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Alberta Politics

Controlling Everything Everywhere All At Once

Sherwood Park MLA Kyle Kasawski (source: Kyle Kasawski / Facebook)
Sherwood Park MLA Kyle Kasawski (source: Kyle Kasawski / Facebook)

NDP’s Oscar-winning film inspired catch phrase captures the UCP moment in Alberta politics

“Danielle Smith wants to control everything, everywhere, all at once…”

In the middle of the weekly chaos of Alberta politics, a catch phrase inspired by an Academy Award winning film has captured one of the driving themes of Alberta politics today.

“Danielle Smith wants to control everything. Pensions, police, health care, schools, local councils. Any dollar spent anywhere in the province, and any decision made by anyone. Everything,” NDP MLA Kyle Kasawski first said in an April 29 press release.

Kasawski is the rookie MLA from Sherwood Park who became the opposition’s sole Municipal Affairs critic when co-critic Sarah Hoffman joined the NDP leadership race earlier this year.

While Municipal Affairs can sometimes be a sleepy file, on both the ministerial and critic side, it has been front and centre over the past month as Premier Danielle Smith and Minister Ric McIver rein in municipal and university funding agreements with the federal government and expand the provincial cabinet’s power to fire locally elected officials and overturn municipal bylaws.

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Alberta Politics

How the Heritage Fund was launched

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith delivers a pre-budget televised address on February 21, 2024 (source: YourAlberta / YouTube)
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith delivers a pre-budget televised address on February 21, 2024 (source: YourAlberta / YouTube)

It was 1975 and Lougheed’s PCs were swimming in oil money like Scrooge McDuck

The Heritage Savings Trust Fund was front and centre in Premier Danielle Smith‘s pre-budget televised speech last week, so there’s a good chance Albertans are going to hear a lot about it when Finance Minister Nate Horner rises in the Legislative Assembly this afternoon to table the provincial government’s annual budget.

In her 8-minute address to Albertans, Smith said she wants to funnel oil and gas royalty revenues into the Heritage Savings Trust Fund to increase it to between $250 and $400 billion by 2050. A report to the Standing Committee on the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund reported the fund had a market value of $21.6 billion in 2023.

Many Albertans know the patriotic version of the Heritage Savings Trust Fund story – a visionary rainy day bank account created in the 1970s by former premier Peter Lougheed meant to preserve Alberta’s oil wealth for future generations. But like many political stories that reach legendary status it is missing a lot of relevant historical context.

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Alberta Politics

Alberta NDP announces pre-Calgary Stampede leadership vote

Edmonton-Glenora MLA Sarah Hoffman resigned as the party’s deputy leader and is expected to join the race to replace Rachel Notley as leader of the Alberta NDP (source: Sarah Hoffman / Facebook)
Edmonton-Glenora MLA Sarah Hoffman resigned as the party’s deputy leader and is expected to join the race to replace Rachel Notley as leader of the Alberta NDP (source: Sarah Hoffman / Facebook)

Race to replace Rachel Notley starts on Feb. 5, new leader to be named on June 22. Yahoo!

If you had told me ten years ago, on January 30, 2014, that the perceived frontrunners for the Alberta NDP leadership race in 2024 would be the MLAs for Calgary-Mountain View, Edmonton-Glenora and Edmonton-Whitemud, I probably would have laughed. Ten years ago today, Rachel Notley was nine months away from becoming NDP leader and none of these ridings would have even been on that party’s radar as winnable at that point.

Probably the most believable prediction from a decade ago might have been that then-Wildrose Party leader Danielle Smith would be Premier in 2024, but there’s no way anyone back then could have predicted her path to the Premier’s Office today.

It’s hard to imagine a modern NDP in this province without Notley at its helm. She took the party from the fourth place fringe to government and solidified it as a political force in Alberta. As the NDP prepares to choose her successor, it’s even hard to compare the current version of the NDP to its pre-Notley version.

That’s a reality that NDP members from across Alberta are having to come to terms with after debating and discussing the leadership race at Red Deer Polytechnic last weekend.

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Thank you.

Thank you to everyone who has read, subscribed and shared my Daveberta Alberta politics columns.

I truly appreciate the support and feedback I’ve received from readers and subscribers since I first started publishing my Alberta politics column on Substack last year.

I’m excited to announce that we will be launching Season 7 of the Daveberta Podcast in the next few weeks with some exciting guests. I’m looking forward to returning the podcast to a regular monthly schedule in 2024.

And, in case you missed it, be sure to read my recent columns about the 10 things I’m watching in Alberta politics in 2024 and how Rachel Notley made the NDP relevant in Alberta politics.

Thanks again,

Dave

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