Progressive conservative Leadership Candidate Profiles: Doug Griffiths

By Amy Badry

Doug Griffiths has been the MLA for Battle River-Wainwright since 2002. At the age of 29 he was the youngest MLA in the province. Griffiths has worked as parliamentary assistant to the minister of agriculture and rural development, to the department of finance and enterprise and to the minister solicitor general and public security.

When asked what he thought was the number one issue facing young Albertans he said, “I have been struggling with that question quite a bit because there are so many issues that [young people] are going to have to face and address,” said Griffiths. “When I was going over the issues, thinking what would be the most important, I thought about the environment, I thought about the finance, I thought about the challenges that are coming up in healthcare, I thought about the challenges that we have on building communities, and then it occurred to me — none of them I could single out as being the biggest challenges. The biggest challenge young people have going forward is sticking to, or building the concept of convincing fellow Albertans, that we have to move away from running from crisis to crisis, from day to day, from year to year and dedicate ourselves to coming up with a plan for the next 20 years.”

Griffiths believes building a better future means thinking long-term.

“It is always easy to take the immediate need and sacrifice the long-term plans,” he said. “You name it, the challenge is going to be collectively admitting defeat and circumventing our desires to make sure we have long-term plans, not just short-term needs addressed.”

Griffiths said the way he would address this challenge is to run for premier.

“I have watched this for 10 years and have grown increasingly frustrated with everyone’s wants now and abandoning the concept of what will be good in the long run and building a better Alberta for the next generation.”