Tag: Dale Nally

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Alberta Politics

Nenshi NDP launch affordability agenda, finally talking about cost of living and grocery prices

Edmonton-Gold Bar MLA Marlin Schmidt (left) and NDP leader Naheed Nenshi (right) speaking at a press conference on June 23, 2026 (screenshot: Alberta NDP / YouTube)
Edmonton-Gold Bar MLA Marlin Schmidt (left) and NDP leader Naheed Nenshi (right) speaking at a press conference on June 23, 2026 (screenshot: Alberta NDP / YouTube)

I wrote last year that NDP MLAs should should start every day by asking themselves the question “how can we make life more affordable for working-class Alberta families?” and then they should spend the rest of their day talking all about it, all the time. I still believe this today.

Nenshi’s NDP have now started talking more about pocketbook issues with the launch of their Alberta Affordability Agenda, which is a good start. The party has been spending a lot of energy focusing on the separation referendum through its For Alberta For Canada campaign, but it can’t afford to ignore other important issues with a provincial election only 15 months away at the latest.

In their new suite of affordability policies, the NDP promises to cut electricity bills by 10 per cent, increase minimum wage to $18, and to reduce grocery prices by increasing competition, ending shrinkflation, and appointing a grocery watchdog.

The NDP also proposed removing the $0.13 per litre provincial gas tax while gas prices remain high — something that will make even Lorne Gunter happy.

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Alberta Politics

Stampede Stomp! Farkas and Smith duel over party tents and beer prices, Nenshi finally shifts to affordability

Premier Danielle Smith and Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas in December 2025 (source: Danielle Smith / Facebook)
Premier Danielle Smith and Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas in December 2025 (source: Danielle Smith / Facebook)

Danielle Smith’s row with Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas over weeknight music tent hours ended with the Premier getting Stampede stomped over her government’s plans to increase the minimum price of a pint of beer days ahead of the start of the Calgary Stampede. Smith backed down and beer minister Dale Nally ordered the Alberta Gaming, Liquor & Cannabis crown corporation to abandon the price increase.

Farkas can now do a victory lap as a hero of both Stampede beer drinkers and local residents worried about the giant Cowboys party tent being erected in their neighbourhood.

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Alberta Politics

Nenshi’s NDP starts nominating candidates for next Alberta election

Edmonton-Glenora MLA Sarah Hoffman and NDP leader Naheed Nenshi (source: Sarah Hoffman / Instagram)
Edmonton-Glenora MLA Sarah Hoffman and NDP leader Naheed Nenshi (source: Sarah Hoffman / Instagram)

Early March candidate meetings scheduled in Calgary and Edmonton ridings

With rumours of an early provincial election circulating since last year, the Alberta NDP looks like it will be the first political party out of the gate to nominate candidates ahead of the next vote.

The NDP website lists candidate nomination meetings scheduled in Edmonton-Glenora on March 3, Calgary-Elbow on March 4, Calgary-Klein on March 5, Edmonton-Beverly-Clareview on March 6 and Calgary-Edgemont on March 7.

All five of these ridings are represented by NDP MLAs who will be seeking re-election if they secure their party’s nominations.

Longtime Daveberta readers will know that I am keenly interested in tracking candidate nominations ahead of provincial and federal elections in Alberta, so I am pleased to share with you that I am continuing this tradition as we approach the next election.

Read all about it on the Daveberta Substack

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Alberta Politics

4 ways Danielle Smith’s UCP could react to the Forever Canadian citizen initiative

Thomas Lukaszuk
Thomas Lukaszuk

Has Thomas Lukaszuk’s pro-Canada petition boxed in Danielle Smith on Alberta separatism?

If there is one big takeaway from last weekend’s United Conservative Party annual general meeting it’s that the separatist movement in Alberta is deeply intrenched in the governing party.

From jeers and cheers to at least half the board candidates endorsed by the separatist Alberta Prosperity Project getting elected, the weekend gathering was a showcase of how influential Alberta’s most prominent separatists are in Premier Danielle Smith‘s UCP.

Smith’s unwillingness to challenge the burgeoning separatist-wing she helped inflame and instead accept them as key players in her party leaves the Premier in a precarious position after yesterday’s news that Chief Elections Officer Gordon McClure has validated and approved a pro-Canada citizen initiative petition asking the question “Do you agree that Alberta should remain in Canada?”

The Forever Canadian campaign was spearheaded by former Progressive Conservative MLA Thomas Lukaszuk, who represented Edmonton-Castle Downs in the Legislature from 2001 to 2015 and launched the citizen initiative in response to the separatist movement showing momentum earlier this year.

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Alberta Politics

Total Recall: Nine UCP MLAs now facing recall petitions in their ridings

UCP MLA Dale Nally faces a recall campaign in Morinville-St. Albert (source: CTV)
UCP MLA Dale Nally faces a recall campaign in Morinville-St. Albert (source: CTV)

MLA Dale Nally lashed out at constituent organizing recall effort in Morinville-St. Albert

And then there were nine.

Elections Alberta approved the start of six additional MLA recall campaigns yesterday, adding to the list of three already ongoing recall efforts against United Conservative Party MLAs Demetrios Nicolaides in Calgary-Bow, Angela Pitt in Airdrie-East, and Nolan Dyck in Grande Prairie.

The local organizers now have until February 22, 2026 to collect in-person signatures to recall UCP MLAs Myles McDougall in Calgary-Fish Creek, Ric McIver in Calgary-Hays, Muhammad Yaseen in Calgary-North, Rajan Sawhney in Calgary-North West, RJ Sigurdson in Highwood, and Dale Nally in Morinville-St. Albert.

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Alberta Politics

Alberta Liberals rode the Reform Party MLA recall wave

Liberal Party leader Laurence Decore at a press conference with University of Calgary Students’ Union President Naheed Nenshi in 1993 (source: Alberta Views Magazine)
Liberal Party leader Laurence Decore at a press conference with University of Calgary Students’ Union President Naheed Nenshi in 1993 (source: Alberta Views Magazine)

It would be more than 50 years after William Aberhart repealled the recall law before more attempts were made to bring back recall in Alberta.

Riding the same wave of populism that Ernest’s son Preston Manning rode into Ottawa in the early 1990s, the Alberta Liberal Party led by Laurence Decore adopted recall as an official party policy in the 1993 election.

“Recall is vital for Albertans because it gives people an element of control over their politicians between elections,” Decore argued in the Edmonton Journal in June 1993. “It also gives MLAs the power to tell their leader they can’t vote for a bill because their constituents wouldn’t stand for it. This power will encourage more free votes in the house and loosen party discipline.”

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Alberta Politics

Premier Aberhart targeted with MLA recall in Okotoks-High River

It wasn’t until September 1937 that a formal application to start a recall petition against Premier William Aberhart in his Okotoks-High River riding was filed and submitted with the required $200 deposit (which is around $4,000 in current dollars).

“The said member, Hon. William Aberhart, has failed to implement promises and representations made by him to the electors prior to the election. He has supported government policies and enactment of statutes detrimental to the province and has lost the conference of the electorate of Okotoks-High River electoral division,” read the application submitted on September 20, 1937.

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Alberta Politics

Alberta MLAs Joseph Beaudry and James Hansen the first MLA recall targets

Premier William Aberhart usually gets credit for being the first Alberta MLA to face the threat recall but that honour actually belongs to St. Paul MLA Joseph Beaudry and Taber MLA James Hansen.

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Alberta Politics

Alberta’s first MLA recall experiment spiked when Premier Aberhart targeted

William Aberhart was Premier of Alberta from 1935 to 1943.
William Aberhart was Premier of Alberta from 1935 to 1943.

Social Credit’s recall law lasted 18 months on the books before it was repealed

A recent proliferation of MLA recall campaigns has fuelled speculation that Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party government could repeal the law, just like Premier William Aberhart did when his party’s MLAs faced recall campaigns 88 years ago.

Aberhart’s Social Credit government passed a recall law in April 1936 and then repealed it in October 1937 after the Premier was targeted by voters in his own riding.

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Alberta Politics

Alberta is Recalling. UCP MLA Angela Pitt facing recall campaign in Airdrie-East

Airdire-East MLA Angela Pitt (source: Angela Pitt / Facebook)
Airdire-East MLA Angela Pitt (source: Angela Pitt / Facebook)

Also: Look who’s running in the UCP AGM board elections

An MLA Recall law championed by United Conservative Party MLAs four years ago is coming back to haunt some of those politicians today.

A second recall campaign launched this month aims to recall UCP MLA Angela Pitt in her suburban Airdrie-East riding north of Calgary. Pitt is the second MLA to face a recall effort in recent weeks with a similar campaign being launched by constituents of Calgary-Bow UCP MLA and Minister of Education and Childcare Demetrios Nicolaides in October.

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Alberta Politics

Alberta government almost accidentally auctioned off Gangwon Bell of Friendship

With Premier Danielle Smith travelling to South Korea to meet with the Governor of that country’s Gangwon state government this week, I am re-sharing an amusing article I originally published on March 22, 2023. Enjoy!

If you are in the market for used office furniture or old electronics, then the Alberta Government’s online auction website is probably for you. Sometimes you might also find an old piano, intriguing piece of art, mobile trailer or heavily-used ATV, but a few months ago something very unique was put on the government’s auction block: a Bell of Friendship.

This particular Bell of Friendship was gifted to the Government of Alberta in 1981 by the then-Governor of Kangwon-do (known more commonly as Gangwon), South Korea.

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Alberta Politics

The final pitch: Who will be the big election winners in Calgary and Edmonton?

Liberal Party leader Mark Carney
Liberal Party leader Mark Carney

Jagmeet Singh, Pierre Poilievre, and maybe Mark Carney make final stops in Alberta

Canada’s federal election is four days away and most polls are pointing to a big national victory for Mark Carney’s Liberal Party. While the national polls show the gap between Carney’s party and Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives slightly tightening, the Liberal lead in Ontario and Atlantic Canada looks insurmountable unless something drastic happens before April 28.

While most of Alberta’s federal ridings will be solidly Conservative blue on election night, the province’s two biggest cities could produce some interesting results. I haven’t seen any actual riding-level polls, which are both expensive and difficult to conduct, but most national polls show the Liberals with around 30 percent support in Alberta. This would represent the largest percentage of votes for the federal Liberals in Alberta since 1968.

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Alberta Politics

Jennifer Johnson in, Marshall Smith out, Rob Anderson still in

UCP cabinet minister Jason Nixon and Lacombe-Ponoka MLA Jennifer Johnson in August 2024 (source: Jennifer Johnson / Facebook)
UCP cabinet minister Jason Nixon and Lacombe-Ponoka MLA Jennifer Johnson in August 2024 (source: Jennifer Johnson / Facebook)

Jennifer Johnson welcomed into the UCP Caucus, Rob Anderson to replace Marshall Smith as Premier’s Chief of Staff

The leaves are changing, the nights are getting cooler, and the days are getting shorter. It’s fall in Alberta. And while many Albertans are enjoying a fairly pleasant change of seasons as we reluctantly brace ourselves for the inevitable shock of the first snowfall, politics in our province is just starting to heat up.

Government and opposition MLAs will return to the Legislature at the end of this month for what is expected to be a painfully contentious and controversial session. And a rowdy crowd of more than 5,400 partisans are expected to converge on Red Deer for the United Conservative Party’s annual general meeting and leadership review during the first two days of November.

And like the changing of the seasons, there will be a few notable changes in the ranks of the UCP when these two big events happen at the end of the month.

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Alberta Politics

19 Alberta ridings I’ll be watching closely on Election Day

19 Alberta ridings I’ll be watching closely on Election Day (source: CanadianPolling.ca)
19 Alberta ridings I’ll be watching closely on Election Day (source: CanadianPolling.ca)

There are four days left until Election Day in Alberta.

Readers of the Daveberta will know I’ve been watching this Alberta election pretty closely and, while I’ve actually been watching all 87 ridings throughout the campaign, there are a few handfuls I’ve been keeping a close eye on.

Some of them will be close races and some will be won with landslides.

Here’s my list of 19 ridings I’ll be watching closely on Election Day.

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Alberta Politics

After the election: What different scenarios mean for Alberta

UCP leader Danielle Smith with candidates Dale Nally (left) and Angela Wood (right) at a campaign event in St. Albert (source: Becca Polak / Twitter)
UCP leader Danielle Smith with candidates Dale Nally (left) and Angela Wood (right) at a campaign event in St. Albert (source: Becca Polak / Twitter)

Before the collapse of the Progressive Conservative Party in 2015, being a PC Party member – or at least participating in PC Party events – was extremely normal. Normal to the point that it was barely political.

If you were a business or a non-profit that depended on government policy, you were a participator to some extent – you kind of had to be. As a decades-old political dynasty, it was the only game in town, and the political dynamic in Alberta showed it.

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