Tell us about yourself:

"I'm a small business owner in Val Marie. I'm actually a professional map publisher, so I have a fairly unusual profession.

I've always been active with the party, but I was motivated to run this time because I'm actually a bi-sexual man. I live in Val Marie with my husband. So I've been fairly motivated to get out and knock on doors by our MP's stance on gay conversion therapy.

I volunteered for various campaigns all throughout university, but that only goes back a few years. A great deal of our lifetime members here in the southwest have been active in the party since Tommy Douglas came and gave a speech on their farm. But I can't brag about the same level of history."

 

How are you enjoying the campaign experience?

"Yeah. I think the last time we spoke I bragged a little bit about how what a great volunteer base we have in this constituency and how many active members we have, and we've been ahead of the game the whole time.

I was the first NDP candidate in the entire province to finish gathering signatures for my nomination papers.  I was the first NDP candidate in the entire province to officially get onto the ballot and that's because of the wonderful group of people we have out here who are working to support us.  We actually beat Saskatoon and Regina on both of those measures, so we have had a great start.

Canvassing has also been fun because I'm a fairly outgoing person. The last year was hard for everyone. I didn't appreciate not really being able to see anyone else in my town. So I've been loving the opportunity to actually get out there, knock on doors and talk to real people face to face about the stuff they care about."

 

How does your previous experience affect the campaign?

I do have some political involvement actually, as before the election I worked with an election forecasting group. Sometimes it can be a bad thing for a candidate to know too much about the relative odds of succeeding.

But it's been a great help because of my previous experience working with election data I've been able to help out my campaign manager a lot just the boring, quotidian stuff like finding 2019 results, matching them to polling boundaries.

I happen to have already done a lot of that work professionally. So not a lot of candidates are able to help out with the data side of their campaign, so it's been a fairly unique situation and I've really enjoyed doing the work.

 

What has the response been so far to your campaign?

I find that Swift Current is an exceedingly polite city. When I was volunteering with the Alberta provincial election in 2019, that was a rough campaign. That was a great way to meet some really upset people.

But Swift Current is pretty much just the nicest town that I've ever door-knocked in. People are polite. I've had good discussions with conservative supporters because we all care about the same issues. Everyone cares about the drought. Everyone cares about the future of the region.

So I'm really happy with the work we've been doing so far to get the party out there and show that we're present here in the southwest. We're from here too. We care about the same issues as everyone and we think that we have the most attractive set of solutions for them."