It’s been an honour
By Leela Sharon Aheer Chestermere-Strathmore MLA
It has been an honour to serve you in this house as a minister, a private member, and an opposition member.
I’d like to share some of the many accomplishments in my riding of Chestermere-Strathmore and Rocky View and thank the partners, colleagues, and friends who have worked so hard to see these projects through.
In March, the Wheatland County Food Bank was awarded over $300,000 and in May, the Carseland Fire Hall celebrated their grand opening.
Changes were made to improve local EMS services: adding paramedic staff and expanding to 24-hour service in Chestermere, changing the Core Flex shifts in Wheatland County to avoid burnout.
Other projects include
• multiple playground grants plus stabilization grants during COVID-19 for non profits and community organizations.
• We modernized Indus School – originally built in 1952.
• Carseland expanded their school and developed Speargrass park.
• Chestermere recreation centre fixed their roof
• The Springbank recreation centre upgraded their facility
• The Bearspaw Lions Club enhanced their facility
• Langdon has a new emergency service building, school, and Baseball Diamonds
• The re-surfacing of 1A Highway between Chestermere and Calgary
• We attracted new businesses – creating thousands of jobs with state-of-the-art facilities such as: Phyto Organics in Strathmore, Canadian Gypsym and De Havilland in Wheatland County
• We expanded broadband
The Canadian Infrastructure Bank made a historical $815 million joint investment with us to increase irrigation lands in Southern Alberta by more than 200 thousand acres.
And this is small by comparison to the thousands of hours spent by folks building our communities – a direct result of the tenacious advocacy and passion in the ridings I represented.
It has truly been the greatest honor of my life to represent you and work on behalf of the people of Alberta.
I will miss it all so much. A huge thank you to the constituency staff who are on the front lines.
Thank you to all the ministers, ministries and to my colleagues for the past 8 years.
Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister of New Zealand said that “I really rebel against this idea that politics has to be a place full of ego and where you’re constantly focused on scoring hits against each one another.
“Yes, we need a robust democracy, but you can be strong, and you can be kind.”
This list of accomplishments shows what we can do when we work together through strength and kindness.
Next week we are very excited to write about the presentation of the late Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee Medal (Alberta) recipients and their accomplishments.
As always, we love to hear from you.
(Leela Sharon Aheer is the MLA Elect for Chestermere-Strathmore)