United Conservative Party leadership candidate and Grande Prairie-Wapiti MLA Travis Toews made a stop off in Lethbridge Friday, with the overall message of his speaking tour geared towards what he calls reuniting the conservative movement.
Toews, who served as Finance Minister and President of The Treasury Board since 2019, says the last couple of years have shown the need for someone who is not only willing to act, but to listen to concerns from Albertans across the province.
“I’m hearing many of them have not felt heard in the last two years… and it’s been a hard two years,” he says.
“There has been so much loss in so many areas, experienced in so many ways by Albertans, and some of them just feel they haven’t had a voice.”
“I believe it’s essential for the conservative movement, [that we] unite around the values we agree on, unite on the values that pulled us together in 2019, I believe that’s critical, but job number one is listening,” he adds.
Toews says another focus of his, if he were to become leader, would be to try and tackle what he calls the unsustainable trajectory healthcare across Alberta. However, Toews remained non-specific about what those changes would look like, or how they would help fix what he calls the deficiencies in the system.
“To do all we can to ensure we can enhance capacity in some of those key areas that have been shown to be wholly insufficient in the pandemic,” he says.
“Long-term, we need to look at healthcare reform, how we are delivering healthcare in this province, to ensure we are delivering it in a patient-centric way.”
UCP members will vote on the next party leader on October 6th, 2022. The leadership race began after Premier Jason Kenney announced his intention to resign following a leadership review in May.
