Livingstone-Macleod’s newly elected representative is setting his sights on getting Albertans back to work as the province goes back to its roots with a conservative government.
After a landslide win in the polls on April 16, Roger Reid will replace Pat Stier, who opted not to run, as MLA for the riding.
“It feels absolutely fantastic. It’s been a long campaign for me and it’s exciting,” said Reid. “I’m looking forward to serving Livingstone-Macleod and representing these amazing people up in Edmonton, and I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and get to work on getting Albertans back to work.”
He had close to 70 per cent of the vote as of 10 p.m. on April 16.
Reid plans to tackle to issues important to Albertans, and the Livingstone-Macleod constituents specifically through focusing on the economy. A primary feature of the UCP platform was getting Alberta open for business through attracting business investment.
“I’ve heard that every day for the last 11 months while I’ve been campaigning, that we’ve got to stop chasing business and talent out of province, we’ve got to start drawing it back so we can get the economy on track,” he said. “So everything we can do to make us attractive to business again we will be doing.”
Local concerns Reid plans to raise at the provincial level include modernization of schools in the riding and advocating for rural needs.
“We want to make sure that everybody pays attention to that and the rural needs we’ve got out here. We’ve got some mining down in the [Crowsnest] Pass, we want to check in and see where they’re at in terms of regulatory approvals and things like that.”
For the next few weeks, Reid and other newly-elected MLAs will be focused on getting comfortable in their new positions before hitting the ground running.
“We’ve been invited up for a couple of days of orientation as new MLAs, so that’s kind of going to be the first thing I’m going to wrap my head around. Then I’m assuming that we’ll be sitting in the legislature within a couple weeks, because we’ve got some work to do, we’re not waiting around for a Fall sitting, we’ll go to work right away,” he said.
Competition was scarce on election night, as Reid racked up the majority votes early on and kept building the lead throughout the night. NDP candidate Cam Gardner held roughly 20 per cent of the vote, while Tim Meech of the Alberta Party receiving roughly 5 per cent.
Other candidates included Vern Sparkes, Alberta Independence Party; Dylin Hauser, Alberta Liberal Party; and Wendy Pergentile, Green Party of Alberta.
When asked of the campaign season, Reid had only positive things to say of the other candidates.
“The campaign has been great, great reception. I have respect for the other candidates, we tried to make sure we ran a civil campaign down here, I think that’s important for us,” he said. “I’m grateful for the other guys that put their names in and put in all the time and effort, and I’m just glad that’s the example we were able to set.”
Above and beyond, the talk of the night was the UCP victory as the Alberta map largely lit up blue, outside of small pockets in Calgary and the majority of Edmonton.
“It’s good news for Alberta,” said Reid. “It’s good news that Alberta is open for business again, that people of Alberta have elected a government that will listen to them, stand up for them, and will work to continue to make this the best province in the confederation.”
