The Airdrie-Cochrane riding has a new Alberta NDP candidate.
Cochranite, lawyer, and associate professor of law at the University of Calgary Shaun Fluker was voted in by party members May 30 over Steve Durrell, who ran for the NDP in the local riding in the last election.
“I’m thrilled to be joining Rachel’s [Notley] team,” said Fluker. “Through the process of the nomination contest, I got to speak with a lot of folks in Airdrie and Cochrane and got a really good sense and some confirmation from those discussions as to what issues matter in our communities.”
The “big three” issues in the riding, in Fluker’s opinion, are health care, education, and transportation.
“Those are just really big, big problems in communities like Cochrane and Airdrie, where you’ve just got a lot of people moving here and raising families here,” he said. “We need that infrastructure and those social supports so that these communities can continue to be considered to be some of the best places to live and raise a family.”
As a resident of Cochrane for nearly 20 years, Fluker can recall the days when the town’s population was half of what it is today.
He referenced the 2022 Statistics Canada report, which shows Cochrane as the 11th fastest growing municipality in the country and Airdrie as the 25th. The report, Fluker feels, is enough evidence for most people to understand the region’s inability to keep pace with growth.
“Those are consistent remarks from everybody you talk to in both communities,” said Fluker. “There’s real, underscored growing pains, as I think everybody here realizes.”
In the days since winning the nomination against Durrell, the new NDP candidate said he’s been busy building and organizing a campaign team to prepare for what is likely a May 2023 provincial election.
The contest with his fellow party supporter, he added, was a great “kickstart” to running a political campaign.
“Good competition often leads to positive outcomes, so that’s certainly how I felt about this one,” Fluker said. “Steve was a formidable opponent and is a veteran of politics, having run in the riding in the last election.
“I think a good competition between Steve and I made for a healthy democratic process, and it certainly encouraged me to get out there and talk to as many people as I could.”
Durrell said he congratulates Fluker on his win and looks forward to volunteering with him on his campaign, which focuses on similar issues that he was prepared to lobby for as the riding’s NDP candidate.
“I look forward to seeing him continue to fight for education, infrastructure, and the party as a whole,” said Durrell.
As for the current government overseeing the province, Fluker said the United Conservative Party’s search for a new leader in the lead-up to the election only serves to harm Albertans.
“The current government is really just looking within itself, frankly, in disarray, and the Alberta NDP is fully unified,” he said. “The UCP are overly fixated on their own internal disagreements right at the precise time when Alberta needs a government that is leading on the public policy issues that are facing this province.”
