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By Chris Brown

David Martin announces run for Alberta NDP nomination in Cypress-Medicine Hat

Jan 23, 2023 | 11:28 AM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – A third candidate has stepped forward to run for the Alberta NDP nomination in Cypress-Medicine Hat.

David Martin is a 31-year Medicine Hat resident, who founded Cypress College in April 2000 and still runs the vocational training college to this day. He also served four years on the Medicine Hat & District Chamber of Commerce board from 2006-2010 and is a former reservist in the Canadian Armed Forces.

“Like many in our community, I have grave concerns about the attacks on key public services. Health care, education and even Alberta’s place in confederation. I can no longer sit on the sidelines without doing everything I can to help solve the problem,” Martin says in a release to announce his candidacy.

Martin adds he decided early last year that if public health care was lost it would not be because he was silent about it, and that public health care available equally to everyone regardless of income.

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“But proposals that are afoot now the idea to privatize, the idea to involve private insurance or to do your own fundraising for treatment, those things are a grave concern to me,” he told CHAT News on Tuesday.

“I just think health care shouldn’t be about how much money you have, it should be about need; and there’s a scarce amount of resources that we can allocate to health care and we have to do it in a prudent way that works for everybody. And I feel like we’re just shortfunding health care in order to show that it doesn’t work and implement a new system that will cause a lot of pain and suffering in our community.”

He also says the public education system needs work, including more teachers and says the UCP’s curriculum changes are not supported by teachers or school districts.

On affordability, Martin says insurance rates have doubled under this government and the electricity rate which that was capped under the NDP has tripled since 2019.

“I think that it just takes a government to build policy that works around families and small business and working people, and less to do with just supporting monopoly companies that I think have been pretty predatory on people in Alberta,” he says.

Martin says he hopes his experience in business and marketing, plus the relationships he’s developed in his career will help make a positive change in this government in the spring election.

Martin joins Cathy Hogg and Tim Gruber in running for the nomination. Last week the party announced the nomination date is Feb. 28, the first time in recent memory the party has had a nomination race in Medicine Hat.

The provincial election is scheduled to be held on May 29.

Drew Barnes has held the Cypress-Medicine Hat seat since 2012. He twice won as a Wildrose Party candidate and won in 2019 under the UCP banner. He now sits as an Independent MLA after being kicked out of the UCP caucus in May 2021.

You can find out more about Martin on his campaign Facebook page.

READ MORE: Prairie Rose board chair seeking NDP nomination in Cypress-Medicine Hat

READ MORE: Tim Gruber running for NDP nomination in Cypress-Medicine Hat