Coaldale teacher on the campaign trail for the Solidarity Movement

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By Trevor Busch

Taber Times

editor@tabertimes.com

Representing the campaign for the Solidarity Movement of Alberta for the Taber-Warner riding, Brent Ginther stands for common sense principles.

“The Solidarity Movement is led by Artur Pawlowski, the pastor from Calgary who keeps getting thrown in jail for when he went down to Coutts there, and giving his sermon. The party stands for a lot of common sense, conservative principles.”

Ginther said he got involved with the Solidarity Movement of Alberta after a purge of the Independence Party of Alberta rescinded the membership of Pawlowski. 

He believes the UCP have a lot to answer for in their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The main reason I got into this was because Grant Hunter (Taber-Warner UCP) didn’t do the right things during COVID, and go against his party. And so I could not look myself in the mirror and do the exact same thing. He did go along with a party that I knew was doing the wrong thing. So I left them. Art needed 44 people to form the Solidarity Movement. And it was originally kind of intended as a coalition of independence candidates, like nobody’s going to tell you exactly what to say about any issue. And so I threw my name, and I said I’d be one of his 44.”

Ginther hails from Coaldale, where he is currently a school teacher.

“I’m kind of a local guy, been my home since the early ‘90s. When I was in high school, and 9/11 happened, I joined the army right out of high school. I never had any intentions of becoming a teacher. So I went to Afghanistan in 2006, and wound up taking a burst of machine gun fire in the legs and kind of had to come home and start from scratch, square one. So I did a few things. I got a degree in environmental science, and later on a degree in education and eventually became a teacher. And I have my own family here raising my kids. And the rest is history.”

Ginther is convinced the UCP betrayed Albertans in implementing many of the restrictions and mandates during the pandemic.

“The UCP lost me during COVID when they came out with their vaccine passport. I mean, they swore up and down, left and right that they were never going to do that…and Grant Hunter obviously knew that what they were doing was wrong, because he showed up in Coutts with his grandkids to take pictures. But for the one guy who actually had power to do something, and to not do it, I was just not going to let that go without doing something about it. And I originally never had any intention ever of running for politics in my life. I showed up at a couple of constituency association meetings for the Independence Party. They were working to put their name forward to be the candidate and I thought, ‘I’m not just gonna let him go unchallenged and never have anybody say anything about what he’s managed to pull off here and let them just sweep that under the rug and forget about it’.”

Ginther’s main message is that holding your nose and trusting the UCP with your vote won’t initiate any change in the party ranks.

“For me, the central issue is that you can’t trust the UCP party and they can say whatever they want, but we already know that when push comes to shove, they’re going to do whatever the leader of that party tells them to do, and that might not be the right thing. So some of the things that I think are actually really important for Alberta are getting its own police force, and a referendum on independence. So I’m still an independence-minded person, but those, to me, are the two biggest things that we need to push: Alberta’s police force and a referendum on independence.”

“Don’t trust the UCP,” concluded Ginther. “We’ve already seen that they’ll say one thing and do another.”

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