carrie Fischer, who ran for the PC’s under the leadership of the late
Jim Prentice. However, he sat in opposition at Rachel Notley’s NDP won 54 seats to the Wildrose’s 21.
He disagrees with some pundits’ opinion that the Wildrose and PCs split the vote. He called Notley’s orange wave a protest.
Although he expected a UCP victory on April 16 and believes a change in government is needed, he stressed that won’t mean an automatic boost to the Alberta economy.
“Albertans want to change back to a better economy, jobs and pipelines, it’s good rhetoric but it is going to be a challenge because a lot of money, intellectual assets have left this province,” Anderson said. “I don’t want people to think that because they changed government the streets are going to be paved with gold right away, but Albertans are resilient.”
He said in Highwood, and Okotoks, the issues will remain the same, no. 1 being getting a water pipeline to the community.
“We were close to getting something with the NDP government,” Anderson said.
He said one of the highlights of his career was helping those still reeling from the 2013 flood in High River and Foothills County.
“I think I inherited 600 to 1,500 DRP (Disaster Recovery Program) files and we got it down in the last year to two, that is pretty good,” Anderson said.
He said he was able to work with the NDP regarding the Province asking for money back from affected homeowners if their financial help went beyond set limits after they received insurance payments.
“I sat down with the minister and said the cost to pull that money back and the time and the effort doesn’t warrant the amount of money you are going to receive back so let’s have a cut-off,” Anderson said. “We managed to get a lot of money back without penalty to anybody. It just made good business sense.”
He said he felt throughout his career he was able to build up constructive relationships on both sides of the floor.
His lone regret in not going back to legislature is leaving some work on the table.
“I would have liked to have continued for another term to finish some of the work I started,” Anderson said. “Given the current political environment I am glad I am not in the middle of it right now. I feel there is a lot of controversy right now that I feel very uncomfortable dealing with right now.”
He called the situation “a complete gong show.”
Anderson said his fortunes changed when he supported Wildrose leader Brian Jean for the United Conservative Party leadership race in 2017, over eventual winner, Jason Kenney, the PC leader and a federal cabinet minister under former prime minister Stephen Harper.
“Everybody knew I was a Brian supporter, so the ‘X’ was kind of marked on my back and it was evident here locally,” Anderson said.
One of those controversies include the alleged kamikaze campaign in which UPC candidate Jeff Callaway was accused of running just to run interference for eventual winner Jason Kenney in the leadership race in 2017.
That controversy was fueled by a leaked audio recording at Tim Hortons in Okotoks in which former Highwood board member Wendy Adam and Mark Hudson discussed Callaway running the kamikaze campaign in August of 2017.
Anderson did not necessarily go gently into thy dying light when he lost the nomination to Sigurdson in October.
He felt there were irregularities in the nomination election and filed a complaint with Elections Alberta in December.
Anderson said he believes Elections Alberta is still looking into it but at present are dealing with the kamikaze campaign issue.
Nothing has resulted from that complaint as of April 8.
As for Anderson he said he is going to relax after April 16.
“It’s kind of fun sitting back and watching this whole thing play its way out,” Anderson said.
