Conservative leadership hopeful comes to Strathmore

Times Reporter

 

Progressive Conservative leadership candidate Gary Mar was in Strathmore on July 14, to talk to his potential constituents about what he plans to do for Alberta. The PC party is currently looking for a new leader after Premier Ed Stelmach announced in January he had decided not to run for re-election.

“It’s a big decision, but to me it’s an important one because Alberta has been my family’s home for over 100 years, and I want it to be our family’s home for the next 100 years,” said Mar.

“The opportunities for Alberta are tremendous and having had a broad set of experiences in cabinet, in healthcare, in education, in environment among others and combining that with the last three and a half years when I was in Washington, DC, being Alberta’s representative makes me have a great appreciation for Alberta, and a vision for the future. 

“I’m very optimistic about the opportunities that are available to Alberta, and I have a strong understanding about how we can achieve those opportunities.”

Mar also has the support of local MLA Arno Doerkson with his leadership campaign. 

“I’ve considered the options and we have some strong options with regard to the leader of the party and the next premier of the province,” said Doerkson.

“Gary’s a strong communicator, I think he understands the issues that are important to all Albertans, the importance of health care and education. Gary has had a lot of experience in international trade, that’s certainly important to us in the agricultural industry and the energy industry in the province, and I guess I think he’ll make a strong contribution to the future of our province and I’m pleased to support him in his leadership bid.”

Mar has been involved in politics for the past 18 years. From 1993 to 2007 he was an MLA in Calgary, and he served as Minister of Community Development, Minister of Education, Minister of Environment, Minister of Health, Minister of International and Intergovernmental Relations.  

“To me we have challenges in areas like healthcare and education, but they look solvable to me. Because of my experience in those areas those challenges look solvable,” said Mar. 

A primary care network is something Mar said that he created when he was Health Minister in 2003. A primary care network is a group of health professionals that work as a team with a doctor. He said if you go to your doctor’s office and you have a sprained foot, you might not need to see a doctor, you might need to see a physical therapist. 

“If you are a diabetic you might see a registered dietician instead of a doctor, and so by creating these teams you improve your access to seeing a doctor when you need a doctor, because the doctor is spending his or her time diagnosing people instead of doing things other people can do,” said Mar.

“What that also does is it reduces the number of unnecessary visits to emergency rooms because you would see a primary health care team instead of going to emergency, and that’s the core to how we improve the healthcare system.”

Mar said the wait times for surgeries is due to an inefficient system. He said the doctor may say you need to see and orthopedic surgeon and then they will call all of the surgeons they know to see who would be able to fit the patient in. Instead, Mar said, the doctor should have a single number they could call, a centralized reservation system so that the doctor calls the one number, and then the next available surgeon will take the patient. 

“It was done was before during my time as Minister of Health but it’s essentially not had the kind of financial support that it should have, and so it’s not being done in the same way anymore,” said Mar.

“Those are all ideas that we can work on but, it’s quite important that we focus on the future, there are others who are focused on the past, but to me I’m focused on the future and the future opportunities for Albertans.”

Mar wants to make Alberta work, which is the focus of his campaign. He said our government has to do more listening and less telling, they have to help Albertans not hinder them, they have to be focused on the future and not on the past.

The other PC leadership hopefuls are Doug Griffiths, Doug Horner, Alison Redford, Rick Orman and Ted Morton. The first ballot election will be taking place September 17, and if no candidate has over 50 per cent of the vote the second ballot with the top three candidates will take place Oct. 1. 

In order to vote, people must be a member of the Progressive Conservative party. More information can be found at www.albertapc.ab.ca