Marlin Schmidt voted MLA with Best Sense of Humour and Brooks Arcand-Paul is the MLA to watch in 2026
After a week of fierce campaigning, all the votes have been counted and the winners of the ninth annual Daveberta Best of Alberta Politics Survey have been chosen.
The annual survey is all about celebrating the best in Alberta politics and the winners were nominated and voted for by politically-savvy Daveberta subscribers.
Congratulations to this year’s winners.
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.
Voting is now open for this year’s best MLA, best cabinet minister, most effective opposition MLA, best public speaker, and more.
With hundreds of names submitted to the ninth annual Best of Alberta Politics Survey, your nominations have been sorted and the top choices have been identified in all nine categories.
Voting in the 2025 survey is now open to the nearly 8,000 Daveberta subscribers until Tuesday, December 2 at 8:00 p.m. The results will be announced on Thursday, December 4.
Danielle Smith and Naheed Nenshi will spar in the Legislature but the most interesting politics will be on the road
A recent fundraising email from Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi with the subject line “Sooner than we think?” includes speculation that Smith’s United Conservative Party is “so afraid of losing power, they’re trying everything to give themselves an unfair advantage. Including US-style gerrymandering.”
Nenshi’s “US-style gerrymandering” comment was a reference to UCP cabinet minister Nathan Neudorf’s controversial proposal to split the southern Alberta city of Lethbridge into four sprawling rural-urban ridings (a story that was first reported on Daveberta). It’s certainly clear what Neudorf’s preference is, but whether it gets included in the soon to be submitted interim report of the Electoral Boundaries Commission is yet to be seen.
The new boundaries will certainly play a big role in the next provincial election but regardless of how the provincial map is redrawn, most voting intention polls show not much has changed since the last provincial election. That vote resulted in two-way race between the UCP and NDP, with Smith’s party’s dominance over almost all of the rural and small city ridings giving them a numerical edge against Rachel Notley’s Edmonton-based NDP.
It’s going to be messy but the Chief Electoral Officer needs to hold his ground – and his independence.
Alberta’s Chief Electoral Officer was publicly rebuked by Premier Danielle Smith and Minister of Justice Mickey Amery after a petition aimed at triggering a province-wide referendum on Alberta’s separation from Canada was referred to the courts to determine if it is legal.
Chief Electoral Officer Gordon McClure announced earlier this week that a citizen initiative petition request submitted by separatist Alberta Prosperity Project CEO Mitch Sylvestre was being referred to the Court of King’s Bench to determine whether it conforms with the requirements of sections 2 (4) of the Citizen Initiative Act. That section specifically states that “an initiative petition proposal must not contravene sections 1 to 35.1 of the Constitution Act, 1982.”
Smith and Amery took to social media to call on McClure to withdraw the court reference and allow the Alberta separation petition to move forward.
To celebrate 20 years of Daveberta, I’m happy to offer free subscribers a 20 percent discount on an annual paid subscription ($40/year down from the regular $50/year). Paid subscribers get full access to all Daveberta newsletters and columns, full episodes of the Daveberta Podcast and a shout out on the podcast, and special Alberta politics extras. Thank you to everyone who has already upgraded their subscription through this offer.
It was 2005.
After a short stint on the dysfunctional Calgary Board of Education, former Fraser Institute intern Danielle Smith was in her fifth year as a columnist and editorial board member at the Calgary Herald. Smith joined the Herald a few years earlier while the journalists who worked for the paper were on strike.
Harvard-educated Naheed Nenshi was teaching non-profit management at Mount Royal College in Calgary. Nenshi was recovering from an unsuccessful first campaign for city council the year earlier and was about to build his profile as a civic affairs columnist in the same newspaper that employed Smith.
And somewhere on the University of Alberta campus in Edmonton, a young political science student named Dave plucked away at his laptop keyboard writing posts to publish on his new blog, Daveberta.
A lot has happened in the 20 years since. Time flies when you’re having fun.
I never expected or planned to still be writing about Alberta politics today but it turns out that it was something I enjoyed doing and people enjoyed reading, so I kept it up. And I’m glad I did.
To celebrate 20 years of Daveberta, I’m happy to offer free subscribers a 20 percent discount on an annual paid subscription ($40/year down from the regular $50/year). Paid subscribers get full access to all Daveberta newsletters and columns, full episodes of the Daveberta Podcast and a shout out on the podcast, and special Alberta politics extras.
“Changing the channel” might be an outdated metaphor in a world where online streaming is how a lot of people now watch “television,” but it is a term that remains in use by politicians and political communicators to describe a strategy to draw attention away from something you don’t want to be on the top of people’s minds or the front pages of the news websites.
That’s exactly what Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party government has been trying to do since Globe & Mail reporter Carrie Tait broke the Dodgy Contract Scandal last week.
The bombshell story revolves around allegations that senior political staff in the government were involved in a $600 million procurement scandal and that AHS CEO Athana Mentzelopoulos was fired by the government two days before she was scheduled to meet with the Auditor General “to discuss her investigation into procurement contracts and deals for private surgical facilities.”
Note: Paid subscribers on the Daveberta Substack can keep scrolling and read all about the candidates running for the federal Conservative Party nominations in the Bow River and Red Deer ridings.
Justice Minister Mickey Amery voted Best Cabinet Minister of 2024
With all the votes counted, the winners of the Best of Alberta Politics 2024 Survey have been chosen. The eighth annual survey is all about celebrating the best in Alberta politics. The winners were selected from a week-long vote for the top two choices in each category nominated by Daveberta subscribers.
Vote for this year’s best MLA, cabinet minister, MLA to watch, municipal leader and more
With hundreds of names submitted to the 2024 Best of Alberta Politics Survey, your nominations have been sorted and the top two choices have been identified in all seven categories.
Voting in the eighth annual survey is now open to the nearly 4,600 Daveberta subscribers (free and paid) until Sunday, December 1 at 8:00 p.m. The winners will be announced on Tuesday, December 3.
The next step in the Alberta NDP’s transformation from Rachel Notley’s NDP to Naheed Nenshi’s NDP takes place this weekend in Calgary.
NDP members from across Alberta will gather in the province’s largest city this weekend for the party’s first meeting of its Provincial Council since Nenshi won his landslide victory in the race to replace Notley.
Nenshi’s 84% win with 62,746 votes means there is no doubt who the vast majority of the party’s membership wanted as leader. But meaningfully connecting with the people in the room this weekend will be Nenshi’s next big step.
Expect a charm offensive.
Politics in Alberta doesn’t skip a beat.
Less than a week after former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi won a landslide victory in the Alberta NDP leadership race, the United Conservative Party has launched a series of attack ads against him, framing the new NDP leader as “Justin Trudeau’s choice for Alberta” and “just another tax and spend Liberal.”
Nenshi’s team tossed out the old NDP playbook.
Instead of stumbling over fancy words and getting overly defensive (or even worse, ignoring the charge), Nenshi laughed off the attack and shot back with his own stinging criticism of Smith’s UCP.
A special weekend episode of the Daveberta Podcast
It’s rare that I send out a newsletter on the weekend but I thought subscribers would enjoy listening to a new episode of the Daveberta Podcast we recorded this week.
We cover a lot of ground in this episode of the Daveberta Podcast, including:
The full episode of this Daveberta Podcast is available to paid subscribers of the Daveberta Substack.
“FINAL NOTICE. PROPERTY REPOSSESSED FOR SALE (Effective April 1st, 2024).”
Anyone walking by Government House in Edmonton’s posh Glenora neighbourhood on April 1 might have noticed a white paper sign attached to the grand mansion-turned provincial government conference facility.
The sign was put there by Edmonton City Councillor Michael Janz, and as far as April Fools’ Day jokes by politicians go, it was pretty good – and it made a good point.
The Government of Alberta currently owes the City of Edmonton around $60 million in unpaid property taxes that have accumulated since 2019. That’s a point that Janz first wrote about in a December 2023 op-ed in the Edmonton Journal and that Mayor Amarjeet Sohi raised in a public letter to Premier Danielle Smith this week.
Read the rest on the Daveberta Substack.
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Nenshi shares his thoughts on Rakhi Pancholi’s endorsement and what it means to be NDP in 2024
He’s a household name in Calgary, Alberta, and across Canada, and now he’s running to become the next leader of the Alberta NDP. Former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi joins the Daveberta Podcast to share why he jumped into the race to replace Rachel Notley.
Since Nenshi entered the race on March 11, the NDP has seen the size of its membership double from around 16,000 to more than 30,000, a factor that likely played a big role in convincing rising political star Rakhi Pancholi to bow out of the race and endorse Nenshi.
“We must move forward to offer a positive alternative to the UCP that Albertans can enthusiastically support in the next election. And I believe that means uniting behind the next leader, Naheed Nenshi,” Pancholi said in her surprise endorsement of the now perceived frontrunner.
In this episode of the Daveberta Podcast, we sit down with Nenshi to discuss Pancholi’s endorsement, what it means to be an Alberta New Democrat in 2024, his time as mayor of Calgary, growing up in Red Deer, empathy in politics and much more.
The Daveberta Podcast is hosted by Dave Cournoyer and produced by Adam Rozenhart. This episode was recorded on March 26, 2024. The Daveberta Podcast was the 2020 winner in the Outstanding News & Current Affairs Series category in the Canadian Podcast Awards.
The full interview with Naheed Nenshi is available to paid subscribers of the Daveberta Substack.
Smith said she wouldn’t campaign on an Alberta Pension Plan and police force, but it looks like that’s what we’re getting.
I want to focus on the lede from this widely shared Canadian Press story published on March 5, 2023:
United Conservative Leader Danielle Smith says she won’t be campaigning on some of her party’s more contentious ideas — sovereignty legislation, a provincial police force and an Alberta pension plan — ahead of the May 29 election.
The reason why this story is notable is because of how much of the re-elected UCP’s political agenda today focuses on those three things Smith specifically didn’t want to talk about during the campaign.
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It’s not unusual for parties that form government to back away from campaign promises or even implement policies they didn’t campaign on at all. But it feels a little more unusual for a party leader to implement policies she said she didn’t want to talk about during a 28-day election campaign that happened less than a year ago.
It was a shameless and cynical move, because despite Smith saying she didn’t want to campaign on those issues during the election, it was clear the UCP was going to move forward on pensions, police and sovereignty if they were re-elected.
Read the rest on the Daveberta Substack.
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