Tag: Alberta Separatists Rally

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Alberta Politics

Alberta’s separation referendum and the law of unintended consequences

Jason Kenney accepting the leadership of the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party in March 2017
Jason Kenney accepting the leadership of the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party in March 2017

Politics makes strange bedfellows. It’s amazing how much can change in 10 years.

I was recently reminded that it was only 10 years ago that Jason Kenney was campaigning for the leadership of Alberta’s Progressive Conservative Party. With everything that has happened in Alberta politics since then, it feels like it might as well have been 20 years ago.

The longtime Calgary MP and former federal cabinet minister set his sights on “uniting the right” after the PC Party’s 43-year long streak as govermment was ended in spectacular fashion by Rachel Notley’s Alberta NDP in the 2015 election.

The PC Party’s loss and the NDP’s win was a shock to Alberta’s political system.

Decades of one-party dominance in Alberta (that even preceded the PCs) created a system centered around a PC Party with a big tent that spanned the political spectrum. The PC Party’s survival instincts and electoral success were matched only by the Liberal Party of Canada — another natural governing party that adapted and recreated itself again and again over the last century to get in front of the parade of public opinion.

And it worked like a charm for four decades.

Read all about it on the Daveberta Substack

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Alberta Politics

Alberta separatists march on the Legislature and UCP AGM

The steps of the Legislature are a busy place this week as supporters of Alberta separatism are promising a large pro-independence rally on October 25. The rally will feature speakers from the Alberta Prosperity Project including Jeffrey Rath, Dennis Modry and Mitch Sylvestre, restaurant owner, podcaster and COVID-19 restrictions opponent Chris Scott, and former UCP nomination candidate Tanya Clemens.

Describing the rally as the first battle in the fight for an independent Alberta, Sylvestre told separatist supporters in a rambling video posted by the APP yesterday that “before we have to pay in blood we have to pay in time because Communism always comes in on a promise and leaves with a bullet.”

Sylvestre is the president of the UCP constituency association in the Bonnyville-Cold Lake-St. Paul riding and is the proponent of the court-delayed citizen initiative to hold a province-wide referendum asking the question “Do you agree that the Province of Alberta shall become a sovereign country and cease to be a province in Canada?”

Read more on the Daveberta Substack

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