Just when you thought you had heard the last of Derek Fildebrandt, he announced last week he would be running for the leadership of the Freedom Conservative Party.
The current Brooks Strathmore MLA, who has had his name in the news for a number of missteps that ultimately led to him being not welcomed back into the United Conservative Party, has taken the reins of a new political party.
“Albertans overwhelmingly want the NDP defeated in 2019, but that has resulted in many of the old backroom insiders from the old Tory party seizing almost total control of the UCP,” he said.
“Because there is a strong belief there that people will have absolutely no other choice, they can take rural and conservative Albertans for granted. As a result, they have been rigging and meddling unnecessarily in nominations across Alberta to make sure that party inside favourites win over what are often the candidates supported by the actual local conservative members.”
He says that in some cases, as the party aims to fetch support from a broader audience it is neglecting its roots.
“I always believed a big tent conservative party could be necessary, but it shouldn’t require that individual MLAs are not allowed to speak up and vote freely on issues,” he said. “I have tremendous respect for Rick (Strankman), he is fantastic MLA but every single Tory MLA has been forced to be quiet on many issues and vote against their own beliefs.
“Tory MLAs were ordered on 12 separate occasions to run out of the house to avoid debating or voting on Bill 9, which attacked free speech rights for pro-life Albertans. They were forced on four separate occasions to vote for an NDP bill to establish race and gender quotas. They were forced to sit silently as the party supported government ownership of the Trans Mountain pipeline with Trudeau and Notley. They have not been able to represent their constituents openly and freely.”
While he has issues with his former party, he says the goal is to make sure the NDP does not achieve power. To avoid vote splitting the Freedom Conservative Party has the aim to run candidates in ridings where there is no chance that the NDP will get in.
Fildebrandt is outspoken when it comes to his own predicament that led to his current situation. New electoral boundaries were established and this led to disagreements as to where Fildebrandt would run in the next election. He says at one point the Boundary Commission proposed a Drumheller–Strathmore riding and he says he was encouraged to run against Drumheller-Stettler MLA Rick Strankman.
He also said he was pushed out of his own riding.
“When it became Chestermere-Strathmore in the final redraw, he (Kenney) said he wanted me back in caucus and to run in the next election. But I couldn’t run in Chestermere-Strathmore because it would look bad, in his words, quote “for a blonde-bearded redneck to defeat one of our only women and minorities in caucus.”
A statement from the UCP Caucus takes issue with Fildebrandt’s assessment.
“Like much of what Mr. Fildebrandt says, this is completely untrue. Mr. Fildebrandt resigned from the UCP caucus in August 2017, after having been caught cheating on his expenses, renting out a taxpayer-funded apartment, and having been charged with leaving the scene of an accident. In November, he approached Jason Kenney to inquire about re-admission to the UCP caucus. Mr. Kenney indicated that Derek would have to make an application to the caucus, who would vote then on his application for re-admission. Mr. Kenney, joined by House Leader Jason Nixon, suggested to Derek that it would be difficult to get the support of his former colleagues if he intended to run against one of them. They suggested that Derek’s application would be better received by Caucus if he indicated an intention to run where he lives - in West Calgary - rather than running against incumbent UCP MLAs such as Rick Strankman and Leela Aheer in constituencies that are very distant from his home. Mr. Fildebrandt’s statement that he was encouraged by the UCP leadership to run against Rick Strankman is complete fiction.”
