Marco Jansen, who has been in the local provincial political scene for a while, is looking to make the jump to the municipal level with a run for Medicine Hat city council.--SUBMITTED PHOTO
Council candidate Marco Jansen might be new to running for elected office but he is no stranger to the local political scene having served as Wildrose and UCP Cypress-Medicine Hat constituency president.
It is that experience coupled with serving for five years as a UNIFOR shop steward at his job as an air traffic controller that he’s held in Medicine Hat for the last 26 years which provides him a balanced understanding of issues, he says.
And he wants to use that experience in his bid to become a city councillor.
Jansen says in addition to a balanced approach, he is committed to representing, “the will of the people.”
“You hear this from politicians a lot,” said Jansen. “But the reality is, we’ve seen it at every level of government, politicians that vote based on their own personal opinion or their agenda or the special interest group of the day.”
Jansen highlighted the issue of the municipality selling its electricity generation assets as one which he personally doesn’t support but one which he is open to hearing from citizens on.
“I will happily debate the point, I might even change my mind but that’s irrelevant if the people of Medicine Hat don’t want us to sell it,” said Jansen.
One of the biggest issues with the current council is they aren’t providing residents with the information they need to have those debates, said Jansen.
“So many committee and council meetings are partially or entirely in camera,” said Jansen. “There is no record of who is saying what, who is proposing what, who is speaking for and against these things.”
Because of the lack of transparency with the current council on issues like power generation and Invest Medicine Hat, “it has completely blown up in council’s faces.”
Jansen says if elected, his first order of business will be to determine why the city has chosen the path of conducting public business in private and for those people responsible to publicly justify their reasons.
As for why he loves is the city is because of it having the amenities of a big city without losing the benefits of a small town.
“We can’t continue to chip away at Medicine Hat advantage,” said Jansen. “That needs to be restored.”
