With only a month and a half to go in the 11-week campaign, the Liberals are finally set to enter the race for the St. Albert-Edmonton riding
The riding association experienced some difficulties earlier this summer with finding a suitable prospect, but the party is now on track to run in the Oct. 19 federal election after calling a nomination meeting for this weekend.
There are two contestants vying for the chance to put their name on the ballot.
Beatrice Ghettuba is an Edmonton-based accountant and board chair for the Council For The Advancement Of The African Canadians In Alberta.
Her involvement in the community through the Africa Centre in Edmonton and her role as a managing partner at K2Z Accounting Associates has shown her that small businesses and families are suffering under the current government.
“These are some of the things that I care passionately about and that I need to bring to the forefront,” she said.
Ghettuba said that the government needs politicians who understand systems and processes, as opposed to lawyers to bail them out of situations like the Mike Duffy trial.
She also said that an understanding of numbers is also needed.
“As an accountant and working with small businesses, I see and I understand that the lowering of oil prices is affecting people very critically,” Ghettuba said.
"I can see through some of the policies being put forward by other parties, which just don't make sense.
“I get kind of offended that Canadians are being lied to because that’s what they want to hear.”
Don Padget is an Edmonton-born lawyer, who currently works for the provincial government as a member of the Constitutional Law Team for the Alberta Justice and Solicitor General.
As a past parliamentary intern and counsel for aboriginal law in the federal Department of Justice, he brings with him experience at both the bureaucratic and political level.
Padget also volunteers at the Edmonton Community Legal Clinic, providing free legal advice to those who cannot afford it. He said that the experience is similar to what he imagines his role as MP would be – listening to problems and offering real solutions.
Padget said his passion for good government and desire for real change, especially when it comes to jobs and the economy, encouraged him to run in the upcoming election.
“My dad was a bricklayer in Edmonton in the ’80s and there was a similar kind of condition that we saw with a lower oil price and recession, so he had to go further away for less work and less pay,” said Padget, who would often not see his father for weeks. “That was a time when he and many other people in Alberta would have appreciated some stimulus from government.”
He said that his single-parent family could have benefitted from the infrastructure spending and middle-class tax cuts being proposed by the current Liberal party.
Padget ran for nomination in Edmonton Centre last August, but was defeated by entrepreneur and philanthropist Randy Boissonnault.
The nomination meeting will be held tomorrow at the Carlisle Community League in Edmonton starting at 3 p.m.
Nomination contestants will begin speaking at 3:30 p.m. Voting will remain open until 7 p.m.
Only those who had registered as a member of the Liberal Party of Canada as of Sept. 2. will be eligible to vote during Sunday’s meeting.
