MOUNTAIN VIEW COUNTY – An animal biologist from Nordegg who last week was officially named the Alberta NDP’s candidate for the Rimbey-Rocky Mountain House-Sundre riding felt compelled to run for politics directly as a result of what he described as UCP chaos that is selling short the province’s future through corporate welfare.
“I’ve always followed politics; it’s really important. But it was never a goal of mine to be an MLA or anything,” Vance Buchwald said during a phone interview. “And then the coal issue came up a couple of years ago.”
Buchwald was among a group of people who formed the West Country Sustainability Coalition, which lobbied not only against proposed expansions to coal mines or new projects but also the provincial government’s abrupt approach in changing the 1976 Coal Policy without public fanfare.
“There was extensive consultation throughout the province,” said Buchwald about the policy ushered in by the Conservative Peter Lougheed government of the day, adding he was about 18 at the time and had attended the hearings because of an innate interest in the Eastern Slopes.
“The Lougheed government had gone through all this extensive consultation, and then the Kenney government – with one stroke of the pen because it was only policy – cancelled it,” he said.
“It’s been reinstated, but the issue is, they reinstated it after they had issued a bunch of new coal leases” that have caused concern in the region due to “some bizarre locations of coal leases that surround some public recreation areas,” he said.
“And it wasn’t just the coal; it was the chaos created within this province with the UCP on a number of issues,” he said, citing examples such as health care, education and corporate tax cuts that didn’t create jobs.
“Jobs were created during that time, but at a slower rate than what the population of Alberta grow by,” he said. “Largely, it was due to automation. It’s people with joysticks now driving the trucks (used at sites).”
He also challenges depictions of the Alberta NDP as a party that frivolously spends money like a drunken sailor.
“The NDP is always painted as big spenders. And the biggest spend being done right now and proposed, is all this money that they’re going to give to the oil patch for clean up,” he said, referring to the controversial R-Star program.
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“We talk about not having any money for health care, and then we turn around and give all this money away,” he said.
“That’s our royalty money – our tax money – and to me, it just reeks of corporate welfare,” he said, adding companies are required to clean up the sites.
“They have record profits right now, and I just don’t see why we’re giving them money for doing cleanup when they’re obligated,” he said. “I’d sooner see that money spent on schools, health care, save some for the future.”
Buchwald emphasized he is not opposed to oil companies and disclosed his own personal portfolio includes investments in the patch.
“But there’s a point where you just go, why are we doing this? It just seems to me that we’re giving away our future. Instead of spending dollars on citizens, we’re giving it away to the oil companies,” he said. “And I just have a hard time with that.”
Following the riding’s NDP constituency association’s Feb. 15 nomination meeting, Buchwald officially became the first candidate fielded from within the region.
“It was pretty smooth sailing since I was the only candidate,” he said. “People are pretty excited that I’m not a parachuted candidate.”
The riding also did not previously have an NDP constituency association, he added.
“That was one of the reasons they were parachuting candidates in,” he said.
Running for office might not have been part of a longstanding plan or life goal, but it’s nevertheless an endeavour Buchwald said he takes “very seriously.”
“I’m not a token candidate,” he said. “I realize I might lose, but I never play the game to lose.”
Born in Edmonton, Buchwald’s earlier life involved moving to Camrose and Stettler before eventually relocating to Red Deer where he graduated from high school.
Eventually earning a degree in animal biology from the University of Calgary in 1980, he spent more than two years working for an Edmonton-based environmental consultant and later went on to build a lengthy career as a fisheries management biologist that spanned three decades. In 2017, he moved to Nordegg, where back in the mid to late 1970s he had worked as a summer student for Fish and Wildlife.
A self-described social democrat who believes in a regulated form of capitalism that more equitably benefits the population, Buchwald is also a family man with two daughters and four grandsons.
