It was Alberta Week in Canada’s federal election campaign
It was Alberta Week in the federal election campaign with the two party leaders who grew up in the western province returning to wave their party flags and rally supporters.
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Preston Manning enters the chat
Conservative movement grandfather emerges from political retirement with grumpy separatist threats
Preston Manning emerged from political retirement to insert himself into the federal election mix by writing an op-ed in the Globe & Mail claiming that Liberal Party leader Mark Carney poses a threat to national unity. Manning’s argument triangulates with Premier Danielle Smith’s threats that a re-elected Liberal government would lead to an “unprecedented national unity crisis” – claims that are likely not very helpful for Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives.
Manning is undoubtably frustrated by the Liberal Party’s resurgence in public support but threatening that the country will be torn apart if the Conservatives don’t win the election is a shameful bookend to his long and fascinating career in Albertan and Canadian politics.
But who’s Preston?
Manning is probably a familiar name to a lot of Daveberta readers but, now that he’s been out of elected office for more than two decades, there’s a good chance that even a few keen politician watchers in 2025 aren’t too familiar with him.
Read more on the Daveberta Substack
Liberals drop former NDP MLA Rod Loyola in Edmonton Gateway
Canada’s federal election is in full-swing and today’s Daveberta newsletter includes a quick update about candidate nominations in Alberta. I will be back early next week with a regular column and more analysis from Alberta in the federal election.
As of this morning, the Conservative Party, the New Democratic Party, and the Green Party are the only parties with candidates in all 37 ridings in Alberta. The Liberal Party briefly had a full slate but are down one after their candidate in Edmonton Gateway was removed yesterday (more about that below).
The deadline for parties to nominate candidates or for Independent candidates to put their names forward is Monday, April 7 at 2:00 p.m.
UCP MLA writes that Canada is broken and Team Canada is a “fake team”
Mark Carney has only been Prime Minister of Canada for 17 days but last week he may have made one of the most consequential statements by a Canadian political leader in recent memory.
“The old relationship we had with the United States based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation is over,” Carney said in response to American President Donald Trump’s almost daily threats against Canada.
Trump backed down on his threats last week to level 25 percent tariffs against the Canadian automobile manufacturing industry, probably temporarily, after Carney announced retaliatory tariffs, but this week could feature Trump’s next big intervention in a federal election campaign where he has become the biggest villain. April 2 is what the Trump is calling “Liberation Day.” It’s the day he says he plans to level more huge tariffs on products being imported into the US.
Read the rest on the Daveberta Substack
Rod Loyola has resigned as the Alberta NDP MLA for Edmonton-Ellerslie and is running as the Liberal Party candidate in the new Edmonton Gateway riding in the federal election. Loyola represented his south Edmonton provincial riding from 2015 until he stepped down earlier this week to pursue the federal Liberal nomination.
Read all about it on the Daveberta Substack
When Alberta Premier Danielle Smith demanded Carney call a federal election after he was sworn-in as Prime Minister ten days ago, she probably didn’t expect that a two week old interview with an American alt-right news website would be making headlines on the first day of the campaign.
In a March 8 interview with the pro-Trump Breitbart website, Smith said she asked the Trump administration to pause their economic attacks on Canada until after the federal election because they might hurt Pierre Poilievre’s chances of defeating the Liberals.
Read it all on the Daveberta Substack
Liberal PM expected to call federal election on Sunday for an April 28 or May 5 vote
Prime Minster Mark Carney was in Edmonton yesterday for his first visit since winning the Liberal Party leadership and becoming leader of the government. Carney met with Premier Danielle Smith, who re-endorsed Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre the night before at a sold out Leader’s Dinner fundraiser in the capital city.
The Prime Minister and Premier did not make themselves available to speak with the media after the meeting and there were no photos taken of the two politicians together, which is probably an indication of how well we can expect the meeting went (Smith’s office later posted a photo of her meeting with Ambassador of Austria Andreas Rendl, which also gives us an idea of where the Prime Minister fits in her pecking order).
Read more on the Daveberta Substack
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Two Alberta boys go to Ottawa
Mark Carney and Pierre Poilievre grew up in Alberta. That’s a big deal for our province.
The political landscape in Canada has totally shifted under the weight of American President Donald Trump’s threats to impose harsh tariffs on Canadian goods and annex Canada as the 51st State.
Trump’s daily rambling threats against his country’s northern neighbours, mixed with the departure of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau from Canadian politics, has erased the huge lead in the polls that Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre had been riding for the past year.
The swearing-in of former Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney as Canada’s new Prime Minister appears to have brought the Liberal Party back into the electoral game, for now, but such huge swings in public opinion in such a short time mean it could be impossible to predict what will happen next.
Danielle Smith joins Team Canada reluctant to use oil & gas trump card
One full day after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and provincial premiers Doug Ford in Ontario and Wab Kinew in Manitoba announced retaliatory measures in response to American President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs on Canadian products, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith entered the fray.
“This economic attack on our country, combined with Mr. Trump’s continued talk of using economic force to facilitate the annexation of our country, has broken trust between our two countries in a profound way,” Smith said at a press conference where she was flanked by Minister of Transportation and Economic Corridors Devin Dreeshen, Minister of Justice Mickey Amery, Deputy Premier Mike Ellis, and two law enforcement officers (one wearing a bullet proof vest and carrying an assault rifle).
“It is a betrayal of a deep and abiding friendship,” she said.
Read all about it on the Daveberta Substack
Quick note: Thank you for reading today’s Daveberta Newsletter! Paid subscribers can keep scrolling to read about the upcoming Edmonton-Strathcona provincial by-election and the federal Conservative Party candidate nomination votes being held in Bow River on March 6 & 7, Red Deer on March 8, and Edmonton Griesbach on March 9.
Alberta goes for another ride on the royalty roller coaster
After twenty years of writing about Alberta politics and about same number of provincial budgets, it’s sometimes hard not to write the same thing year after year: Alberta relies too heavily on revenues from oil and gas royalties to fund the daily operations of government.
That’s the baked-in analysis of Alberta politics. Our provincial government’s over-dependence on oil revenues is both a blessing and a curse. When the price of oil is high, things are really good. When the price of oil is low, it’s really bad. It is the central component of what we used to call the “Alberta Advantage.”
Alberta has been able to afford to have the lowest taxes in Canada and high spending on public services because the government could use oil and gas royalties to offset what every other province would normally collect through taxes.
Read more on the Daveberta Substack
Echoes of Donna Kennedy-Glans and Len Webber resignations from 11 years ago
I usually try to avoid writing too much about breaking news and I typically don’t publish more than one article per day, but I made an exception after today’s news that Minister of Infrastructure Peter Guthrie had resigned from United Conservative Party Premier Danielle Smith’s cabinet.
“I’m not going to stand by and see potential corruption exist within government and be a part of that,” Guthrie was quoted as saying to the Globe & Mail in reference to the ongoing scandal and alleged cover-up related to government contracts with private surgical companies. “I felt profound disappointment in their ability to be able to ignore these clear conflicts,” he said.
Read more on the Daveberta Substack
Many subscribers know that I am tracking candidates running for party nominations in Alberta ahead of the upcoming federal election. The list of candidates is available for everyone to read but paid subscribers get extra information about the nomination contests and candidates.
Political scandals, resignations, budget cuts, strikes and coal mining – Alberta politics is never boring
The familiar voice of Speaker Nathan Cooper calling out “order!” and “the honourable member for…” will once again echo through the hallowed halls of Alberta’s Legislative Assembly when MLAs return to Edmonton for the start of the spring session today.
Government House Leader Joseph Schow released the United Conservative Party government’s legislative agenda for the session, which I will write about over the next few weeks, but here is a broader overview of what I’m watching as MLAs return to the Legislature:
1. Private surgical contracts scandal
Some people are calling it the Dodgy Contracts Scandal and the opposition NDP have gone all in on naming it CorruptCare, but whatever you are calling this political scandal there is no doubt it will be front and centre in this legislative session.
This morning’s news that Minister of Infrastructure Peter Guthrie is resigning from cabinet in protest of the scandal and how Premier Danielle Smith has handled it is sure to add fuel to the political fire.
“I’m not going to stand by and see potential corruption exist within government and be a part of that,” Guthrie is reported to have said. He plans to sit in the Legislature as a UCP MLA, but whether Smith wants him to remain in the government caucus is unclear (and unlikely).
Cracks in UCP cabinet unity started to show when Guthrie’s proposal to remove Minister of Health Adriana LaGrange from her current cabinet post was leaked to the media, though it is unclear who leaked it.
Smith and LaGrange tried to change the channel on the scandal at a press conference last week by pinning the blame on Alberta Health Services procurement staff, but an almost never-ending series of scoops from Globe & Mail investigative reporters Carrie Tait and Alanna Smith have undermined the UCP government’s efforts to spin their way out of the political storm.
Expect the NDP opposition, with the protections of parliamentary privilege, to spend a lot of time questioning and prodding UCP cabinet ministers about this scandal during Question Period.
Read the rest on the Daveberta Substack
Many subscribers know that I am tracking candidates running for party nominations in Alberta ahead of the upcoming federal election. The list of candidates is available for everyone to read but paid subscribers get extra information about the nomination contests and candidates.
That time of year is once again upon us: the annual Family Day long weekend in Alberta. Thirty-five years after Albertans first marked the third Monday in February as a provincial holiday in 1990, most of us who get the day off work take it for granted, but there is a big political story behind how this day was created.
Some readers will be familiar with the story about then-Premier Don Getty’s son getting arrested for possession and trafficking of cocaine and his father creating a holiday to celebrate family values in response. It sounds like a cynical take but it’s a big part of the story.
The idea to create a mid-winter holiday had been around for some time before it was announced in Alberta’s 1989 pre-election Speech from the Throne.
Read all about it on the Daveberta Substack
When scandal threatens to envelop a government, the politicians spin hard
“Changing the channel” might be an outdated metaphor in a world where online streaming is how a lot of people now watch “television,” but it is a term that remains in use by politicians and political communicators to describe a strategy to draw attention away from something you don’t want to be on the top of people’s minds or the front pages of the news websites.
That’s exactly what Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party government has been trying to do since Globe & Mail reporter Carrie Tait broke the Dodgy Contract Scandal last week.
The bombshell story revolves around allegations that senior political staff in the government were involved in a $600 million procurement scandal and that AHS CEO Athana Mentzelopoulos was fired by the government two days before she was scheduled to meet with the Auditor General “to discuss her investigation into procurement contracts and deals for private surgical facilities.”
Read more on the Daveberta Substack
Note: Paid subscribers on the Daveberta Substack can keep scrolling and read all about the candidates running for the federal Conservative Party nominations in the Bow River and Red Deer ridings.
Carrie Tait’s bombshell exposé rocked Alberta politics this week
When I first sat down to start writing today’s column I was planning to write a follow up to my piece about Premier Danielle Smith’s reaction to American President Donald Trump’s tariff threat, but a week in politics can be an eternity and to say this has been a busy week in Alberta politics is an understatement.
If you read one news article this weekend, I strongly recommend it be intrepid Globe & Mail reporter Carrie Tait’s bombshell exposé about the United Conservative Party government firing Alberta Health Services CEO Athena Mentzelopoulos “two days before she was scheduled to meet with the province’s Auditor General to discuss her investigation into procurement contracts and deals for private surgical facilities.”