Kevin Sorenson, has served as a Member of Parliament for Crowfoot, Alberta since 2000 and in January 2006, he was re-elected with 82.5 per cent of the popular vote. On July 15, 2013, Sorenson was named to cabinet by Prime Minister Harper as Minister of state for Finance in the recent Cabinet shuffle. He has also been a member of the Canadian Alliance (2000–2003). He has served as the former Opposition critic to the Solicitor General, and of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness.
With 2014 all wrapped up and the ringing in of a brand new year, Minister Sorenson did some reflecting on the past year. “First let’s start with I think we’ve had a very productive year. We’ve come through a major global economic recession and we’ve come out of that – in fact, Canada is fairing about the best of all the industrialized countries in the world. There’s been over 1.2 million net new jobs created and we’ve been able to bring forward new tax relief for families including increasing the Universal Child Care Benefit and bringing forward income splitting for spouses with children – so there’s been some very good things that we’ve brought forward, some good measures.”
The Minister then went on to speak about some things that saddened him in 2014, “there’s also been some things this year that I reflect on ’14 that weren’t so good. For me, working as the Minister of State for Finance, obviously losing a very close friend, Jim Flaherty. This was one of my mentors and one of the people that I looked up to and had the pleasure of sitting down with on a daily basis here in Ottawa while we were here. He phoned me when he was going to resign from Cabinet, so he could get over his health issues and spend time with his family and then shortly after that he passed away. That was a very difficult thing to lose a friend like that. The other big reflection on 2014 was that day in October when all of a sudden a terrorist comes bolting into Parliament and he’s already shot one military personal and now he shoots a guard and shoots at the number of others. We were sitting in caucus and I heard the shots ring out – just the fact that this happens in our Parliament, you think about those things”.
Coming into a new 2015, Minister Sorenson says, “I think we want to continue to bring forward measures for seniors, measures for families – these individuals that have played such an important role in building Canada, but also those that have a role in raising families in difficult times and we want to make sure that we bring forward measures, we invest in helping them so that they can have an easier road making ends meet. Also, I think some of the things that we look forward to, and we can accomplish, investments in the infrastructure, making certain that we spend and invest in the right ways, right areas, that can help business and industry prosper for many years down the road. That’s the best way of keeping jobs and making sure there is prosperity”.
“We’re very cognisant of what the oil prices mean and we want to be certain that we keep our economic house in order so that when we come up against these difficulties that we can bring forward measures, we can afford to do that. That’s why us coming to a balanced budget is going to be so important but Canada is also an exporting country – the countries that we export to are having a huge amount of difficulty right not with their economies, not so much the United States, but Europe, Brazil much of the ‘brick countries’ (Brazil, Russia, India and China), their economies are shrinking, and these are countries that we typically export to so we’re optimistic but we also realize there will be challenges. Then there’s those other geo-political challenges. We realize, and especially at Christmas time that we have troops right now. Air Force, that are standing up with many of our other allies to make a difference against a real evil and that is that group ISIL – who have this goal of creating a radical Islam environment and Canada has said that we aren’t going to stand idly by and watch Christians and even moderate Muslims beheaded by a group that wants it only their way. On one side I’m moved that we’re there, but on the other side I’m frustrated that there is such groups that have such radical ideologies.”
Minister Sorenson ended by saying that Canada is headed in a great direction for 2015 with much prosperity and sends his Merry Christmas and Happy New Year wishes to the residents of Chestermere.
