As the race for a new Liberal Party leader heats up, a former Okotoks candidate is looking forward to what the future holds.
Dustin Fuller contested the 2014 Macleod byelection, losing to current Foothills MP John Barlow a year before Justin Trudeau's Liberals came to power.
"Justin Trudeau did a lot of good for the Liberal Party," said Fuller, citing his reduction of child poverty rates, increased access to dental care for low income families and work towards Indigenous reconciliation as examples.
The party's fortunes have certainly changed since then, with polls showing the Liberals well behind Pierre Poilievre's Conservatives.
"I think some personal failings made people turn on him, but he did a lot of good," Fuller said of Trudeau, who announced he will be stepping down earlier this month. "After 10 years, it's time for change. [It's] just how it is in Canada."
Fuller, still a card-carrying Liberal, is eager to see what the future holds for the party and the country.
"I have the same enthusiasm and excitement that Justin Trudeau brought back in 2015," said Fuller. "But Canada is in a very different position... right now we need a leader who is serious, somebody who understands the financial market."
For Fuller, that leader is Mark Carney, who announced his Liberal leadership campaign in Edmonton today (Jan. 16).
Fuller believes Carney — who was appointed governor of the Bank of Canada by Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2008 and governor of the Bank of England by the United Kingdom's Conservative government in 2013 — could unite Canadians rather than divide them.
"The West can't complain that Ontario and Ottawa is out of touch with the West. First of all, Mark Carney is from Alberta, as is Chrystia Freeland," he said.
Carney was born in the Northwest Territories and raised in Edmonton, while Freeland, a presumptive candidate who has yet to announce a leadership bid, hails from Peace River in northern Alberta.
Though he's currently based in northern Ontario as a family lawyer, Fuller maintains deep ties to Okotoks. He received just under 17 per cent of the vote a decade ago in a byelection that was Barlow's first electoral success.
"Obviously we weren't gonna win... but it was a heck of a lot of fun," said Fuller, who spent a great deal of time door-knocking with Trudeau in Okotoks.
The Liberal Party last won the riding in 1968, when it was known as Rocky Mountain and only encompassed a portion of the current Foothills riding, during the initial "Trudeaumania" wave under Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
The Liberal Party has so far nominated four candidates in Alberta: two in Calgary, one in Edmonton and one in Airdrie-Cochrane.
A candidate has not yet been named by the Liberals to run in Foothills. The Liberal Party's Alberta office and the Foothills Liberal electoral district association did not respond to a request for comment.
