Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has visited the Alberta riding he plans to contend for in a future byelection to regain access to the House of Commons.
Poilievre posted photos on social media on May 5 of him and his wife Anaida Poilievre meeting with Tory MP Damien Kurek at his home and family farm.
“People in these communities feed and power our country,” said Poilievre in the post. “It will be an honour to work for their support to return to Parliament, hold the government to account and champion common sense values for Canada.”
Kurek, who was re-elected last week in the Alberta riding of Battle River-Crowfoot, announced on May 2 he would step down to allow Poilievre to win a House seat.
Poilievre lost his long-held Ottawa-area riding of Carleton to Liberal Bruce Fanjoy in the general election on April 28. Meanwhile, Kurek won a third term with 81.8 percent of the vote. He would have become eligible to receive his MP pension in October after six years of service.
Kurek is one of many Tory MPs who want Poilievre to remain as leader after the Tories gained ground in the election but failed to unseat the Liberals. The Conservative caucus is expected to meet this week to discuss the path forward.
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“We are more than confident that Pierre will be a strong voice for the West and will work hard for the people of Battle River-Crowfoot as their next Member of Parliament,” Kurek said on social media. Kurek said last week he intends to run again in his riding in the next election.
Before the prorogation of Parliament on Jan. 6, Kurek was a member of the House of Commons Canadian Heritage and Canada-China relations committees. He also served as his party’s critic for Canadian Heritage before the launch of the election in March.
The riding of Battle River-Crowfoot is mostly rural and spans a large territory stretching between Calgary and Edmonton east of the highway linking the two major cities, and extending to the boundary with Saskatchewan.
The riding under its current boundaries came into effect for the 2015 election. The Tories have won the riding with over 70 percent of the votes in each election since.
While Kurek said he would be stepping down, the process to replace him has yet to be set in motion. After the resignation is official, Prime Minister Mark Carney will announce the date the byelection will be held in the riding.
He said he already told Poilievre he would not delay the holding of a byelection to give him the opportunity to regain a seat. “I will ensure that it happens as soon as possible. No games, nothing,” Carney said on May 2.
Meanwhile, the Longest Ballot Committee has already started planning to flood the Battle River-Crowfoot byelection with candidates, according to an email sent to supporters, after targeting Poilievre’s previously held Carleton riding.
Poilievre had faced 90 other candidates during the April 28 election, with the Carleton riding being targeted by the Longest Ballot movement. The group is protesting the first-past-the-post voting system in which the winner takes all, leading to other voices not having representation in the House of Commons.
The movement started in the 2021 election and had also fielded 91 candidates during the Lasalle-Émard-Verdun byelection in September.
Changes to electoral law would be needed to prevent this type of activism, something Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault has previously suggested should be done. The long list of candidates makes ballots unwieldy, reaching a metre in length, and the small font sizes raises accessibility concerns, Perrault has said. Long ballots have also delayed vote counting.
