Tag: Danielle Smith

UCP fumbling primed Albertans to support the teachers’ strike

Post author By Dave Cournoyer
Post date November 1, 2025

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith (right) was photographed sitting at the Calgary International Airport while UCP MLAs were still in the Legislature pushing through Bill 2 on Monday night. Smith is spending the week in Saudi Arabia and Dubai. (photo: publicinterestalberta / Instagram)

Danielle Smith left for Saudi Arabia before invoking Notwithstanding Clause

The fall session of the Legislature started on Monday and Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party government wasted no time pushing through its legislation to force striking Alberta teachers back to work.

In a severely time-limited debate that took less than 12 hours in total, UCP MLAs voted on third reading to pass Bill 2: Back to Work Act at around 2:00 a.m. on Tuesday.

The bill imposed a new contract on 51,000 striking teachers until 2028, threatened hefty fines for any teachers who dared defy the UCP’s rushed law, and used the constitutional sledgehammer known as the Notwithstanding Clause to suspend teachers’ and the Alberta Teachers’ Associations’ rights to collective bargaining under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Where is Nenshi? He’s in the Legislature.

Post author By Dave Cournoyer
Post date October 26, 2025

One of the biggest questions I get asked about Alberta politics these days is “where is Nenshi?”

Well, former mayor of Calgary and current Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi now has a seat in the Assembly and will be spending some time getting acquainted with what levers of the legislative process are available to opposition leaders.

While there will be a temptation to put extra effort into sparring with Smith and scoring points in Question Period, the NDP need to reintroduce a curiously absent Nenshi to Albertans and figure out what their pitch is to the province’s voters — and then get out there and sell it.

Nenshi’s decision to shuffle Sherwood Park MLA Kyle Kasawski into the role of Shadow Minister for Affordability and Utilities this week is a good start.

🎙️ Podcast: Unpacking Alberta’s political mystery

Post author By Dave Cournoyer
Post date October 25, 2025

Medicine Lake in Jasper National Park (photo: Dave Cournoyer)

I’m Dave Cournoyer and this isn’t the Daveberta Podcast but it might be the next best thing.

A few weeks ago I joined my friend and former Daveberta Podcast co-host Ryan Hastman on his new podcast, the Alberta Edge, for a discussion about Alberta politics along with respected pollster Janet Brown.

I’m happy to share that episode of Alberta Edge with Daveberta subscribers today. Be sure to visit TheHub.ca and subscribe to Ryan’s podcasts.

Enjoy the show and thanks for listening.

Listen to the podcast episode on the Daveberta Substack

Tags Alberta Edge Podcast, Alberta Election Podcast, Alberta History, Alberta NDP, Alberta Politics Podcast, Alberta Politics Substack, Alberta Separation Referendum, Alberta Separatism, Canada Election Substack, Danielle Smith, Daveberta Podcast, Daveberta Substack, Janet Brown, Naheed Nenshi, Ryan Hastman, United Conservative Party

Alberta Politics

Alberta separatists march on the Legislature and UCP AGM

Post author By Dave Cournoyer
Post date October 25, 2025

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?”

Forever Canadian petition rumoured to have collected more than 300,000 pro-Canada signatures

Post author By Dave Cournoyer
Post date October 24, 2025

Former cabinet minister Thomas Lukaszuk and his Forever Canadian Unity Bus (source: Thomas Lukaszuk / Facebook)

Former Progressive Conservative cabinet minister Thomas Lukaszuk is on the final stretch of his “Unity Bus” tour to collect signatures for the Forever Canadian petition that asks the simple question “Do you agree that Alberta should remain in Canada?”

Lukaszuk’s question requires 293,976 in-person signatures in order to be approved and sent to an MLA committee to be considered for a province-wide referendum, but there are rumours that the pro-Canada campaign’s more than 4,000 volunteers have already collected more than 300,000 signatures.

Evasive maneuvers! Alberta politics on a collision course!

Post author By Dave Cournoyer
Post date October 24, 2025

A large rally of around 30,000 striking teachers gathered outside the Legislature to welcome MLAs back for the fall session on October 23 (source: @atalocal8 / Instagram)

A loud crowd of 30,000 teachers and their supporters welcomed MLAs back to the Legislature

When MLAs returned to the Legislature yesterday for the Speech from the Throne and the start of the fall session they were welcomed back by a very large and very loud crowd of around 30,000 Alberta teachers.

More than 51,000 teachers from public, Catholic, and Francophone schools across the province have been on strike since October 6 with workload challenges being their biggest issue, namely class sizes and per-student funding.

Instead of getting back to the bargaining table to negotiate a deal that could satisfy both the government and teachers, Premier Danielle Smith has signalled her government’s plans to fasttrack back to work legislation — and there is wide speculation that it could use the constitutional sledgehammer known as the Notwithstanding Clause to block any court challenges of the law.

The Order Papers for next week shows that Minister of Finance Nate Horner will soon introduce Bill 2: Back to School Act along with motions to severely limit debate at all stages of reading. With a 6 vote majority in the Legislature, UCP MLAs should have no problem pushing it through swiftly, though the opposition NDP can be expected to try its best to delay the passage of the bill.

Andrew Knack is the next Mayor of Edmonton

Post author By Dave Cournoyer
Post date October 22, 2025

Andrew Knack speaks to reporters after winning Edmonton’s 2025 mayoral election (source: Andrew Knack / Instagram)

Knack bests former frontrunner Tim Cartmell in race to replace Amarjeet Sohi

Results from Edmonton’s low-key municipal election were very slow to trickle in but by mid-afternoon today we learned that Andrew Knack will be the next Mayor of Edmonton.

The three-term councillor has represented west Edmonton since he was first elected in 2013 and jumped into the mayoral race after initially planning to leave municipal politics and not seek re-election to council.

Knack bucked what felt like a strong wave of anti-incumbent sentiment going into the campaign and defeated south side councillor and Better Edmonton Party leader Tim Cartmell by a margin of around 8 points with an abysmal 30 per cent turnout of voters at the polls (at the time I am writing this only 217 of 236 polls are reporting in the mayoral election). Knack ran as an independent candidate.

Read all about it on the Daveberta Substack

Tags Alberta NDP, Andrew Knack, Ashley Salvador, Better Edmonton Party, Bill Tonita, Calgary Mayoral Election 2025, Calgary Municipal Election 2025, Caroline Matthews, Cindy Jeffries, Communities First Party, Danielle Smith, Darrell Friesen, Don Iveson, Don Scott, Drew Barnes, Edmonton Mayoral Election 2025, Edmonton Municipal Election 2025, Gabrielle Blatz, Jackie Clayton, Jeff Watson, Jennifer Rice, Jeromy Farkas, Jon Morgan, Julianna Charchun, Jyoti Gondek, Karen Principe, Kent Hehr, Linsee Clark, Michael Elliott, Michael Janz, Michael Walters, Mike Allen, Mountain View County, Omar Mohammad, Peggy Johnson, Rahim Jaffer, Reed Clark, Rob Smith, Sandy Bowman, Sonya Sharp, Strathcona County, Terri Beaupre, Thu Parmar, Tim Cartmell, Tyler Gandam, United Conservative Party, Victor Doerksen, Ward Ipiihkoohkanipiaohtsi, Ward sipiwiyiniwak

Alberta Politics

UCP and NDP Presidents Rob Smith and Bill Tonita running in municipal elections

Post author By Dave Cournoyer
Post date October 15, 2025

Bill Tonita (centre) with fellow NDP candidates Chantal Saramaga-McKenzie (left) and Karen Shaw (right) during the 2023 provincial election. (source: Bill Tonita / Facebook)

The introduction of municipal political parties in Calgary and Edmonton has generated a lot of confusion and consternation in this election but lost in the noise of the big city debate is that the presidents of Alberta’s two main provincial political parties are on ballots in county elections outside urban centres.

United Conservative Party President Rob Smith is running as a candidate in Mountain View County council’s Division 6 and Alberta NDP President Bill Tonita is running for re-election in Strathcona County’s Ward 4.

Also, big city mayoral candidates Andrew Knack and Jeromy Farkas got the gift every election candidate in Alberta dreams of in the final stretch of the campaign: a Janet Brown poll showing you’re in the lead.

Teachers used to be part of the PC Party big blue tent

Post author By Dave Cournoyer
Post date October 12, 2025

Teachers used to be an important part of the big blue voter coalition that made the old Progressive Conservative Party an electoral juggernaut from 1971 to 2015.

There was even a former ATA President, Halvar Johnson, who served as a PC MLA under premiers Peter Lougheed and Don Getty and later as a cabinet minister in Premier Ralph Klein’s government. The relationship between teachers and the PC government had its rocky moments, but it was still common for teachers and even ATA officials to attend and participate in debates and votes at PC Party conventions.

Read more on the Daveberta Substack

Tags Alberta PC Party, Alberta Politics Substack, Alberta Teachers, Alberta Teachers' Association, Alberta Teachers' Strike, Alison Redford, Canada Election Substack, Danielle Smith, Daveberta Substack, Don Getty, Halvar Johnson, Ian Brodie, Peter Lougheed, Rachel Notley, Ralph Klein, Stephen Harper, United Conservative Party, University of Calgary, Wildrose Party

Alberta Politics

Breaking the ATA is in the official UCP policy book

Post author By Dave Cournoyer
Post date October 12, 2025

Breaking up the ATA and making membership in the union optional for teachers are actual official UCP policies that were enthusiastically passed by delegates at the party’s convention last year in Red Deer.

In defending the policy to make membership optional, the UCP constituency association from Innisfail-Sylvan Lake wrote that the ATA is “supporting many controversial progressive ideologies that do not represent the values of many teachers who are forced to pay dues in order to maintain employment in this province.”

The policy was passed weeks after anti-sexual health education protests organized by UCP-connected activists were held outside the ATA’s offices in Edmonton. The political mood of those protests align with Nicolaides moral panic book ban fiasco and the government’s targeting of transgender and female students who want to play school sports.

But partisan conservatives didn’t always feel this way about teachers.

Posh private schools get public funding in Alberta

Post author By Dave Cournoyer
Post date October 11, 2025

Looming large over the government’s labour dispute with teachers in public, Catholic, and Francophone schools is the lavish funding the province spends on private schools.

Private schools in Alberta get 70 per cent per-student funding from the provincial government, which is the highest of any province in Canada. That tops BC, which funds private schools between 35 and 50 per cent, Saskatchewan, which funds up to 50 per cent. Ontario and the Atlantic provinces do not fund private schools at all.

Although there is a wide spectrum of private schools that provide different types of education to different groups of students, some of the private institutions receiving generous public funding include elite schools tailored to Calgary’s wealthiest families and charge more than $20,000 in annual tuition.

UCP cries poverty on funding but promises to build more schools

Post author By Dave Cournoyer
Post date October 11, 2025

While the government cries poverty when it comes to the per-student funding, classroom sizes, and salary increases teachers are asking for, Premier Danielle Smith frequently points to her big promises of capital investments in the education system.

Smith promised in a televised address last year that the UCP government would build 130 new schools by 2031, which is a lot, but with the student population of the province growing by more than 33,000 per year (Smith’s number), that’s just playing catch up.

UCP Government ads are slicker than it’s spokespeople

Post author By Dave Cournoyer
Post date October 10, 2025

The UCP government launched a series of advertisements shortly after the ATA announced its plans to strike. The ads promote what the government describes as “a good plan” and are short, easy to understand, and are framed as a policy proposal rather than a bargaining position.

Where the paid advertising ends and the spokespeople start talking is when the government’s messaging starts going off the rails.

The government’s messaging was derailed last week when senior UCP staffer Bruce McAllister publicly berated a high school student for asking a question about the teachers’ strike and private school funding during the Alberta Next panel town hall in Calgary. McAllister, a former news anchor-turned-Wildrose Party MLA who now runs the Premier’s Office in Calgary, told the young man that his parents should spank him before he cut off his microphone.

Danielle Smith’s UCP digging in for a long teachers’ strike

Post author By Dave Cournoyer
Post date October 10, 2025

Premier Danielle Smith, Minister of Finance Nate Horner, and Minister of Education and Childcare Demetrios Nicolaides say they are disappointed with the strike but have given no indication they were eager to return to the bargaining table to, well, actually bargain.

Smith, Horner and Nicolaides have signalled that they are prepared for a long teachers strike, and, despite claiming the cupboards are bare, the government will pay parents $30 a day to do teachers’ jobs from home, sort of, during a strike.

Teachers on strike in Alberta!

Post author By Dave Cournoyer
Post date October 9, 2025

Teachers and supporters after their daily morning picket near the Walterdale Bridge in Edmonton (photo credit: Brad Lafortune)

More than 51,000 teachers launched the largest strike the history of their profession in Alberta

Schools are empty this week as more than 51,000 Alberta teachers in public, Catholic and Francophone schools launched the largest strike the history of their profession in Alberta.

The strike comes shortly after members of the Alberta Teachers’ Association overwhelmingly rejected a new contract for a second time in less than six months, with more than 90% voting against the proposal in the final days of September.