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Slow start to federal election race

Now there are three.

Now there are three.

As you will read on page 2A John Schrader, a Westlock County rancher has joined the fray to win the Peace River-Westlock riding joining incumbent Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) MP Arnold Viersen and Peter Nygaard of the Green Party of Canada.

We for one couldn’t be more excited and hope they will soon be joined by candidates from the Liberals, NDP and those from parties outside the norm.

In our view, the more candidates, the better, as long as they take the process seriously.

There are relatively few opportunities for people to get involved in the political process, especially at the federal level. So when they do have a chance, we applaud them for their efforts.

And to tell you the truth for a while we were getting a little worried that we wouldn’t have an election in our riding.

In the runup to the last federal election, we ran stories about not only the candidates running for Member of Parliament but party nominations.

The fact that there hasn’t been more activity at the party levels is a little bit surprising. Yes, it is summer, a time when there is less political activity, as all level of governments scale down their activities, but considering the federal Liberals have taken considerable political damage over their handling of the SNC-Lavalin file you would think there would be more candidates declared considering we are less than two months from the writ being dropped. According to Canada’s Election Act, the federal election must take place no later than Oct. 21.

However, not all political parties are ready.

The People’s Party of Canada (PPC) is the most prepared for the election, at least in Alberta, if you go by the number of candidates that they have on the slate. The PPC’s have a candidate declared in all 34 of the province’s ridings. Next comes the Conservative Party of Canada with 33 candidates, followed by the Green Party with 20, the Liberal with 10 and the NDP with five.

It shouldn’t be surprising that the PPC and CPC have more declared candidates in the province given that Alberta is traditionally a bastion conservative or right-wing party stronghold, but that being said, it is still disappointing that the other parties don’t have more candidates already announced. After all, after they win their party’s nomination, it will take time for the candidates to set up their campaign office and so on.

Be that as it may, we urge our readers, when all the parties have declared their candidates to keep an open mind and not to blindly vote for a candidate because that is the party you always support.

Listen to their viewpoints, check out all the parties’ platforms, read their literature, take into account their background and then make an informed decision.

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