As Albertans prepare to head to the polls next month, they may be taking time to educate themselves on who's who in the Highwood Riding.

Locally, residents will have their pick of either Dan Irving from Alberta Independence Party, Erik Overland with the NDP, or RJ Sigurdson with the UCP.

A few highlights Irving says he likes to make when speaking with constituents about the AIP includes dropping the income tax for the first $45,000 a resident earns, eliminate GST, eliminate the carbon tax, and stop transfer payments to Ottawa. He adds getting rid of income tax will put $600 back into residents pockets and that ceasing transfer payments to the capital city would put an extra $40 billion back into the economy.

Irving says the AIP has a vision of seeing the province stand on its own.

"Give the opportunity to all Albertans of the choice to decide if it would be better off to stay in Canada or become our own country," he explains. "... because depending on what poll you listen to, 45- 60 per cent of Albertans want to separate from Canada because we have international law on our side for getting our pipelines through. No foreign country can impede a land locked country from getting their product to market so that would be able to get our pipelines to deep water ports which is a big thing."

Irving says the biggest concern he's hearing from constituents is that the government isn't listening to them.

"They get in power and then they run their own agenda. We have one agenda and it's always to listen to Albertans first. When I first joined the Alberta Independence Party I told our leader, 'I will always represent my riding first, party second', and we need to fight for our area first and have people that are in power that are actually listening to Albertans in that riding to make proper decisions."

The Alberta Independence Party first formed in 2001 and was revived in 2018.

The party is lead by David Bjorkman.

To get in contact with Irving and the AIP click here.

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