Tag: Alex Boykowich

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Alberta Politics

Alberta is a pretty boring place to spend a federal election

Alberta is a pretty boring place to spend a federal election. Even as the polls shift nationally, there is a good chance the seat total could be the same as the 2019 election: 33 Conservative and one NDP.

It’s a quiet campaign.

Unlike the 2019 election, when Albertans were still riled up from that year’s April provincial election and federal campaign issues like pipelines and the carbon tax, this year feels sleepy. The majority of Albertans will surely cast their ballots again on September for the Conservative Party, but it might not be with the same level of enthusiasm and gusto as the last election.

But, if there is a chance that any seats could switch parties, here are a few of the ridings where it might happen:

Edmonton-Griesbach

Blake Desjarlais

Probably one of the only centres of electoral excitement in Alberta is where Conservative candidate Kerry Diotte is seeking re-election for his third-term against New Democrat Blake Desjarlais.

The NDP are hoping they can elect a second MP from Alberta and are putting that hope into Desjarlais’ campaign. Party leader Jagmeet Singh has visited the riding twice in the past month, spending an entire day campaigning in the district during the first week of the election, and pouring volunteer, financial and online advertising resources into the local campaign.

If the NDP are going to pick up a second seat in Alberta in this election, this is it. 

Even NDP MLAs, who shunned the federal party in 2019, have been campaigning with Desjarlais in his bid to unseat Diotte. Edmonton-Highlands-Norwood MLA Janis Irwin, Edmonton-Glenora MLA Sarah Hoffman, Edmonton-Rutherford MLA Richard Feehan, Edmonton-South MLA Thomas Dang, Edmonton-North West MLA David Eggen, and Edmonton-West Henday MLA Jon Carson have been spotted on the campaign trail in Edmonton-Griesbach. 

Full list of candidates in Edmonton-Griesbach:

  • Communist: Alex Boykowich
  • Conservative: Kerry Diotte
  • Green: Heather Lau
  • Liberal: Habiba Mohamud
  • Libertarian: Morgan Watson
  • Marxist-Leninist: Mary Joyce
  • NDP: Blake Desjarlais
  • People’s Party: Thomas Matty

Edmonton-Centre

Randy-Boissonnault Edmonton Centre Liberals
Randy Boissonnault

Conservative James Cumming and Liberal Randy Boissonnault are facing each other for the third time since 2015. Boissonnault won the first time they face each other in 2015 and Cumming unseated him in 2019. 

NDP candidate Heather MacKenzie, a former public school board trustee and past municipal candidate, is hoping to dislodge the Liberals as the main alternative to the Conservatives.

NDP vote has held firm over the past three elections, suggesting that Boissonnault’s win in 2015 and defeat in 2019 was more about voters switching between the Conservatives and Liberals than a split between the Liberals and NDP.

Toronto Liberal MP Chrystia Freeland stopped in the district at the beginning of the campaign to support Boissonnault’s bid for re-election.

Full list of candidates in Edmonton-Centre:

  • Conservative: James Cumming
  • Liberal: Randy Boissonnault
  • Libertarian: Valerie Keefe
  • Marxist-Leninist: Merryn Edwards
  • NDP: Heather Mackenzie
  • People’s Party: Brock Crocker

Edmonton-Mill Woods

Edmonton City Councillor Ben Henderson is running for the Liberal Party in Edmonton-Mill Woods
Edmonton City Councillor Ben Henderson is running for the Liberal Party in Edmonton-Mill Woods

Conservative Tim Uppal’s main challenger is city councillor Ben Henderson, who hopped south from his long-held municipal ward to run in his federal district.

While Uppal served as an MP for many terms, this is his first time running for re-election in Edmonton-Mill Woods. He was the MP for Edmonton-Sherwood Park from 2008 to 2015. 

The district was represented by Liberal MP Amarjeet Sohi from 2015 to 2019. Sohi is running for Mayor of Edmonton. 

Full list of candidates in Edmonton-Mill Woods:

  • Communist: Naomi Rankin
  • Conservative: Tim Uppal
  • Liberal: Ben Henderson
  • NDP: Nigel Logan
  • People’s Party: Paul McCormack

Calgary-Centre

Sabrina Grover Liberal Calgary-Centre
Sabrina Grover

It’s a long-shot but if the Liberals are able to salvage their national campaign in the next two weeks they could be in a position to pick up this district that Liberal Kent Hehr won in 2015. In this election Liberal Sabrina Grover is challenging first-term Conservative Greg McLean.

Full list of candidates in Calgary-Centre:

  • Christian Heritage Party: David Pawlowski
  • Conservative: Greg McLean
  • Green: Austin Mullins
  • Liberal: Sabrina Grover
  • NDP: Juan Estevez Moreno

Calgary-Skyview

Justin Trudeau and George Chahal (source: Twitter)

Conservative Jag Sahota is facing a challenge from city councillor George Chahal who is running for the Liberals in this northeast Calgary district. Chahal has been endorsed by Mayor Naheed Nenshi, and a handful of city councillors including mayoral election hopefuls Jyoti Gondek and Jeff Davison.

Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau’s plane touched down just long enough for him to appear at a rally in support of Chahal during the first week of the election.

Former MLA Darshan Kang was elected as the Liberal MP in 2015 but left the Liberal caucus after allegations of sexual harassment.

Full list of candidates in Calgary-Skyview:

  • Centrist Party: Nadeem Rana
  • Conservative: Jag Sahota
  • Green: Janna So
  • Independent: Lee Aquart
  • Liberal: George Chahal
  • Marxist-Leninist: Daniel Blanchard
  • NDP: Gurinder Singh Gill
  • People’s Party: Harry Dhillon

Banff-Airdire

Conservative candidate Blake Richards will probably safely coast to re-election on September 20, but the cast of conservative characters in this district make it interesting. Richards faces former Ontario Conseravtive MP Derek Sloan, who has relocated to Alberta in order to hold rallies for anti-mask and COVID conspiracy theorists, Maverick Party candidate and rodeo competitor Tariq Elnaga, People’s Party candidate Nadine Wellwood, and Independent separatist candidate Ron Voss. 

Full list of candidates in Banff-Airdire:

  • Conservative: Blake Richards
  • Green: Aidan Blum
  • Independent: Caroline O’Driscoll
  • Independent: Derek Sloan
  • Independent: Ron Voss
  • Liberal: David Gamble
  • Maverick: Tariq Elnaga
  • NDP: Sarah Zagoda
  • People’s Party: Nadine Wellwood

The smaller right-wing parties

It has yet to be seen what kind of impact two smaller right-wing parties will have in Alberta in this election.

People’s Party leader Maxime Bernier is in Alberta this week holding a series of rallies and it seems like the right-wing populist party is gaining support among disenchanted conservatives and anti-vaxxer crowds.

Wildrose Independence Party leader Paul Hinman has been spotted at People’s Party events and Bernier also met with Cypress-Medicine Hat Drew Barnes, who currently sits as an Independent MLA after being ejected from the United Conservative Party caucus earlier in the summer. It also appears as though outgoing Fort McMurray-Cold Lake Conservative MP David Yurdiga endorsed the local People’s Party candidate in a post on his personal Facebook account.

The separatist Maverick Party is only running candidates in districts they have determined are not likely to elect a Liberal or NDP MP, which is most of Alberta, but limiting themselves to running in Conservative strongholds has probably eliminated their chances of being relevant in this election.

Former talk radio host Dave Rutherford has been joining Maverick Party interim leader Jay Hill at candidate events across the province.

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Alberta Politics

Jagmeet Singh is coming to Alberta. Derek Sloan is running in Alberta?

Blake Desjarlais, Jagmeet Singh, and Heather McPherson at Kind Ice Cream in Highlands in July 2021.
Blake Desjarlais, Jagmeet Singh, and Heather McPherson at Kind Ice Cream in Highlands in July 2021. (photo credit: Heather McPherson on Twitter)

New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh will be the first party leader to visit Alberta in this election campaign when he stops in Edmonton on August 19.

Singh will be spending his whole day in Edmonton-Griesbach starting with a 9:30am health care announcement outside the East Edmonton Health Centre and a 1:15pm “whistle stop event” at the Bellevue Community Hall at in support of local candidate Blake Desjarlais and other candidates in the capital city.

Desjarlais is Director of Public Affairs & National Operations for the Metis Settlements General Council and the former Co-Chair of Alberta’s Indigenous Climate Leadership Summit. The NDP are pouring some resources into the riding, including support from Edmonton-Strathcona NDP MP Heather McPherson, in hopes that Desjarlais can unseat second-term Conservative MP Kerry Diotte.

Unlike the last election, a few Alberta NDP MLAs are campaigning alongside the federal NDP. Popular Edmonton-Highlands-Norwood MLA Janis Irwin has lent her support and her extensive social media reach to Desjarlais (she ran against Diotte in 2015), as has Edmonton-Rutherford MLA Richard Feehan, who served as Minister of Indigenous Relations from 2016 to 2019.

Meanwhile, as Graham Thomson writes in ipolitics today, unlike the last federal election campaign, Premier Jason Kenney is now seen as a liability for his federal Conservative brethren. The Premier’s Office has said that Kenney is currently on vacation.

Ontario MP Derek Sloan running in Banff-Airdrie?

Derek Sloan speaking to a crowd in Calgary.
Derek Sloan speaking to a crowd in Calgary. (source: Facebook)

Independent Ontario MP Derek Sloan has spent the past month travelling around Alberta speaking to increasingly large crowds of anti-vaxxer and COVID-19 conspiracy theorists. Videos on his social media accounts show he has recently spoken at evangelical-style events in Airdrie, Calgary, Camrose, Claresholm, Cochrane, Red Deer and St. Albert.

The first-term MP from Hastings-Lennox and Addington was kicked out of the Conservative caucus in January 2021 after making numerous controversial statements about abortion and LGBTQ issues, and accepting a donation from a neo-Nazi.

Sloan apparently sees Alberta as his new political home, because in an email to his supporters today he pledged to never leave and “Make Alberta Great Again!” as he plans to make an important announcement in the town of Cochrane tomorrow. Rumours has it that the life-long Ontarian plans to run as an Independent candidate in Banff-Airdrie, where incumbent Conservative MP Blake Richards is seeking re-election.

Federal Conservatives endorse Senate Nominee candidates

The federal Conservative Party has endorsed three candidates in the upcoming Senate Nominee election to select two nominees to submit to the Prime Minster of appointment tot he upper chamber.

Lobbyist and former United Conservative Party president Erika Barootes, right-wing activist and former municipal election candidate Pam Davidson and Canadian Ukrainian Free Trade Agreement Association president Mykhailo Martyniouk will have the endorsement of the federal party in the October elections.

Newly nominated federal election candidates

  • The Liberal Party has nominated Leah McLeod in Battle River-Crowfoot, Jessica Dale-Walker in Calgary-Nose Hill, Dan Campbell in Grande Prairie-Mackenzie, and Hannah Wilson in Medicine Hat-Cardston-Warner.
  • The Communist Party of Canada has nominated candidates Jonathan Trautman in Calgary-Forest Lawn,  Alex Boykowich in Edmonton-Griesbach and Naomi Rankin in Edmonton-Mill Woods.
  • The Green Party has nominated Daniel Brisbin in Battle River-Crowfoot.
  • The Maverick Party has replaced Doug Karwandy with Jeff Golka in Battle River-Crowfoot.
  • The Christian Heritage Party has nominated former Wildrose candidate Jeff Willerton in Sturgeon River-Parkland and Derek Vanspronsen in Calgary-Heritage. Previously announced Calgary-Heritage candidate Larry Heather is now running in Calgary-Nose Hill.

I am maintaining an updated list of nominated federal election candidates in Alberta. Please drop a comment below if I am missing anyone. Thank you.

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Alberta Politics

Liberals, NDP and Greens scrambling to fill candidate slates in Alberta ahead of federal election call

Jasraj Singh Hallan, Nirmala Naidoo, Joe Pimlott, Gurdiner Singh Gill
Jasraj Singh Hallan, Nirmala Naidoo, Joe Pimlott, Gurdiner Singh Gill

Photo: federal candidates Jasraj Singh Hallan, Nirmala Naidoo, Joe Pimlott, and Gurinder Singh Gill

With a federal election expected to begin sometime in the next nine days, some of Canada’s major political parties are scrambling to fill their slate of candidates in Alberta. At the time this update was published, the Liberal Party had 17 candidates nominated in Alberta’s 34 ridings, the NDP had nominated candidates in 9 ridings, and the Greens had candidates in 21 ridings. The Conservative Party and People’s Party had nominated full-slates of 34 candidates.

The regionally dominant Conservative Party is already expected to sweep most of the federal races in Alberta on October 21, 2019, but it is still a bit shocking that the other major political parties are still so far behind in their candidate selection process. It sends a pretty strong signal that those parties will be spending most of their resources in other provinces that are seen as more competitive, with the exception of a few Alberta ridings – Edmonton-Strathcona for the NDP and Calgary-Centre, Edmonton-Centre and Edmonton-Mill Woods for the Liberals.

Former UCP candidiate Hallan wins Conservative nomination in Calgary-Forest Lawn

Jasraj Singh Hallan won the Conservative Party nomination in Calgary-Forest Lawn, defeating Andre Chabot, Amrit Rai Nannan, and Aman Obhrai (son of deceased former MP Deepak Obhrai). Hallan runs a residential home building business in Calgary and was the United Conservative Party candidate in Calgary-McCall in Alberta’s 2019 provincial election where he finished 13 points behind New Democratic Party MLA Irfan Sabir.

Calgary-Forest Lawn was the eighth closest race in Alberta in the 2015 federal election, with Obhrai finishing 4,932 votes ahead of the Liberal candidate in that election.

As noted in a previous update, Joe Pimlott has been chosen as the federal NDP candidate in Calgary-Forest Lawn. Pimlott is a community liaison with Metis Calgary Family Services and was the NDP candidate in Calgary-Peigan in the 2019 provincial election.

Naidoo runs for Liberals in Calgary-Skyview

Nirmala Naidoo has been acclaimed as the Liberal candidate in Calgary-Skyview. The former television broadcaster was the Liberal candidate in Calgary-Rocky Ridge in the 2015 election. She briefly served as co-chair of the Alberta Liberal Party’s leadership contest before stepping down to serve as the spokesperson for Sandra Jansen during her brief campaign for the Progressive Conservative Party leadership in 2016 (Jansen had endorsed Naidoo’s federal candidacy in 2015).

Naidoo’s candidacy was approved despite two other candidates having announced their intentions to run for the Liberal Party nomination in this riding.

The riding is currently represented by Independent MP Darshan Kang. Kang is a former two-term Liberal MLA who was elected as a federal Liberal in 2015 before leaving the Liberal caucus in 2018 following allegations of sexual harassment.

Gurinder Singh Gill was recently nominated as the NDP candidate in Calgary-Skyview.

Here are some of the other nomination updates:

  • The Liberals have nominated Ghada Alatrash in Calgary-Signal Hill. She is a Syrian-Canadian writer and holds a PhD in Educational Research from the University of Calgary.
  • Leslie Penny is the nominated Liberal Party candidate in Peace River-Westlock. Penny ran for the provincial Liberal Party in Barrhead-Morinville-Westlock in the 2008 and 2012 elections.
  • Ronald Brochu is the Liberal Party candidate in Sturgeon River-Parkland. Brochu has run for the provincial Liberal Party in Edmonton-Gold Bar in 2015 and Drayton Valley-Devon in 2019.
  • Del Arnold has been nominated as the Liberal Party candidate in Calgary-Shepard. Arnold is the former vice-president of the Alberta Society of Registered Cardiology Technologists.
  • Tariq Chaudary has been acclaimed as the Liberal Party candidate in Edmonton-Riverbend. Chaudary was the Liberal candidate in this riding in 2015, where he earned 30 per cent of the vote.
  • Audrey Redman is expected to seek the NDP nomination in Edmonton-Riverbend on September 16, 2019.
  • Gurmit Bhachu is seeking the NDP nomination in Calgary-Midnapore. Bhachu is active with the provincial NDP in Calgary-Fish Creek and briefly considered seeking the nomination in that district before the 2019 provincial election. The nomination meeting is scheduled to take place on September 10, 2019.
  • The NDP will nominate candidates in Calgary-Heritage on September 10 and in Calgary-Nose Hill on September 11.
  • Elke Crosson has been nominated as the Green Party candidate in Lakeland.
  • Alex Boykowich is running in Edmonton-Griesbach for the Communist Party of Canada. Boykowich recently ran as the Communist Party of Alberta candidate in Edmonton-Highlands-Norwood in the 2019 election.
  • Dougal MacDonald is running in Edmonton-Strathcona as a candidate for the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada. MacDonald also ran for his party in this riding in the 2015 federal election.

Federal Green candidate now interim leader of the Green Party of Alberta

Will Carnegie Green Party of Alberta Calgary Forest Lawn
Will Carnegie

Will Carnegie, the federal Green candidate in Calgary-Forest Lawn, is now the interim leader of the Green Party of Alberta following the resignation of Cheryle Chagnon-Greyeyes.

“I’ve had devastating personal losses and health challenges over the past year, and I need time to step away, focus on family, and heal,” Chagnon-Greyeyes explained in a press release from the party.

Carnegie, who ran for the provincial Greens in Calgary-East in the 2019 election, will remain interim leader until a new leader is elected in early 2020.

This marks the fourth change in Green Party leadership in Alberta since 2017.

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