The Livingstone Macleod riding has its first confirmed candidate.

Kevin Van Tighem received the NDP nomination Wednesday night at the High River Library.

While he's well known as an opponent of coal mining on the eastern slopes of the Rockies, there are other big issues like education and health care.

"Health care is a huge issue, it's not just an issue in Alberta we've got a problem across the country, it comes with an aging baby boom, the shock of the pandemic, so there's no easy answers but really a very large question and that's one reason the NDP has been trying to develop approaches to get rural doctors and nurses to come back and to stay," he says.

"When you think about this issue with the headwaters, if we want to attract and retain medical staff we've to make them want to live here, that means when they look at Alberta they say 'my kids going to get a good education there, I'm going to have a great place to hike, hunt and fish, I'm going to have a good community to live in' those are all issues that I keep hearing about."

Van Tighem says the future is a knowledge-based economy, a mobile economy and we need to bring people to Alberta and the way to do that is to make it as livable a place as possible.

Lethbridge MLA Shannon Phillips says she's always willing to help out Livingstone Macleod as she has in the past.

NDPKevin Van Tighem and Shannon Phillips

"I was so honoured to work with many of those same people and many others who were politically active at all in the push back against coal mining on the eastern slopes and so of course I would come and support someone who was active on that issue but so many other issues that are important to so many other people right now like affordability and health care and generally just trust in government," she says.

NDP

Over a hundred people turned out for the meeting, raising over $10,000 for the campaign.