Categories
Alberta Politics

Alberta’s Evergreen Party to discuss name change, choose new leader.

Alberta Greens
Alberta Greens logo, circa 2009.

2008: Led by George Read, the Alberta Greens run 79 candidates and earn 4.58% in the provincial election, the party’s highest level of support ever.

Joe Anglin
Joe Anglin

2009: After a divisive leadership vote, the Alberta Greens, now led by Joe Anglin*, dissolve when the party is unable to unable to file financial returns with Elections Alberta as required by law. As a result the party was deregistered and became unable to run candidates in the 2012 election.

2011/2012: The Evergreen Party was registered by Elections Alberta and ran 25 candidates in the 2012 election, earning 5,082 votes or 0.394% of the province-wide vote. Coming full-circle after the provincial election, the Elections Alberta prohibition against using the “Green Party” name expired.

On September 29, 2012 the Evergreen Party will hold its annual general meeting at the Chateau Louis in Edmonton. At the meeting, the party will debate ditching the “Evergreen” name in favour of something similar to its previous name – the Alberta Greens.

Janet Keeping
Janet Keeping

A leadership vote will also occur at the annual meeting to replace outgoing leader Larry Ashmore. The contest will see recent election candidates Mike Donnelly and Janet Keeping contest the leadership. Mr. Donnelly was a candidate in Wetaskiwin-Camrose and is a printing press operator. Ms. Keeping was a candidate in Calgary-Varsity Calgary-Hawkwood and is the former president of the Sheldon Chumir Foundation and the executive director of the Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre.

* Mr. Anglin is now the Wildrose Party MLA for Sundre-Rocky Mountain House-Rimbey.

6 replies on “Alberta’s Evergreen Party to discuss name change, choose new leader.”

So unless party registration rules changed, they had more people sign their certification petition than votes they earned. Time for introspection?

I’m pretty impressed they were able to get registered again so quickly. I was under the impression that getting a new party registered was no easy task. Wasn’t that why the Alberta Party underwent a reverse take-over of sorts? To save on having to go through the difficult registration process? I guess they coveted the party name too…

Neal: It is my recollection that the signatures were being collected by both the “Alberta Progress Party” (mostly former rural Green Party supporters) and the “Renew Alberta” group (mostly disenchanted Liberals and Tories) to create two political parties. Both groups opted to forgo the signature process in favour of joining efforts under the already existing “Alberta Party” banner.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *