While the ink is barely dry on Damien Kurek’s resignation, candidates are throwing their hats into the ring to be MP for Battle River-Crowfoot.
Last week, Kurek officially announced his resignation, making way for CPC leader Pierre Polievre to run for a seat in parliament.
Bonnie Critchley is also very interested in the seat. While the nomination period hasn’t opened, she has made her intentions well-known and is touring the riding.
“I have been working on this for just about a month,” she told the Mail as she stopped through Drumholler last Friday, June 20. “The instant that Mr. Kurek made his announcement he was stepping down, I looked at my husband and said, ‘That’s just not right. Why are we spending another $2 million to do this again?’ Everyone is tired of the rhetoric, tired of the anger, tired of the vitriol… they don’t want to do this again.”
The Beaver County resident is a fifth-generation service member who served for 22 years and was the second woman in a Combat Arms Unit.
She is running as an independent, “with a focus on climate responsibility, fair access to healthcare, affordable housing and inclusive progress for all Canadians.”
“I spent time in Afghanistan, and I saw how the Afghans were so excited to vote, how the women were so excited to vote, and the young people for the first time ever. So now I have a Canadian trying to remove these rights? He (Polievre) is just assuming we are going to vote him in?”
She adds that it is important to represent the constituency.
“The reason Mr. Polievre lost is not because of the redistribution of boundaries, it’s not because of the Longest Ballot Committee, it is because he igniored his constituency, lifelong Conservatives are messaging me and saying that ‘he didn’t show up, I had to vote for the other guy,’” she said.
She described herself as a non-partisan centrist.
“My platform is deliberately loose because my goal is to maintain a voice for the riding,” she said.
Part of that includes getting rid of some of the Trudeau-era firearms regulations.
“I have stood in my field with a horse foal out, watching the coyotes on the other side of the fence,” she said. “I totally understand why folks in Toronto and Montreal think these regulations are a good idea, because they do deal with gun violence, except the gun violence they're dealing with is already illegal firearms.”
She sees being an independent as an advantage.
"With the current minority government, he (Carney) is short three votes, which means he needs to deal with me, because I don't have to tow a party line, I can do what the constituency tells me to,” she said.
