Yellowhead MP Gerald Soroka is expressing his gratitude to constituents as his tenure comes to an end.
Soroka lost the Conservative nomination for the riding last year to William Stevenson, a chartered professional accountant in Carstairs, and is not seeking re-election.
“While this means my time as your Member of Parliament will soon come to an end, I remain deeply grateful for the incredible privilege of serving you over the past five-plus years,” Soroka said in a statement.
Soroka had served as a Yellowhead County councillor and later its mayor before entering federal politics. He ran in the 2019 federal election and was re-elected in 2021.
“Even when I was running for mayor all the time, people used to tell me, ‘What do you promise?’ And I think the No. 1 thing I always promised was to represent the people to the best of my abilities,” Soroka said in an interview. “And even as MP, because we’re in opposition, that was my goal, [which] was always to represent the people as best as I possibly could and try to assist in ways that they needed.”
Since taking office in 2019, Soroka has advocated for farmers, protecting the energy sector, pushing for a low-tax, high-growth economy and standing up for rural communities.
“That’s all you really can do when you’re in opposition because you can make recommendations to the government, you can suggest, accuse, whatever you want to say, but really, when they’re in government, they are the ones that have final decisions,” he said.
Soroka has not decided what he would like to do once he leaves office, saying he would focus on serving as MP until the next federal election, which could be called earlier than the Oct. 20, 2025, scheduled date.
Yellowhead will have new boundaries that stretch from Canmore to north of Grande Cache and the Alberta-B.C. border to Drayton Valley. The riding will also include Banff, Jasper, Crossfield, Edson, Hinton, Rocky Mountain House, Sundre, Carstairs, Caroline and other areas.
Soroka noted it would be challenging for the next MP to travel around such a massive riding that encompassed various kinds of communities ranging from tourism destinations to resource-based economies.
“How do you represent people equally when you’ve got such different demographics within this new riding?” he asked.
As for what issues Yellowhead’s next member of Parliament will be facing, Soroka noted the economy was always No. 1, encompassing other issues such as tariffs and temporary foreign workers. Because much of the riding’s economy was resource-based, tariffs represented a significant threat.
He added housing had always been a problem across the riding and would be a serious challenge, in particular, for Jasper post-wildfire.
Soroka reiterated how honoured he was to have served the people of Yellowhead.
“I was very honoured to be doing that for five and a half years already, and it’s sort of sad to see this go, but I wish the best for everyone in the future,” he said.
