Conservative Party activist Pamela Davidson has announced her plans to run as a candidate in Alberta’s Senate Nominee elections on October 18, 2021.
On her website, Davidson describers herself as a staunch advocate for property rights and supporter of law-abiding firearms owners.
Davidson has made numerous attempts to run for political office locally and internally in the federal and provincial conservative parties.
Davidson was unsuccessfully in her bid to defeat Councillor Christine Moore in Division 6 in Red Deer County in 2017.
She was endorsed by the the anti-abortion lobby group Right Now and the National Firearms Council during her unsuccessful bid to win a seat on the Conservative Party of Canada’s National Council in 2021. She was one of the organizers of Premier Jason Kenney’s Christian prayer breakfast in Edmonton in November 2019.
In 2018, she was the chair of the Innisfail-Sylvan Lake UCP nomination committee ahead of that year’s by-election and ran as a “Team Grassroots” slate candidate for the Central Alberta director on the United Conservative Party’s board of directors.
Her husband, Gary, unsuccessfully sought the UCP nomination against Jason Stephan in Red Deer-South in 2019 (Pam Davidson ran against Stephan’s sister-in-law, Laura, in the 2017 municipal election in Red Deer County).
Davidson notes on her website that she is running for the Conservative Party nomination for the Senate Nominee election. It is unclear whether the Conservative Party of Canada has released any details or information about the nomination contest, but Davidson’s website says you must have a valid Conservative Party members by July 29, 2021 to vote in the nomination contest.
This is the first time since Senate Nominee elections were first held in 1989 that candidates can run under a federal party banner. In previous Senate Nominee elections candidates were only allowed to run as a provincial party candidate or an Independent candidate.
The new Senate Election Act introduced in 2019 allows candidates to list their federal party affiliation on the ballot, though it is unclear whether the federal party’s will actually have any control over who is listed as affiliated with them on the ballot.
The Conservative Party of Canada is currently the only federal party with representation in the Senate. All other Senators sit as Independent or members of a smaller caucus that are unaffiliated with a political party.
The uniquely-Albertan election is being held to select a list of nominees to be appointed to the Senate of Canada when there are vacancies in Alberta’s delegation. Only Progressive Conservative and Conservative Prime Ministers have recognized the election and recommended the appointment of nominees chosen in Alberta’s Senate Nominee elections.
Other already declared candidates are Progress Alberta executive director Duncan Kinney and lobbyist and former UCP President Erika Barootes.
3 replies on “Conservative activist Pam Davidson running in Alberta’s Senate Nominee election”
I kinda doubt the CPC is having an actual internal nomination process for this dog-and-pony fake Senate election? Would complicate their position on the issue in other provinces…
Sounds like someone’s just selling CPC memberships under an odd premise.
These so-called “elections” are a sham & a waste of effort. The Prime Minister is under no obligation to summon the successful candidate to the Senate, and indeed since the implementation of the new Senate selection process, is even less likely to pick whoever wins this than might have been the case before under the old, “party bagman & political warhorse” system — what the late Allan Fotheringham once called the “taskless thanks”.
The Supreme Court has ruled that the only way to an elected Senate is through a duly passed Constitutional amendment, which since 1992 has been a third rail in Canadian politics. Sadly — the NDP’s position that it should be abolished notwithstanding — we’re stuck with the Senate as it is for the foreseeable future. And we don’t need people elected to a non-accountable lifetime-until-75 position; like judges, such unfireable jobs should be filled by appointment.
[…] Davidson, endorsed by the National Firearms Association and an anti-abortion group in past election attempts, was one of the organizers of Mr. Kenney’s 2019 Christian prayer […]