PC candidate hopeful announced

Shannon LeClair
Times Reporter

 

Reeve of Newell County Molly Douglass officially put her name up for nomination as the Progressive Conservative (PC) MLA candidate for the Strathmore-Brooks constituency on Jan. 29. While an election is still yet to be called, rumours are circulating that a provincial election is looming on the horizon.
Douglass is currently in her 11th year as reeve. A Newell County councillor had decided not to run, and had approached her to see if she was interested in the seat. She ran, won the position, and at her first meeting as a councillor she was selected as the reeve.
“I got frustrated about the condition of some of our rural provincial highways and became involved with a group of people that were lobbying to improve some of our local highways that belonged to the province, provincial responsibilities and so that’s how I got involved,” said Douglass about why she got involved in politics to begin with.
“I’m certainly not tired of municipal politics but I have received lots of encouragement to run from some of my council mates and other residents and so decided that it was time. I’m proud of what we have accomplished within the County of Newell in last 10 years through working together with our other municipalities.”
She strongly feels that good communication and working together is always better, and said that in order to come up with the solutions all of the questions need to be answered.
“I just feel that we live in the best place you can live in Canada, and probably the whole world and there are solutions. We just need to sit down and work on them, find them, think outside the box,” said Douglass.
Municipal and provincial politicians often work together on a lot of services to the residents, and Douglass said she is interested in being involved in some provincial decisions.
“I think it would be interesting to look at provincial responsibilities and roles, and our municipal roles and responsibilities and see where things can be improved and that does not mean downloading more responsibility to municipal government unless there’s funds and the resources to follow that,” said Douglass.
“I think we need to be fiscally smarter so we need to take a look at what our needs truly are and then we need to look at the services the people want, the taxpayers want and ones that they will pay for. I just think we need to work on a plan, we need to have some solutions so that we don’t have the up and down every few years over the oil and gas royalties.”