Ken Finlayson will be running as an independent in the upcoming Battlefords-Lloydminster by-election.
While Finlayson says pipelines are important, he’s against the Carbon Tax and against the proposed tax on small businesses, however he says that’s not what sets him apart from the other candidates. He says there’s a few issues specific to our region that he would be focusing on.
“What is peculiar to our constituency, I find when I’m out there talking to people, is the issue of crime. People don’t feel safe and I don’t think we can ignore it.”
He goes on to say, “crime seems to be a twin sister of poverty. We’ve seen a huge rise in crime since the oil prices collapsed. When we look at our penal system, we see somewhere in the order of 85% of our inmates are of Indigenous ancestry. It’s not because they’re Indigenous, it’s because of where they come from; the social, economic disparity.”
Finlayson adds, “what we have to face up to is the enormous effect of the loss of human potential. We’re talking about people’s lives, not pot holes. We’re talking about peoples lives, not fixing a tax issue. We can fix all of those things, this is a far more serious issue.”
Finlayson says that people should vote to him because he’s an independent, making his sole responsibility the voters.
“I’m not saddled by sticking to party lines, I’m not part of any party hierarchy and I’m only accountable to the constituents.”
While there has been some controversy surrounding Finlayson’s bid for the Conservative Party nomination, he says he is not willing to speculate on what happened.
There are four other candidates in the upcoming election including Rosemarie Falk for the Conservative Party, Matt Felder for the NDP, Larry  Ingram for the Liberal Party and Yvonne Potter-Pihach for the Green Party. Voters head to the polls on December 11.