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Alberta Politics

Does anyone want to lead the Alberta Liberal Party?

You have until 5:00 p.m. today to submit your nomination to run for the leadership of the Alberta Liberal Party.

If you do, there’s a chance you might be the only one.

The deadline to enter the leadership of the once official opposition and now seatless Liberal Party is fast approaching and there doesn’t appear to be anyone interested in the job.

At least not publicly.

Longtime party volunteer John Roggeveen stepped into the thankless role as interim leader in March 2021 after the job was left vacant following David Khan‘s resignation in November 2020.

The party announced the leadership race in June 2022, and presumably, the executive board would (or should) have had someone in mind when they opened the gates.

It’s unlikely that Khan would want to return to the role now that he is a lawyer for Ecojustice, nor would his 2017 leadership opponent Kerry Cundal, who is now the nominated Alberta Party candidate in Calgary-Elbow.

Former leader Raj Sherman was recently spurned by the United Conservative Party when he tried to become a candidate in that party’s leadership race. Sherman’s main leadership rival from 2011, Hugh MacDonald, has returned to his labour union roots as Business Manager and Secretary Treasurer of Boilermakers Lodge 146.

And other former leader David Swann appears comfortable with returning to his roots as an environmental activist. Swann was the party’s last MLA when he decided to retire from elected politics in 2019.

The Liberal Party formed official opposition from 1993 to 2012, but I’ll leave the story of its quick rise and fall for another day (I have a lot to say).

Now, I guess we wait to see what happens at 5:00 p.m. today.

UPDATE: It appears as though the Liberal Party did not accept any nominations for its leadership race by today’s 5:00 p.m. deadline. The party has removed the “Leadership” section from its website drop down menu and has not made any public statements about the leadership race yet.

14 replies on “Does anyone want to lead the Alberta Liberal Party?”

Maybe Sherman can come back and take another shot at it, if he doesn’t have anything better to do.

He didn’t completely kill off the party last time, so maybe his work is here is unfinished.

I really hope they find someone. At least there I’m person running in my riding of Edmonton City Centre. Alberta needs a centrist party and it’s sure as hell not the Alberta Party!

Alberta has a centrist party that could form Government. It’s called the NDP. The 2015-19 Notley Government was a pragmatic moderate centrist government that actually disappointed true leftists in its attempt to appeal to the broad base of the Alberta electorate.

Had the Notley Government been truly left-wing, there are a number of things it could have done that it didn’t actually do:

– abolish utility deregulation & nationalize power & natural gas utilities
– bring in public auto insurance
– reintroduce a truly progressive income tax system, raise corporate taxes far more than they did & dramatically raise taxes on the richest Albertans
– increase AISH and other social assistance rates & fully index them to inflation
– abolish public funding of private schools and end public funding of [largely Roman Catholic, with the sole exception of the St Albert area] separate schools
– make college & university attendance tuition-free
– decertify the Christian Labour Association of Canada (CLAC) as an employer-dominated pseudo-union
… and so much more.

Yes. I agree with you in that Notley has taken the NDP to the centre. But if the NDP fails to form government in 2023 then its highly likely that the grass roots and the left wing of the party will try to take the party back to its origins as a left wing party undoing the Notley coalition.

Any move to divide the anti-UCP vote is bad for Alberta. The reigning Confederacy of Dunces must be kicked to the curb once and for all.

Wow! What happened to this party? I would love to see a rise and fall of the Liberals. They need new blood to breathe life into this party.

Sadly, Alberta Liberal Party hasn’t had any political influence for 10+ years now.

While I understand electoral fortune can change dramatically between elections, the ALP electoral support has diminished to 1% – 2008 (26%, 251,000; 9 seats), 2012 (9.9%, 127,000; 5), 2015 (4% 60,000; 1), 2019 (1%, 18,500; 0 seats).
In 2019, the last election, there was seven candidates for other parties that received more votes individually than the ALP received collectively across the entire province.

Financially, it is just as bad. For the first two quarters of this year, ALP raised barely $38,000. that is not enough for some paid staff, events, communications, or saving for next election and is a far cry from NDP’s nearly $2,500,000 so far.

Based on their social media, they have very very few to no events. It doesn’t appear the interim leader did anything to rally members. During media interviews he was a terribly ineffective speaker.

Myself and many other members, donors, & volunteers see a very suitable party with great policies and organization in the Alberta NDP.

Should have supported Kenny .He was doing the best he could .
Kenny should not have quit but it goes to show ho hard it is to please everyone when The liberals are trying so hard to divide our people and our country .

donna Scott: The head honcho of the UCP was never in it for Albertans, but only there for himself. He couldn’t become CPC leader, because nobody wanted him. Cheating to become premier of Alberta is what he has done, because firing Lorne Gibson, is very telling, and the R.C.M.P, are still on his trail to look into how he got to where he is on the Alberta provincial political stage. This former federal cabinet minister had something to do with the robocalls affair. The UCP have also done the most pricey shenanigans, that cost us billions of dollars, mismanged the Covid-19 pandemic, creating record setting Covid-19 case counts for the entire country, left the downtrodden in more despair, picked fights with doctors, didn’t help medical employees, including nurses, and other hospital staff, made seniors struggle more, disregarded the environment, and wrecked havoc in the public education system. Division is what the head honcho of the UCP is doing, and so is Danielle Smith. In fact, the UCP are doing that. We aren’t better off with these pretend conservatives and Reformers who are destroying what Peter Lougheed has done right for Alberta. Why would we want to stick with the UCP, when they haven’t helped Alberta one bit?

There is hope for the Alberta Liberal Party. Its brand that has a lot of longevity in Alberta politics.

It will take a lot of work to rebuild the party and I do think its the better bet than the Alberta Party that just keeps morphing into something new every few years.

It will take a lot of sweat and blood equity to build it up. There is a space for a centrist party in Alberta and its the ALP. That’s one of the reasons why im running to become the ALP nominee for Edmonton City Centre.

Were rebuilding the party present in Edmonton and a lot of events well be up coming for the Edmonton area!

Zak Abdi for Edmonton City Centre

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