The Conservative candidate for the Yellowhead riding has his hands full with an impending election and a large district to get acquainted with.
William Stevenson, a chartered professional accountant in Carstairs, acknowledged the new riding boundaries now encompassed a variety of communities with diverse needs, ranging from tourism destinations nestled in the Rocky Mountains to resource-based economies in the prairies.
“To me, this riding is not built to make it easy,” Stevenson said. “The city ones, [an MP] can be across their entire one in 10 minutes. This is possibly seven hours from north to south, so it's gonna be very difficult on that end to get to everybody there.”
Stretching from Canmore to north of Grande Cache and the Alberta-B.C. border to Drayton Valley, Yellowhead is one of the largest federal ridings in the province.
The riding also includes Banff, Jasper, Crossfield, Edson, Hinton, Rocky Mountain House, Sundre, Carstairs, Caroline, the MD of Bighorn, Clearwater County and portions of the MD of Greenview, Rocky View County and Yellowhead County.
“I would say it's probably one of the most diverse ridings in the province, if not the country,” Stevenson said.
Should Stevenson win, he would have to rely on technology such as video conferencing to properly represent his constituents.
Although Stevenson has been involved in provincial and federal party politics for 30 years, this is the first time that he has stepped out from behind the scenes and into the spotlight.
With his children having grown up and his career becoming a grind – working 100 days straight last year – he decided to seek the nomination, which was possible due to the significant boundary changes to the riding.
Having served as a financial agent for multiple MPs, Stevenson had a good handle on how to get through the nomination process.
“I was sitting on the other side of the chair, and I knew the process, so I was prepared to know what I had to do,” he said.
Stevenson challenged Conservative incumbent Gerald Soroka for the nomination last year and was officially declared the winner on June 22.
Since then, he has continued to work as an accountant while travelling around the riding and getting acquainted with its numerous communities. The Alberta Conservative Caucus also met in Jasper last month, where he got to meet some of Jasper’s key players including Mayor Richard Ireland.
One of the biggest issues for Banff and Jasper, Stevenson believed, was the relationship with Parks Canada and having decisions made in Ottawa.
When it came to the Jasper wildfire response, he said there was room for improvement regarding communication between bureaucracies.
While he thought Parks Canada personnel on the ground had done everything they could to prevent the fire, policies from Ottawa would have to be re-examined to see if there was any room for improvement.
Throughout the riding, he has heard from constituents about affordability, the carbon tax and housing. The energy and forestry industries are also concerned about the impending trade war with the United States.
“That could potentially hurt our industry here,” Stevenson said.
If elected, Stevenson hopes to get on a committee dealing with the Canadian Revenue Agency and work on tax reform.
“Because I've dealt with that for the last 25 years, that will be kind of my wheelhouse that I can contribute a lot to,” he said.
He explained, as an example, how elderly business clients who had been filing GST returns on paper for the last 30 years now have to pay a $100 fee every time they do a paper GST return.
“There's lots of little things like that that we could do right away that would ease the pain of the administration of doing taxes,” he said.
With such a diverse riding, Stevenson anticipated a “laundry list” of issues that he would need to deal with.
“There's not going to be one thing, but trying to make your life simpler, less red tape and less tax, that'll be my goal,” he said.
Canmore resident Avni Soma has been declared the NDP candidate for Yellowhead. A Liberal candidate has not been nominated yet, but Kyle Pynch, chair of the Yellowhead Federal Liberal Association, said in an email that the process should be completed in the next few weeks.
