Meet the Federal Candidates: Andy Kowalski, Liberal Party

Liberal Party candidate and local businessman Andy Kowalski, 52, calls Ryley his home, but he wasn’t born in this country. In 1971, he left the communist dictatorship in Poland, along with his mother and brother, and came to Edmonton under the sponsorship of his grandfather.

Times were tough for the family, with Kowalski remembering the six years spent in the Boyle Street neighbourhood trying to eke out an existence. “We were so poor,” he said, “but we worked ourselves out of poverty.”

His mother worked in a hotel for 35 cents an hour, and washed clothes until she met the owner of Ryley Sausage. She married him and moved out to Ryley in the early 1980s.

Andy went to NAIT and did an apprenticeship. He eventually bought Ryley Sausage with a partner but has been running the business alone since the late 1990s.

In 1993, he joined the federal Liberal Party, and has twice run as a candidate for Ryley Council, although he was unsuccessful.

He was President of the federal Liberal Riding Association for Lakeland in the 1990s.

As the candidate for Battle River-Crowfoot, he says: “There must be a change in Canada. The Harper government is getting stale. This is the second recession in a row. We need a shakeup.

“We need somebody who is young with compassion,” he said of Liberal leader Justin Trudeau.

“And we need to return Canada to its recognized place in the world as a compassionate country (and) again taken seriously in political circles around the world.”

The Canadian federal election will be held on October 19, 2015.