daveberta.ca - Alberta Politics and Elections

As Alberta isn’t exactly set to be anything close to an exiting political battleground in the upcoming federal election, I expect the Alberta-wing of the Conservative Party machinery in this Conservative MP heavy province to be spent a) increasing vote tallies to take advantage of the funding-per-vote finance scheme, b) transferring funds to lesser well-off campaigns in other Provinces and Territories, c) sending weekly bus loads of Calgary Conservatives out to Wascana to campaign against Ralph Goodale.

Other than the more interesting races in Edmonton-Centre and Edmonton-Strathcona (which I will focus on more later), the rest of Edmonton and Alberta looks like a wash for the Conservatives. With Reform-era MP John Williams retiring, former Tory MLA Brent Rathgeber has been nominated as the Conservative candidate in Edmonton-St. Albert and will be facing off against Liberal Sam Sleiman, New Democrat Dave Burkhart, and Green Peter Johnson. Rathgeber served as the MLA for Edmonton-Calder from 2001 until 2004, when he was defeated by New Democrat David Eggen. My only memorable encounter with Rathgeber was at the Legislature Press Gallery Christmas Party in December 2007, during which we had an overly jovial conversation about door knocking during the winter.

In Edmonton-Sherwood Park, Tim Uppal is the Conservative candidate replacing C-484 advocate Ken Epp. Uppal, who nearly defeated former Liberal MP David Kilgour in Edmonton-Mill Woods-Beaumont in the 2004 election, was rumoured to have been convinced to run in Edmonton-Sherwood Park to avoid a nasty nomination battle with MP Mike Lake. Lake is seeking re-election against Liberal Indira Saroya in Kilgour’s former stronghold. Since former candidate Neal Gray stepped aside earlier this year, the NDP are in the processes of renominating a candidate to run against Lake and Saroya (recent Edmonton-Rutherford provincial candidate Michael Butler is seeking the nod).

In Edmonton-East, former NDP MLA Ray Martin will be taking a second run at Conservative MP Peter Goldring. The two men last met in clutches of electoral battle in 2000, when Martin placed third behind Goldring and former Liberal MLA Sue Olsen. This time, Martin will be joining Liberal Jim Jacuta and Green Trey Capnerhurst. The two remaining races in Edmonton are expected to be much less exciting as MPs Rona Ambrose and James Rajotte should have no problem facing their competition in Edmonton-Spruce Grove and Edmonton-Leduc.

Across the province, a number of Conservative incumbents won’t be seeking re-election. Among the new candidates who will more than likely become MPs are Devinder Shory in Calgary-Northeast, Blake Richards in Wild Rose, and Earl Dreeshen in Red Deer.

David Emerson chooses retirement over running in Edmonton-East.

Amy Goodman and two Democracy Now! producers were arrested while reporting on protests outside the Republican Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota today.

I’ve updated my list of nominated candidates in Alberta, and here are the totals of nominated candidates across the province (that I am aware of) If I’ve missed any updates, feel free to post them or send me an email – daveberta.ca@gmail.com.

Conservative – 28 candidates
Liberal – 24 candidates
NDP – 20 candidates
Green – 13 candidates
Canadian Action – 5 candidates
Christian Heritage – 5 candidates
Libertarian – 4 candidates
First Peoples National Party – 2 candidates
Independent – 2 candidates

The Conservatives have nominated a full slate of candidates and I expect the Liberals, NDP, and Greens to round up their slates by the first week of the apparently imminent election. Though it’s extremely likely that the Conservative Party will sweep all 28 ridings in the Wild Rose Province, expect most of the media attention to be focused on the race between Laurie Hawn and Jim Wachowich in Edmonton-Centre, and Rahim Jaffer and Linda Duncan in Edmonton-Strathcona.

It may not have gained as much media attention as the giant glass pyramid, but Edmonton’s long-awaited Public Art Master Plan (pdf) was presented to City Council’s Community Services Committee on August 25 by Edmonton Arts Council Executive Director John Mahon and Public Art Director Kristy Trinier.

The plan includes three key recommendations that range from funding of staff positions to prevent the further deterioration of current public art, creating an endowment to stabilize long term conservation funds, and modernizing many of Edmonton’s public art and programming policies to meet national standards (including increasing support to community public art programs). The plan also calls for Edmonton to spearhead a number of initiatives including an Art Bank, a Public Art System, a Public Arts Ideas Lecture Series, Graffiti Zones, and a Biennial International Commission to recognize contemporary artists in Alberta’s Capital City.

The plan also calls for the creation of a Percent for Art plan for the public and private sectors which would have the City allocate one percent of its qualifying construction budget of various projects for the procurement of publicly displayed art. The private sector portion of the plan would create incentives for private developers to increase the amount of public art while constructing new developments.

Committee members Karen Leibovici, Don Iveson, and Tony Caterina moved that the plan be approved when presented to City Council on September 17th, 2008.

As other levels of government have been much less supportive of Canada’s creative economy in recent years, I am impressed by the innovative action and refreshing ideas that continue to emerge from municipalities across Canada.

Avenue Magazine has a great piece in this month’s edition on Edmonton City Councillor Don Iveson.

Lisa Gregoire wrote the article after following Iveson around Edmonton in the months following his high profile victory over incumbent Councillor Mike Nickel in the October 2007 municipal election that brought him to City Hall.

Iveson, a strong advocate for public transit and smart growth initiatives, was voted most effective City Councillor in SEE Magazine‘s 2008 Best of Edmonton and has been credited by Edmonton Journal columnist Scott McKeen as being the coolest head on City Council.

On the eve of a federal election call, Canada has found itself with its first Green Party MP: Blair Wilson.

(h/t Calgary Grit)

After reading Scott Tribe’s latest post on why Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been scared into election mode, I felt the need to engage in some friendly dialogue and write a response to Scott’s post. In his post, Scott suggests that:

1) Harper knows the economy is going to tank in a few months, or he’s going to be in the red with his next Budget, so he prefers to go now then later, when he and his government and Mr Flaherty would take more heat over mismanaging a Liberal surplus into a deficit situation in less then 3 years.

2) The Committees looking at the in-and out scandal will be highly embarrassing for him, as perhaps will the actual court case result against Elections Canada.

3) He knows he’s faring crappy in the 4 byelections, knows he wont win any of them, and doesn’t want Liberal momentum going into the House this Fall.

First, I don’t see any evidence that Harper has been scared into election mode. It seems pretty evident that the Conservatives have succeeded in manufacturing a ‘crisis’ in parliament and framing the debate around an ‘impending’ election call. Is there really a crisis in Parliament? Of course not. Is there need for an election? No. It’s fairly clear that the Conservatives believe that, regardless of polling results which place the Conservatives in a tight race with the Liberals, they can increase their seat total in the next election, which is generally why political leaders at all levels have done the very same thing since Confederation in 1867. I don’t see any reason why Harper’s motivation is any different than that of say… Pierre Trudeau circa 1974.

The economic downturn in Ontario is hardly something that can be squarely pinned on the Conservatives, and after only two years in office it is reasonable to believe that the Conservatives could use their partisan spin machine to attempt to pin the downturn on “13 years of Liberal economic mismanagement…” If anything, the economic mess in Ontario’s auto sector has more to do with inefficiencies of the automobile manufactures than the policies of Conservative or Liberal governments.

Though the lack of respect towards Parliament that the Conservatives have shown towards committees such as the House Ethics Committee is reprehensible, I don’t believe that the In-and-Out scandal will have traction on the doorsteps. It may be a big deal inside the Ottawa bubble, but I have a hard time imagining that this will lead Conservative voters to change their minds in a 2008.

I’m also not sure how winning a handful of by-elections in constituencies which they already hold (minus St. Lambert of course) would give Stéphane Dion‘s Liberals any momentum. The financial and organizational mess within the Liberal Party isn’t likely convincing Harper to change his mind on calling an election. After sitting in the Opposition benches for two years, it seems that the Green Shift is the first solid policy announcement that the Liberals have proposed and though Dion’s messaging is getting stronger, it may be too little too late. It also may be that the Liberals are underestimating the bitter taste that Paul Martin and Adscam left in the mouths of Canadians just only two years ago. After two years in the dog house (and a pretty comfortable minority parliament-style dog house at that), it is hard to believe that the Liberals have spent enough time outside the Ottawa bubble to understand why Canadians didn’t trust them to govern in 2006.

Even though people aren’t jumping up to warmly embrace him on the street, I don’t believe that Canadians feel Harper has done an awful job as Prime Minister. With the lack of a credible or charismatic opposition leader to knock him off his Prime Ministerial pedestal, I don’t see anyone moving out of 24 Sussex Drive anytime soon. And though I strongly disagree with many of their policies — including the introduction of draconian copyright legislation, short-sighted cuts to federal arts funding, the lack of seriousness on climate change and environmental issues, and the politicization of MPs taxpayer funded resources — I have a hard time not predicting an increase in the Conservative seat total in the next election, and I can hardly believe that Stephen Harper is afraid of that.

With talk of an impending federal election grabbing the attention of the nation (or not…), I’ve updated the list of nominated federal election candidates in Alberta.

Calgary-Northeast NDP candidate Vinay Dey is the newest candidate on the list. Dey will face off against Tory Devinder Shory and Liberal Sanam Kang.

In 2004, Dey ran for the federal NDP in Calgary-Nose Hill against Tory MP Diane Ablonczy. On the provincial level, Dey ran in the 1989, 1993, and 2004 provincial elections. In 1989, Dey challenged then-Calgary-Egmont Tory MLA David Carter, in 1993 he ran against Calgary-Cross Tory Yvonne Fritz, and in 2004 he challenged Calgary-Fort Tory MLA Wayne Cao.

(h/t Pundits’ Guide)

Not only could it be a new source of renewable energy, but it could also mean less potholes…

Ned Franks’ op-ed in today’s Globe & Mail caught my eye:

There is no good justification for the Canadian practice of giving discretion to the prime minister in setting the time of by-elections, and for the long delays between vacancy and by-election. Neither practice serves parliamentary democracy and the constitutional right of Canadians to be represented in Parliament.

As David Swann joins Mo Elsalhy and Dave Taylor in the race to replace Kevin Taft as the leader of the Alberta Liberal Party, I thought it would be interesting to take a historical look at the past leadership races of that party. Though I promise more real analysis later (including the significance of two candidates being Calgary MLAs and all three having been first elected in 2004), here’s a quick look at the races since 1988:

1988
With a 4-seat Liberal breakthrough into the Legislature in 1986 after a 19 year electoral drought, Edmonton Mayor Laurence Decore and rookie Edmonton-Meadowlark MLA Grant Mitchell pushed long-time leader Nick Taylor out of the leader’s chair at a 1988 Calgary delegated convention. Decore’s coalition (which included Liberals, New Democrats, Red Tories, and right-wing Reformers) challenged the dominance of both Premier Don Getty (who would lose his Edmonton-Whitemud seat to Liberal Percy Wickman in 1989) and Ray Martin‘s Edmonton-based NDP opposition (who would be wiped out in the 1993 election).

RESULTS
Laurence Decore – 801
Grant Mitchell – 385
Nick Taylor – 259

1994
Decore resigned in 1994 after having led the Liberals to win 32 seats in the 1993 election (and intensifying the Battle of Alberta…), leaving Edmonton MLA Bettie Hewes as interim leader until a new leader was chosen. This race attracted a full-lot of candidates that included Edmonton MLAs Grant Mitchell and Sine Chadi, Fort McMurray MLA Adam Germain, Calgary MLA Gary Dickson, and expelled Lougheed-era PC MLA Tom Sindlinger. Rumoured candidates who stayed out of the race included Calgary MLA Frank Bruseker and Calgary Mayor Al Duerr.

As the final ballot featured a race between Mitchell and Chadi, many prominent Decore supporters, including Jim Lightbody, Patricia Misutka, Nancy Power, and Ted Power, were seen supporting Chadi (leading many observers to believe that 1994 was an extension of the Decore-Mitchell/Chretien-Turner-Martin power struggle). This race featured no shortage of controversy caused by dubiously malfunctioning phone lines and questionable absentee ballots during the phone-in vote, after which Chadi and Germain launched appeals of the results. The real and perceived problems in this race dogged Mitchell into the 1997 general election.

It would later be revealed that Chadi has expressed interest in joining the Tory caucus, to which Premier Klein responded “…I’ve indicated subsequently that Sine is not the kind of person that we would like to have in our caucus.“

RESULTS
1st Ballot
Grant Mitchell – 4,799
Sine Chadi – 3,772
Adam Germain – 1,663
Gary Dickson – 706
Tom Sindlinger – 64

2nd Ballot
Grant Mitchell – 4,934
Sine Chadi – 3,794

1998
Mitchell stepped down after the Liberals only won 18 seats in the 1997 election. Stepping up to run were Edmonton MLAs Karen Leibovici and Linda Sloan, Lethbridge MLA Ken Nicol, and former PC Cabinet Minister Nancy MacBeth.

In 1992, MacBeth (then Betkowski) faced off against Ralph Klein for the PC leadership following Don Getty’s resignation. In this race however, with the support of 5 MLAs and 35 former candidates, MacBeth easily defeated her MLA opponents by winning the support of the majority of members in Calgary and Edmonton, while Nicol bested her in rural Alberta. As a party outsider and former Tory, MacBeth faced strong resistance and opposition from within the Liberal caucus. After leading the Liberals to disastrous results in the 2001 election, electing only 7 MLAs and being defeated in own her seat by Tory Mark Norris, MacBeth resigned only days after the election.

Interestingly, MacBeth’s election marked the first time in Alberta history that two parties in the Legislature were led by women (along with NDP Leader Pam Barrett).

RESULTS
Nancy MacBeth – 4,271
Ken Nicol – 2,042
Karen Leibovici – 1,038
Linda Sloan – 285

2004
Having been quietly acclaimed after MacBeth’s resignation, Ken Nicol resigned as Leader in early 2004, opting instead to run for Paul Martin‘s Federal Liberals in Lethbridge. As interim leader, Edmonton MLA Don Massey led the party until Edmonton MLA Kevin Taft was easily elected against two relatively unknown candidates. Taft faced little opposition from former Alberta First Party leader Jon Reil and Forensic Psychologist Jon Parsons Friel.

Though Taft inherited a party with 7 MLAs and a million dollar debt, he led his party to win 16 seats in the 2004 election and pay down a significant amount of its debt. Following the setback of winning 9 seats in the 2008 election, Taft announced his resignation.

RESULTS
Kevin Taft – 2,354
John Reil – 205
Jon Parsons Friel – 174

NOTE: Most of the information I used to write this post came from newspaper articles and books such as Quasi-Democracy? by David Stewart and Keith Archer.

OCCUPIED follows the story of five random Edmontonians who cross paths under a bizarre set of circumstances in a very unlikely place — the men’s washroom at Churchill LRT Station. Though I wasn’t aware of the existence of public washrooms at said LRT station, OCCUPIED introduces you to an entertaining cross-section of characters (including a high-strung lawyer, a city employee, a vagabond, a bagel concerned professional, and a hapless wanna-be lawyer) and their discussions of materialism, post-modernist thought, and the general hectic pace of life.

Overall, it was an entertaining and enjoyable show. Check out VUE Weekly, SEE Magazine, and The Edmonton Journal for more reviews of this Fringe show.

My August 19 Fringe adventure began by joining a friend for a brisk walk from the University of Alberta to the Strathcona Community Hall where me and two friends settled in to watch a boisterous performance of BUSTY RHYMES WITH MC HOT PINK (aka Penny Ashton). A crude, sexually confronting, and hilarious show, MC Hot Pink reveled the audience with her unique poems and songs about all those lovely politically un-correct topics that make some people squirm.

Though I still can’t understand why the Edmonton Journal rated Busty Rhymes as 2 stars out of 5, I was pleased to see that the Edmonton Sun, SEE Magazine and Vue Weekly had some sense to each award the show four stars. Though I would strongly recommend against bringing your Mormon in-laws to see this show, it was quite entertaining to take in as a group. Vue Weekly interviewed MC Pink earlier this week:

After crawling our way out of the unnaturally hot (and un-airconditioned) Community Hall, we headed over to the Next Act Pub for a burger and beer, which was followed up by another couple of beers at the always fun Fringe Beer Gardens. Packed to the brim on this hot evening, these beer gardens are great for meeting up with friends. Recent encounters have included a great conversation with Ward 4 City Councillor Ben Henderson, who had just finished his cameo appearance as the Mayor in David Belke‘s THE ADVENTUROUS TIMES OF KEVIN GRIMES. I haven’t seen him yet, but I have heard rumours of Nathan Fillion sightings on the Fringe grounds this year (if someone can snap a picture of Fillion Fringing, I will post it).

Soon enough, 11pm hit and we were sitting in the Academy at King Edward to watch the spectacle that was HAMLET (SOLO). This intense performance by Raoul Bhaneja was incredibly intense to take in. Shifting from character to character, and having memorized the entire Shakespeare piece, Bhaneja gives quite the impressive performance as he shifts characters from Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, the Ghost, Polonius, Laertes, Horatio, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern, and Fortinbras. It was a great show, though I would recommend seeing an earlier show, rather than bringing in the early morning hours in a hot school gymnasium.

Check out reviews from The Gateway, Vue Weekly, SEE Magazine, the Edmonton Journal,

Like MC Hot Pink, Vue Weekly also interviewed Bhaneja earlier this week:

A day after Edmonton-Centre MLA Laurie Blakeman declined to enter the race, it is being reported that Calgary-Mountain View MLA David Swann has entered the race to replace outgoing Alberta Liberal leader Kevin Taft.

Swann, who has recently returned from the Water is Boss conference in Fort Chipyewan, will face off against former Edmonton-McClung MLA Mo Elsalhy and current Calgary-Currie MLA Dave Taylor. More later.