Ex-cabinet minister leading Conservative charge in Alberta

A former federal Conservative cabinet minister from Alberta is back in the political game, hoping to take down the Liberal minister in charge of the nation’s energy industry, in the heart of the country’s oil patch.

Tim Uppal, who served as a minister of state in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s cabinet for almost four years, is nominated to run again in Edmonton Mill Woods, a riding Natural Resources Minister Amarjeet Sohi nabbed from him in 2015 by just 92 votes.

With the issues facing Alberta’s economy, including a lack of pipeline capacity and low oil prices, Uppal said he felt drawn to jump back in.

“I’ve started to get excited about politics again,” said Uppal, 44. “There’s just a lot that needs to be done and I want to be part of that.”

Alberta isn’t exactly the biggest battleground in this fall’s federal election - the Conservatives already have 29 of the 34 seats and it’s really only the five seats they don’t hold that are in play. The possibility exists for the Conservatives to wipe out the Liberals and NDP there completely. The possibility also exists that Maxime Bernier’s new People’s Party of Canada will play spoiler in some of those seats, taking enough votes from the Tories to help the Liberals or NDP survive.

Almost one-fifth of the new members signed up by Bernier’s party thus far are in Alberta. Although support for the party is still generally pretty small nationally, there are some Tories who privately predict Bernier is likely to do best in Alberta.

The Liberals want to hang on to some Alberta seats, even in the face of oil industry economic doom and gloom. Just before Christmas they dispatched Sohi with a $1.6 billion aid package.

Uppal said one might expect $1.6 billion would always be welcome. Instead, he said, people saw it as desperation from the Liberals trying to save Sohi, Edmonton Centre MP Randy Boissonnault and Calgary Centre MP Kent Hehr.

The Liberals won two seats in Calgary in 2015, their first in that city since 1968, but both Hehr and Calgary Skyview MP Darshan Kang have since faced harassment allegations. Hehr lost his job in cabinet over his behaviour, for which he apologized a year ago, but he has been nominated to run for the Liberals again this fall. Kang left the Liberal caucus and allegations against him were later substantiated by a House of Commons investigation. He remains an independent and hasn’t decided yet whether he will be on the ballot come October.