Edmonton City Councillor Michael Janz joins the Daveberta Podcast to talk about the recent municipal election, his experiences during his first month on City Council, what he hopes to accomplish in the years ahead, and how ordinary Edmontonians can have an impact on decisions at City Hall. We also dive into provincial politics and what might lie ahead in the future for Premier Jason Kenney and Alberta’s 2023 election.
The Daveberta Podcast is a member of the Alberta Podcast Network: Locally grown. Community supported.
You can listen and subscribe to the Daveberta Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you find podcasts online. We love feedback from our listeners, so let us know what you think of this episode and leave a review where you download.
Harnoor Kochar and Rajah Maggay join the Daveberta Podcast to talk about Edmonton’s recent municipal election, the historic wins that came out of it, and what comes next for Alberta’s capital city.
Harnoor Kochar was the Director of Field Operations and Get Out the Vote co-chair on the successful Amarjeet Sohi for Mayor campaign. She is also a fifth-year Political Science student at the University of Alberta.
Rajah Maggay is a research and policy advisor for City Councillor Andrew Knack, Vice-Chair of Research at ParityYeg, and co-founder of Political Divas.
The Daveberta Podcast is a member of the Alberta Podcast Network: Locally grown. Community supported.
You can listen and subscribe to the Daveberta Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you find podcasts online. We love feedback from our listeners, so let us know what you think of this episode and leave a review where you download.
Jyoti Gondek defeats Jeromy Farkas to become Calgary’s next Mayor.
Amarjeet Sohi defeats Mike Nickel to become Edmonton’s next Mayor.
Eight of Edmonton’s 12 City Councillors elected today are women – a historic record. Four are persons of colour. Four incumbents are on the verge of defeat.
Premier Jason Kenney’s referendum to remove Equalization from the constitution gets a very tepid endorsement (59% support in Calgary – Edmonton results next week).
Support for abandoning the twice yearly time change is even more divided.
University of Alberta political scientist Dr. Jared Wesley joins Dave Cournoyer on the Daveberta Podcast for a deep dive into Alberta’s October 18 Equalization Referendum, why it is being held, what Premier Jason Kenney hopes to accomplish (and why he’s been absent on the campaign trail), and what the ramifications of the vote could be for Alberta and Canada.
We also answer some great listener questions about Equalization and dive into the history of Alberta’s low-key Senate Nominee Elections and more.
The Daveberta Podcast is produced by the talented Adam Rozenhart.
The Daveberta Podcast is a member of the Alberta Podcast Network: Locally grown. Community supported.
You can listen and subscribe to the Daveberta Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you find podcasts online. We love feedback from our listeners, so let us know what you think of this episode and leave a review where you download.
According to the poll, 60 per cent of Edmontonians said they are more likely to vote for a mayor who opposes the policies of the provincial government. Only 14 per cent said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who supports the government’s actions
Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi and Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson spoke on CBC’s West of Centre Podcast and shared criticism of Kenney’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and a leadership style that soured the relationship with the two largest cities.
“I know that even the cabinet ministers who are just trying to do a good job are frustrated that they’re unable to make decisions or move files forward because petty partisan politics get in the way,” Nenshi said.
One of the fun things about writing about politics is that every few years I have a chance to say nice things about friends and people I know who are running as candidates for election.
As the advance voting stations have opened this week and Edmontonians are beginning to mark their municipal election ballots, there are a few people who I want to write some nice things about.
Cori Longo (source: Facebook)
The first is my friend Cori Longo, who is running in my City Council ward of Ward Métis.
I first met Cori ten years ago through our involvement in the labour movement and have had the privilege of co-facilitating an annual Communications for Union Activists course with her for many years since then. I learned first hand during these classes that she is probably one of the best facilitators I’ve ever worked with.
Cori’s enthusiasm and positivity is contagious and she is incredibly down to earth. She is without pretence and doesn’t carry any hint of elitism with her.
And as the mother of young kids, I think she will bring an important voice to City Council that isn’t always represented under the glass pyramids.
These traits, along with her progressive values, I believe will serve Cori well as a City Councillor.
Michael Janz (source: Facebook)
The second person I want to write some nice things about is my friend Michael Janz, who is running for City Council in Ward Papastew.
I’ve been friends with Michael since we were students many years ago at the University of Alberta. I actually first met him when he volunteered for my campaign for Students’ Union Vice President External (I won) and we’ve been good friends ever since.
One of the things I like most about Michael is his addiction to learning. He reads more books and listens to more podcasts than anyone else I know. It’s remarkable.
Michael has also proven himself to be an enthusiastic and relentless advocate for better public education during his eleven years as a trustee on the Edmonton Public School Board. I have no doubt he will bring that same tireless work ethic to City Council if he is elected on Oct. 18.
For the Edmonton Public School Board, I am happy to support Trisha Estabrooks in her bid for re-election in Ward D. Trisha has been a strong advocate for public education and the safety of children during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Amarjeet is one of the most sincere, humble, genuine and hardest working politicians I have ever met. He brings a wealth of real world experience with him with a resume that ranges from cab driver to bus driver to city councillor to federal cabinet minister. I think he would be an exceptional Mayor of Edmonton.
I also want to give a shout-out to Jenn Prosser, who is running for City Council in Lethbridge and DJ Kelly who is running for City Council in Calgary. If you live in their communities please consider supporting them on Election Day.
We are back from the summer with the first episode of Season 4 of the Daveberta Podcast and we dive right into Alberta’s response to the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, speculation about how long Jason Kenney might last in the Premier’s Office, the federal election, municipal political parties and slates and much much more.
The Daveberta Podcast is a member of the Alberta Podcast Network: Locally grown. Community supported.
You can listen and subscribe to the Daveberta Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you find podcasts online. We love feedback from our listeners, so let us know what you think of this episode and leave a review where you download.
Amarjeet Sohi joins the Daveberta Podcast to talk about why he is running to become the next Mayor of Edmonton and discuss his experiences moving to Canada as a young man, being elected as a City Councillor, serving in Ottawa as a Member of Parliament and cabinet minister, and his love for Edmonton.
Sohi served on Edmonton City Council from 2007 until 2015, when he was elected as the Member of Parliament for Edmonton Mill Woods. While in Ottawa he served as Canada’s Minister of Infrastructure and Communities and Minister of Natural Resources.
Amarjeet Sohi and Dave Cournoyer on the Daveberta Podcast
The Daveberta Podcast is a member of the Alberta Podcast Network: Locally grown. Community supported. The Alberta Podcast Network includes dozens of great made-in-Alberta podcasts.
You can listen and subscribe to the Daveberta Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you find podcasts online. We love feedback from our listeners, so let us know what you think of this episode and leave a review where you download.
Former City Councillor and federal cabinet minister Amarjeet Sohi is running for Mayor of Edmonton.
The race to replace Mayor Don Iveson got a little more crowded today.
Former city councillor and former federal cabinet minister Amarjeet Sohi announced his plans to enter the mayoral election this morning on Facebook Live.
After years working as a bus driver with the Edmonton Transit Service, Sohi was elected to City Council in 2007, where he became a vocal advocate for public transit and the sometimes overlooked communities he represented in south east Edmonton.
After being re-elected to council twice, he was elected as the Member of Parliament for Edmonton Mill Woods in 2015. As one of four Liberal MPs elected in Alberta that year, Sohi was appointed to the federal cabinet, first as Minister of Infrastructure and Communities and then as Minister of Natural Resources.
As Natural Resources Minister, Sohi was is believe to have been a driving force behind the federal government’s decision to buy the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project, saving the project at the moment its private-sector shareholders decided to walk away.
Sohi was defeated in his bid for re-election in the anti-Trudeau wave that swept Alberta in 2019, but the loss was more a reflection of Edmontonians unhappiness with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau than with Sohi himself.
A year and a half later, he dusted himself off and is now in the race to become Mayor.
Sohi is a very unique and compelling candidate, and, as anyone who has met him over the course of his 12 years of public service can attest, he is one of the most sincere, humble, and hard-working politicians in Edmonton.
Oshry represented south west Edmonton on city council from 2013 to 2017. He was rumoured to have considered a run for the Progressive Conservative Party leadership in 2017 but ultimately declined.
Krushell is back?
Kim Krushell
After her campaign went silent on social media for an entire month, former city councillor Kim Krushell reappeared online last week. Krushell’s social media accounts went dormant from April 7 to May 4.
Dani Paradis and Chris Henderson are back on the Daveberta Podcast to discuss the recent blow-out in the United Conservative Party caucus, the expulsion of Drew Barnes and Todd Loewen and the ongoing challenges to Premier Jason Kenney’s flailing leadership.
We also discuss recent developments in Edmonton’s mayoral election, Michael Oshry launching into the race, and Amarjeet Sohi’s expected entry into the campaign.
The Daveberta Podcast is a member of the Alberta Podcast Network: Locally grown. Community supported. The Alberta Podcast Network includes dozens of great made-in-Alberta podcasts.
You can listen and subscribe to the Daveberta Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you find podcasts online. We love feedback from our listeners, so let us know what you think of this episode and leave a review where you download.
Michael Janz is filing his papers to run for Edmonton City Council in the new Ward papastew. The ward encompasses many central Edmonton neighbourhoods that lie south of the North Saskatchewan River.
The three-term public school trustee announced late last year that he would not run for re-election to the Edmonton Public School Board after 11 years, a handful which he served as board chairperson and vice president of the Alberta School Boards Association. Janz has been an outspoken advocate for fair and equitable funding for public schools and improving financial literacy in schools.
Janz was re-elected in 2017 with a landslide, earning more votes than any winning municipal candidate in Edmonton except Mayor Don Iveson.
Along with filing his papers with the municipal elections office to officially enter the race, Janz released a long list of prominent Edmontonians who are endorsing his city council campaign. The list includes Edmonton-Glenora NDP MLA Sarah Hoffman, former Liberal MLA Raj Sherman, former Edmonton-Strathcona NDP MLA Raj Pannu, former city councillors Allan Bolstad and Michael Phair, former school trustees Heather Mackenzie, Dave Colburn and Ray Martin, former Catholic school trustee John Acheson, past city council candidate Sim Senol, past school board candidate Neda Asadi, harm reduction advocate Petra Schulz, and former cabinet minister Danielle Larivee among many others.
Already in the race in papastew are Haruun Ali, Kirsten Goa, Tarcy Schindelka, and Byron Vass. Visit the Edmonton Elections page to see the full list of candidates running for Council, Mayor, and School Boards in Edmonton in the October 2021 elections.
Publisher’s Note: Michael Janz is a friend of mine and I have enthusiastically supported his campaigns for public school board in 2010, 2013 and 2017. He was a guest on the Daveberta Podcast in December 2019.
Dani Paradis and Chris Henderson join the Daveberta Podcast for a deep dive into municipal politics and a look ahead at the October 2021 elections in Edmonton. What issues will resonate with voters and what does a pandemic election campaign looks like? We cover a lot of ground, from Lucy the Elephant to equalization to centralization of 911 dispatch to the souring of relations between municipalities and the provincial government. This was a fun episode.
The Daveberta Podcast is a member of the Alberta Podcast Network: Locally grown. Community supported. The Alberta Podcast Network includes dozens of great made-in-Alberta podcasts.
You can listen and subscribe to the Daveberta Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you find podcasts online. We love feedback from our listeners, so let us know what you think of this episode and leave a review where you download.
Krushell represented northwest Edmonton’s Ward 2 from 2004 to 2013 but her city hall career began in the mid-1990s when she worked as executive assistant to Councillor Lillian Staroszik and Larry Langley. She left municipal politics in 2013, becoming President of Lending Assist.
While Krushell never ran for provincial political office, she has past ties to the now defunct Progressive Conservative Party. She was the President of the PC Party association in Edmonton-Calder in the early 2000s and later served as Edmonton regional director and budget director for the PC Party until Jason Kenney became party leader in 2017.
Another former city councillor, Michael Oshry, is also said to be assembling a mayoral campaign team, and former councillor and Member of Parliament Amarjeet Sohi is rumoured to be considering a run for mayor.
And a number of new candidates have announced their plans to run for City Council:
Gino Akbari, Gabrielle Battiste and Tony Caterina have announced their plans to run in in the central Edmonton Ward O-day’min.
Tony Caterina
Caterina is a four-term City Councillor from northeast Edmonton who is running in the new downtown Ward because his current Ward 7 is being heavily redistributed between the new Ward Metis and Ward tastawiyiniwak (ᑕᐢᑕᐃᐧᔨᓂᐊᐧᐠ).
The boundary change puts Caterina in a position where if he did not choose a brand new ward to run in, he could have either run in the north half of his current ward, facing off against Councillor Jon Dziadyk, or in the south side of his current ward, which now stretches south of the North Saskatchewan River to Bonnie Doon and King Edward Park. He previously ran in downtown as the Alberta Alliance candidate in Edmonton-Centre in the 2004 provincial election.
Caterina will be running in the area vacated by two-term Councillor Scott McKeen, who announced this month that he will not be seeking re-election. McKeen ran against Caterina in Ward 7 in 2010 and endorsed his main challenger, Kris Andreychuk, in the 2017 campaign.
Edmonton City Council’s new Ward boundaries with new Indigenous names.
In Ward Metis, which includes the southern half of Caterina’s current ward, Ashley Salvador and Liz John-West have filed their nomination papers. Salvador is an urban planner and President and Chair of YEGarden Suites. John-West is the Regional Service Director for WJS Canada and was a candidate in the 2017 municipal election.
In Edmonton’s south west Ward sipiwiyiniwak, first-term Councillor Sarah Hamilton has announced her plans to seek re-election.
Recently announced candidates in Ward Papastew include student Haruun Ali (who had previously announced his candidacy in Ward Ipiihkoohkanipiaohtsi), DJ and entertainment company owner Tarcy Schindelka, and Byron Vass.
Local celebrity Dan Johnstone has announced his plans to run in Ward Ipiihkoohkanipiaohtsi. Johnstone, who also goes by the nickname “Can Man Dan,” previously ran for city council in Ward 10 in 2013, in Ward 12 in a 2016 by-election, and mounted a brief campaign for the Alberta Party nomination in Edmonton-South ahead of the 2019 provincial election.
For the Edmonton Catholic School District, Sandra Palazzo is running for re-election in Ward 72, Carla Smiley in Ward 73, Alene Mutala in Ward 75, and Lisa Turchansky is running in Ward 76.
Frequently the lone voice of right-wing discontent on City Council, it has been rumoured for months that Nickel has been preparing a run.
But until now Nickel has yet to officially announce his candidacy. It is unclear whether this was intended as an official announcement or if it is a website publishing mistake.
This would mark Nickel’s third time running for mayor after unsuccessful bids in 1998 and 2001. He placed second with 16 per cent of vote in 1998 and third with 19 per cent in 2001. He later served on city council from 2004 until he was defeated in 2007 by a little known rookie candidate by the name of Don Iveson. Nickel returned to council in 2013 and was re-elected in 2017.
I spoke with CTV Edmonton about the bizarre development in Edmonton’s mayoral election between former City Councillor Michael Oshry and current Councillor Mike Nickel. Nickel tweeted a screenshot of a private message sent to him by Oshry saying he was “likely in” as a candidate for the mayoral race and asking Nickel if he would support him. Nickel’s tweet was sent to generate attention to his own campaign for mayor, but also serves as a warning to anyone planning to send him an email or private message – it might not stay private for long.
Diana Steele has announced her plans to run for mayor. Steele is the President of the Crestwood Community League and Coordinator, Volunteer Services and Communications for the Pilgrims Hospice Society.
There have also been a number of candidates who have announced their plans to run for Edmonton City Council in the newly redrawn and renamed Wards:
Edmonton City Council’s new Ward boundaries with new Indigenous names.
Dene: Youth, Child and Refugee Advocate Gerard Mutabazi Amani is running in this north east Edmonton ward.
Ipiihkoohkanipiaohtsi: Haruun J. Ali and Rhiannon Hoyle have launched their campaigns in this south Edmonton ward.
Ali is a political science student at the University of Victoria who, according to his website, volunteered on Edmonton-South NDP MLA Thomas Dang‘s re-election campaign in 2019.
Hoyle is the past president of the Alberta Party and the former president of the Heritage Point Community League, which includes the Rutherford and MacEwan neighbourhoods.
Glynnis Lieb announced her plans to run in this ward last month.
Townsend is the President of the Parkdale-Cromdale Community League and owner of The Briefing Room. He was the provincial Liberal Party candidate in Lesser Slave Lake in the 2012 election and in Edmonton-Whitemud in the 2015 election.
Kosowan is a high school Social Studies teacher and placed third in Ward 8 in the 2017 municipal election.
pihêsiwin: First-term councillor Tim Cartmell announced his plans to run for re-election in this newly redrawn ward. Cartmell made the announcement on his constituent email list.
sipiwiyiniwak: Giselle General announced on Facebook that she plans to run in this new south west ward. General is the Volunteer and Communications Coordinator with the Edmonton Community Legal Centre and the author of the FlipinaYEG blog.
Sspomitapi: Rashpal Sehmby is planning to run in this south east Edmonton ward. Sehmby is a postal worker and currently the Health & Safety officer for C.U.P.W. Edmonton Local 730.
I am once again tracking candidates who have announced their plans to run for Mayor, City Council and School Board in Edmonton. If I am missing anyone on the list, please send me an email at david.cournoyer@gmail.com or post a comment and let me know. Thanks!
