Kevin Smook seeking Alberta Party nomination for Camrose riding

Kevin Smook, a local businessman based out of Tofield and a Beaver County councillor, is seeking Alberta Party nomination for the Camrose riding in the next provincial election.

“This is more about me encouraging people to vote for me to represent them with the Alberta Party,” said Smook. “It’s not so much about the party yet, because I don’t represent them.”

Smook elaborated on his decision and explained, “I share many values that the Alberta Party would have and that’s why I am attracted to them. I see them as a party open to everybody, from all walks of life, no matter what . . . they’re very inclusive.”

After attending several of their events while serving as the first vice-president of Alberta Party in the ‘transitional riding association’, Smook came to the decision.

“When I walk into their events, I see a cross-section of people, from all corners of the province and all aspects of life, so that I find very encouraging,” Smook added. “I find in my discussions with them very positive, solution-based politics. Meaning if something is considered a bad policy, well, rather than slamming them, come up with a better solution.”

Believing in the school of thought where you don’t need to blow out someone else’s candle to let your own light shine, Smook feels that one should stand on their own merit and come up with a legitimate option for people, and that’s what he thinks the Alberta Party is, a legitimate option for people.

“It’s for people who are looking for a political home that’s neither left nor right, but somewhere in the middle,” Smook stated.

After seeing what’s occurred in provincial politics and the direction that the Official Opposition has chosen to go, Smook doesn’t want to follow them there, and he also doesn’t want to follow the government of the day.

“I think there needs to be a legitimate option for people who believe in strong social values, but also good fiscal responsibility and I see that more along the lines of where the Alberta Party is more so than others,” Smook emphasized. “There’s been a change in politics provincially over the last year and a half, and it encourages me to find a party that I can identify with.”

Speaking about some of the issues that he would like to address in the riding if he were to be nominated, Smook said, “The riding has the City of Camrose with 19,400 people approximately, but the outlying areas are largely rural, and Camrose is a strong farming and agricultural community. I’d like to see more value-added agriculture.”

According to Smook, it’s great that we can grow our products and ship them off to markets, and he’d like to see that continue but he’d also like to see more productivity here so that you’d take your product and create your by-products here.

“There’s lots of examples where you’d work examples where you’d work with the product but also keep it here so that you can create some sort of end use for it, more local, and it would stay here more,” Smook said. “I think that would create employment in the area. Let’s try and encourage local development of our products in agriculture here too, just like we’re trying to do in the oil and gas industry, so that we can have people working on those things here, and creating employment here.”

Smook believes that there is a “need for a real strong and positive voice for rural Alberta.”

“It concerns me that rural Albertans are losing three seats to the cities, so it’s decaying the voice of rural Alberta,” Smook said. “The Electoral Boundaries Commission (ECB) provided a recommendation; they do not run the province. What could have been done perhaps if there was a concern that cities are growing and you’d need to have more MLAs representing that population, then add a few MLAs into the cities, but why would you take them away from rural Alberta?”

The area that an MLA covers out in rural Alberta is massive compared to in a city, and even though Smook is open to doing all the work, he thinks that they aren’t on an even playing field.

“I believe in regional collaboration where we would work together; I know in my role with the county that the counties and the towns and villages do our best to strive to work together, I think that’s something that we all need to be doing collectively,” Smook remarked.

“When you work together and get people to the table, it encourages more dialogue and often you come up with results that are hopefully satisfying to everybody.”