Thank you to everyone who has shared kind words and notes of congratulations as I mark 20 years of writing about Alberta politics on Daveberta. This week I had the real honour meeting with my MLA, Janis Irwin, who presented me with a celebratory scroll marking the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Daveberta. Thank you, Janis!
Daveberta readers will also know Irwin as the 5-time winner in the Best Alberta MLA category in the annual Best of Alberta Politics Awards.
Former Calgary PC MLA David Carter, who served as Speaker of the Legislative Assembly from 1986 to 1993, wrote to the commission expressing his concern about increasing the total number of MLAs from 87 to 89:
“This will result in crowding. Including potential hinderance in the event of fire or evacuation from the Chamber. In my opinion, these additional seats are an ill-advised intrusion by the government and should be regarded architecturally as the absolute limit to the number of seats within the Chamber. I recommend this limitation be noted in the report.”
Pierre Poilievre is going to win. The only real question is: by how much?
Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre will return to the House of Commons after he wins the federal by-election happening in the sprawling rural riding of Battle River-Crowfoot on Monday, August 18.
The by-election marking Poilievre’s return to Ottawa also marks a return to Alberta after he left his hometown of Calgary more than 20 years ago to work as a political staffer in Ottawa and run in a riding just outside the capital city. After spending 21 years as an Ottawa-area MP, Poilievre was defeated by Liberal Bruce Fanjoy in Carleton on April 28, which many believe was a result of his strong support of the anti-vaccine trucker convoy that harassed residents of the capital city in January and February 2022.
Athabasca-Barrhead-Westlock UCP MLA Glenn van Dijken asked the commission to consider what he described as the “Unique Burden of Rural Representation” when redrawing Alberta’s electoral map.
The three-term MLA urged the commission to lower the population averages in rural ridings so that rural MLAs will not have an increasingly large geographic region and more municipalities to represent in the Legislature, even if that means increasing the population averages in urban ridings.
Former Calgary mayor Al Duerr argued in his written submission to the commission that lumping rural and commuter communities into Calgary ridings would be impractical, unfair and a detriment to effective representation.
The former four-term Calgary mayor, who served from 1989 to 2001, wrote that Calgary residents share different interests than people in neighbouring communities and they access different services and go to schools in wholly different school systems…
East of Lethbridge, two former Medicine Hat MLAs are asking the commission to redraw the Medicine Hat ridings after the city was divided into two large rural-urban ridings when the riding boundaries were last redistributed in 2017.
Different submissions from Rob Renner, who was the Progressive Conservative MLA for Medicine Hat from 1993 to 2004, and Bob Wanner, who represented Medicine Hat as an NDP MLA from 2015 to 2019, argued that pairing the Medicine Hat with the City of Brooks in the current Brooks-Medicine Hat riding doesn’t well-serve the interests of Alberta’s sixth largest city.
I read all 197 submissions to Alberta’s Electoral Boundaries Commission so you don’t have to
The City of Lethbridge could be carved into four provincial ridings that sprawl into the surrounding rural areas if a local United Conservative Party MLA gets his wish. Lethbridge-East MLA Nathan Neudorf submitted a written proposal to the Electoral Boundaries Commission calling for the southwest Alberta city to be reconfigured into “three or four complementary ridings that create a cohesive “agri-innovation corridor.”
Neudorf’s submission, which is one of 197 written submissions received by the commission and posted on its website, proposes a dramatic change in the electoral map he says would give “producers, processors, researches, and urban businesses a unified voice in the Legislature.”
It’s been just over three months since Election Day in Canada and, as the dust has settled, I’ve taken a closer look at the results in ridings across Alberta.
The Conservative Party continued its decades-long streak of electoral dominance in federal elections in Alberta as it saw its support jump to 63.5 percent from 55.4 percent in 2021 (though it is still lower than the 69 percent the Conservatives earned in Alberta in 2019). The Conservatives had strong showings in every part of the province, but especially in rural Alberta where the party’s candidates were elected with huge margins of victory.
Alberta’s two largest cities, Calgary and Edmonton, were home to the most interesting and most competitive races of the federal election in our province. The races with the narrowest margins of victory were in the cities, and the three closest races were in Calgary, which not long ago was considered a Conservative stronghold.
It’s going to be messy but the Chief Electoral Officer needs to hold his ground – and his independence.
Alberta’s Chief Electoral Officer was publicly rebuked by Premier Danielle Smith and Minister of Justice Mickey Amery after a petition aimed at triggering a province-wide referendum on Alberta’s separation from Canada was referred to the courts to determine if it is legal.
Chief Electoral Officer Gordon McClure announced earlier this week that a citizen initiative petition request submitted by separatist Alberta Prosperity Project CEO Mitch Sylvestre was being referred to the Court of King’s Bench to determine whether it conforms with the requirements of sections 2 (4) of the Citizen Initiative Act. That section specifically states that “an initiative petition proposal must not contravene sections 1 to 35.1 of the Constitution Act, 1982.”
Smith and Amery took to social media to call on McClure to withdraw the court reference and allow the Alberta separation petition to move forward.
To celebrate 20 years of Daveberta, I’m happy to offer free subscribers a 20 percent discount on an annual paid subscription ($40/year down from the regular $50/year). Paid subscribers get full access to all Daveberta newsletters and columns, full episodes of the Daveberta Podcast and a shout out on the podcast, and special Alberta politics extras. Thank you to everyone who has already upgraded their subscription through this offer.
There are 87 days until municipal election day in Alberta and Edmonton’s sleepy mayoral race is beginning to take shape.
With Mayor Amarjeet Sohi not running for re-election after serving one term in the office, what looks like a fairly open field of current and former city councillors has emerged in the race to replace him.
With the city facing an addictions and mental health crisis, a pitch battle over zoning and infill in mature neighbourhoods, huge population growth that is putting immense pressure on the city’s public services, infrastructure, schools and hospitals, and a provincial government is openly hostile to the current city council, whoever is in the mayor’s chair for the next four years will face a rough and challenging time.
To celebrate 20 years of Daveberta, I’m happy to offer free subscribers a 20 percent discount on an annual paid subscription ($40/year down from the regular $50/year). Paid subscribers get full access to all Daveberta newsletters and columns, full episodes of the Daveberta Podcast and a shout out on the podcast, and special Alberta politics extras.
It was 2005.
After a short stint on the dysfunctional Calgary Board of Education, former Fraser Institute intern Danielle Smith was in her fifth year as a columnist and editorial board member at the Calgary Herald. Smith joined the Herald a few years earlier while the journalists who worked for the paper were on strike.
Harvard-educated Naheed Nenshi was teaching non-profit management at Mount Royal College in Calgary. Nenshi was recovering from an unsuccessful first campaign for city council the year earlier and was about to build his profile as a civic affairs columnist in the same newspaper that employed Smith.
And somewhere on the University of Alberta campus in Edmonton, a young political science student named Dave plucked away at his laptop keyboard writing posts to publish on his new blog, Daveberta.
A lot has happened in the 20 years since. Time flies when you’re having fun.
I never expected or planned to still be writing about Alberta politics today but it turns out that it was something I enjoyed doing and people enjoyed reading, so I kept it up. And I’m glad I did.
To celebrate 20 years of Daveberta, I’m happy to offer free subscribers a 20 percent discount on an annual paid subscription ($40/year down from the regular $50/year). Paid subscribers get full access to all Daveberta newsletters and columns, full episodes of the Daveberta Podcast and a shout out on the podcast, and special Alberta politics extras.
With municipal elections happening in October, Edmonton mayoral race is taking shape and taking unexpected turns.
A heated few weeks at Edmonton City Council culminated with retiring councillor Sarah Hamilton launching a profanity-laden attack against her colleague Jo-Anne Wright, and perceived mayoral race frontrunner and Better Edmonton Party leader Tim Cartmell leaving on vacation just before the end of public hearings and missing a crucial vote to amend the city’s controversial zoning bylaw.
A motion from Mayor Amarjeet Sohi to reaffirm some of the most controversial parts of the current bylaw passed in a 6-5 vote, meaning that Cartmell’s vote would have made the difference had he shown up in-person or joined the meeting over Zoom.
The week before Cartmell left for vacation, he proposed halting infill development in the city with a dramatic motion that he was told ahead of time was likely illegal. Cartmell then posted a video on social media tut tutting his council colleagues before leaving for an undisclosed vacation spot that his campaign says has no internet connectivity.
A Liberal win in this sprawling rural riding would be one in a trillion
With Stampede season soon winding down in Calgary, attention of the political class will quickly turn from the lobbyist receptions, pancake flips, and oil industry cocktail parties to the land of real cowboys. The federal by-election in Battle River-Crowfoot has been called for August 18 and Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre is the favourite to win this vote and reclaim a seat in the House of Commons after his defeat in Ontario on April 28.
This week’s by-elections were as clear an indication as any that the divisive debate over Alberta’s separation from Canada is mostly an issue among rural conservatives in and outside of Smith’s UCP.
UCP candidate Tara Sawyer won the Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills riding with 61 percent, a drop of 14 points from the 2023 election, and most of that vote appears to have gone to the right-wing separatist Republican Party.
The Republicans had hoped their party leader, Cam Davies, could pull off a win inspired by separatist Gordon Kesler’s win in Olds-Didsbury in 1982 but when the votes were counted he placed third with 17 percent behind NDP candidate Bev Toews, who placed second with 20 percent.
Danielle Smith’s Alberta Next Panel looks a lot like a UCP re-election tour
Alberta is getting a bad deal and it’s always Ottawa’s fault. That’s Premier Danielle Smith’s key message in a 6 minute and 26 second long video posted on her social media channels on Tuesday.
Less that 24 hours after the polls closed in three provincial by-elections that saw voters deliver one win for Smith’s United Conservative Party and two wins for Naheed Nenshi’s NDP, the premier was ready to announce a new panel to hear people’s grievances about Ottawa and views on the provincial government taking control of immigration, which immigrants should have access to social services, and creating a provincial tax collection agency, provincial pension plan and provincial police force.
