Former Battle River-Crowfoot MP speaks on Monday’s byelection

Tens of thousands of rural Alberta voters will be heading to the polls today.

The Battle River—Crowfoot byelection is taking place as the Conservative Party hopes to see its party leader, Pierre Poilievre, return to Parliament with a win.

Poilievre lost his Carleton riding in Ottawa in April’s federal election after previously winning in that region seven straight times.

Former member of Parliament, Damien Kurek, won the Battle River-Crowfoot riding in April, before deciding to step down to allow Poilievre a chance to run there.

Kurek joined the Evan Bray Show on Monday to discuss the byelection and how he thinks Poilievre will do.

Listen to the full interview with Damien Kurek:

Kurek said he believed stepping down for Poilievre was the right thing for him to do.

“As my wife Danielle and I evaluated things, there are a few opportunities in life where you have to not just talk the talk, but walk the walk,” he said. “We believe that Pierre Poilievre is the right guy to be Prime Minister and the right guy to fight for Canada.”

When Kurek announced he was stepping down as the MP of the Battle River-Crowfoot riding, to allow Poilievre to run there, he said the reaction was overall positive.

“It was more positive than Danielle and I thought it would be,” he said. “Not universally (though), there were quite a bit of people that had questions, they wanted to know what Pierre’s plan was to make sure that he was going to care about the people here.”

Read more:

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Kurek won his riding with relative ease, garnering 82.8 per cent of the vote in April’s federal election, but despite this, he said it’s hard to predict how people will vote.

“I won’t pretend to know what is on the mind of every elector in this region,” he said. “We are seeing incredible turnout, incredible support, people want Pierre Poilievre to keep fighting.”

Kurek said he has run in three general elections and been a volunteer in the area since he was 15.

“Politics has been a passion, Grassroots politics has been something that I believe in,” he said. “While Pierre Poilievre’s name wasn’t on the ballot in the last general election, I was the only candidate that showed up here… now all of a sudden you have the longest ballot fold and a whole host of others that now all of a sudden care about this region… yet when it came down to it in the last general election they probably didn’t know where Battle River—Crowfoot was.”

Kurek said he doesn’t believe the longest ballot committee following Poilievre to this Alberta riding—after facing them in April’s federal election in his Carleton riding—is a coincidence.

“When it comes to them making a claim that it doesn’t target conservatives, they’ve certainly done a pretty good job of targeting conservatives,” he said. “They didn’t target other federal party leaders, in fact they targeted the only federal party leader that was honest about his perspective on electoral reform.”

Kurek called the longest ballot a scam.

“This is an abusive process, from the folks that I’ve talked to on the ground, it’s been truly deceptive,” he said. “The shenanigans associated with it, they’ve shown themselves to be nothing more than a scam.”

The first results of the byelection will begin to come in around 8:30 p.m. Saskatchewan time.