It was a full house at Cochrane's Royal Canadian Legion last evening (October 18) as community members gathered to hear Jason Kenney's message to 'get-er-done' one last time.

Kenney was happy to be back in Cochrane before party supporters cast their vote October 26-28 to determine who will lead the United Conservative Party in the 2019 Provincial election.

Acknowledging that Cochrane started the initial conversation of unification back in June of 2016, Kenney says look at where they are today. "When we started this whole thing 16 months ago, people said it couldn't be done, it was too complicated, some said it wasn't even legal, that there wasn't enough time; but thankfully we didn't listen to the puppets, the critics, or the cynics."

Kenney is up against Brian Jean and Doug Schweitzer for leadership and although each candidate feels they will be the one to take Alberta back, Kenney was happy to see egos parked and everyone focused on putting Alberta first. Going from the province that was once a magnet for hard workers and risk takers it was known as a centre for gain rather than drain, and Kenney wants to lead it back on track. "A growing population of long term unemployed, tens of thousands of small businesses have gone under, record levels of bankruptcy and insolvencies, and tens of billions of capital investment has fled this province; people who have run out severance, run out of EI, run out of savings, run out of credit, and are now running out of hope." Believing that the UCP will defeat the current NDP government, Kenney is looking forward to getting the ball rolling when it comes to policy and platforms.

The three way leadership race held its last debate on Tuesday (October 17) in Lethbridge and now candidates will try to squeeze in as much public engagement before members cast their vote.

The winner will be declared on October 28 and Kenney shares whoever is chosen needs to have a mixture of experience, skills, and temperament to bring together a strong competent principal team that will hit the ground running on day one. 

Only those UCP members that registered by October 13 will be able to vote for a leader of their choice by phone or email from October 26 to 28.