Four-straight weeks of campaigning paid off for Glenn van Dijken, who claimed the Athabasca-Barrhead-Westlock constituency in the April 16 provincial election.
van Dijken won the riding with 68.8 per cent of the vote, compared to his nearest competitor Therese Taschuk, of the NDP, who garnered 19.2 per cent.
Wayne Rufiange of the Alberta Party came in third with 9.1 per cent followed by Alberta Independence candidate Buster Malcolm at 1.8 per cent and independent candidate Brad Giroux at 1.1 per cent.
“It’s 28 days of going hard, but in all reality, this campaign started May 6, 2015,” said van Dijken, referring to the date the NDP took power in the province.
“I think the vast majority of conservatives knew that we needed to get our house in order. We run on values we believe are going to build an Alberta that’s strong and free and those values are essentially family values, individual freedoms, individual equality and individual responsibility and on those values we can all build a community together.”
van Dijken credited UCP leader and now premier-elect Jason Kenney for fulfilling his plan to unite the province’s conservative right and replace the NDP government at the first available opportunity — a task the UCP completed with little trouble.
van Dijken told the story of how the party came to be unified through various leadership campaigns, boundary realignments and setting up constituency offices.
“Conservatives all across this province, led by (Jason Kenney) made a decision to move in a direction that would take back governance of this province and to help restore the province to its once great fame and to be strong and free once again,” said van Dijken during his speech to volunteers at Memorial Hall as the results came in.
With a nearly 77 per cent voter turnout in the riding, the blue conservative wave also made its way over all of rural Alberta and much of Calgary, leaving the City of Edmonton as the lone NDP stronghold in the province.
van Dijken said the win wouldn’t have been possible without his campaign team, volunteers and supporters around the region and especially his family and wife Barb.
“Over the last four years, my wife Barb has put up with a lot, a lot of sacrifice. It’s a busy life,” van Dijken said.
“It’s a lot of time on the road and it’s a lot of time away from family, but Barb and my family have been there supporting me all the way along and it’s truly is not just one person doing this — it’s an entire family that has to sacrifice to make sure we have good representation for rural Alberta.”
He also gave special kudos to the voters.
“Thank you to the voters, for sure. It’s the will of the people that’s important,”
NDP challenger Therese Taschuk, who finished second at 19 per cent of the vote, was at her headquarters in Athabasca on election night.
“It is what it is,” she said. “I want to congratulate my opponent on his victory tonight. While I am disappointed, I respect Albertans’ choice in this election,” she said.
“Our team ran a great campaign, and I want to thank all of my wonderful volunteers and supporters who believed in me and helped me to get here.”
Premier-elect Kenney said he expects to name his new government April 30. At that time 63 UCP MLAs, including van Dijken, will take their seats in the Legislature along with 24 from the NDP.
van Dijken said he expects the party will move quickly in its new role in government to repeal legislation brought in by the NDP and enact its own.
“I believe our United Conservative Party is prepared to move at a very rapid pace,” he said. “We’ve been preparing for this for the last year-and-a-half, as an elected caucus, but also as a party. There’s some stuff that’s going to take a while to fix, absolutely, but there are signals we can send to the market almost immediately that Alberta is going to be open for business once again.”