Tag: United Conservative Party

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.

Read all about it on the Daveberta Substack

Alberta Politics

Danielle Smith vs. Alberta’s teachers

Post author By Dave Cournoyer
Post date October 1, 2025

Danielle Smith speaks at an all-candidates forum in Edmonton during the 2009 Wildrose Alliance leadership race. (source: Dave Cournoyer)

With more than 43,000 members of the Alberta Teachers’ Association overwhelming rejecting the latest contract offer from the provincial government and an October 6 teachers strike fast approaching, a lot of people have been sharing links to a series of articles I wrote 16 years ago about Premier Danielle Smith’s disastrous time on the Calgary Board of Education in the late 1990s.

Read all about it on the Daveberta Substack

Tags Alberta Teachers, Alberta Teachers' Association, Alberta Teachers' Strike, Calgary Board of Education, Danielle Smith, Lyle Oberg, Teresa Woo-Paw, United Conservative Party, Wildrose Party

Alberta Politics

Hey Dave! Who’s going to be the next Mayor of Edmonton?

Post author By Dave Cournoyer
Post date September 27, 2025

Edmonton mayoral candidate Michael Walters (source: Michael Walters / Facebook)

The latest public opinion poll shows current councillors Tim Cartmell and Andrew Knack and former councillor Michael Walters leading the pack in a close three way race. But with nearly 50 percent of voters saying they are undecided, it could be anyone’s to win.

The Cardinal Research poll showed Walters with 15 per cent support and Cartmell and Knack with 13 per cent each, and 48 per cent of voters undecided. I don’t want to focus too much on the horse race, but that poll shows a pretty tight race in a big open field.

Read all about it on the Daveberta Substack

Tags Alberta NDP, Amarjeet Sohi, Andrew Knack, Dan Williams, Danielle Smith, Edmonton Mayoral Election 2025, Michael Walters, Naheed Nenshi, Omar Mohammad, Rahim Jaffer, Tim Cartmell, Tony Caterina, United Conservative Party

Alberta Politics

All about Alberta politics in Fall 2025

Post author By Dave Cournoyer
Post date September 17, 2025

Alberta’s Legislature Building through the view of a broken glass panel in summer 2025 (credit: Dave Cournoyer)

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.

Moral panic! UCP book ban explodes as government on brink of major labour dispute with Alberta’s teachers

Post author By Dave Cournoyer
Post date September 2, 2025

Minister of Education and Childcare Demetrios Nicolaides (foreground) and Minister of Finance Nate Horner (background) (source: Government of Alberta / Flickr)

Summer is coming to an end. Labour Day is just behind us and students are heading back to school. But it looks like Alberta teachers and the United Conservative Party government are on the brink of a major labour dispute.

It’s been 23 years since the last province-wide teachers strike in Alberta and the impasse at the bargaining table has increased the possibility of another major job action.

Read more on the Daveberta Substack

Alberta Politics

What’s at stake in the Battle River-Crowfoot by-election?

Post author By Dave Cournoyer
Post date August 15, 2025

Conservative Party candidate Pierre Poilievre in Carbon, Alberta (source: Pierre Poilievre / Facebook)

Pierre Poilievre is going to win. The only real question is: by how much?

Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre will return to the House of Commons after he wins the federal by-election happening in the sprawling rural riding of Battle River-Crowfoot on Monday, August 18.

The by-election marking Poilievre’s return to Ottawa also marks a return to Alberta after he left his hometown of Calgary more than 20 years ago to work as a political staffer in Ottawa and run in a riding just outside the capital city. After spending 21 years as an Ottawa-area MP, Poilievre was defeated by Liberal Bruce Fanjoy in Carleton on April 28, which many believe was a result of his strong support of the anti-vaccine trucker convoy that harassed residents of the capital city in January and February 2022.

UCP MLA Glenn van Dijken on the “Unique Burden of Rural Representation”

Post author By Dave Cournoyer
Post date August 14, 2025

Athabasca-Barrhead-Westlock UCP MLA Glenn van Dijken asked the commission to consider what he described as the “Unique Burden of Rural Representation” when redrawing Alberta’s electoral map.

The three-term MLA urged the commission to lower the population averages in rural ridings so that rural MLAs will not have an increasingly large geographic region and more municipalities to represent in the Legislature, even if that means increasing the population averages in urban ridings.

Former Medicine Hat MLAs Rob Renner and Bob Wanner want big changes to provincial ridings

Post author By Dave Cournoyer
Post date August 13, 2025

East of Lethbridge, two former Medicine Hat MLAs are asking the commission to redraw the Medicine Hat ridings after the city was divided into two large rural-urban ridings when the riding boundaries were last redistributed in 2017.

Different submissions from Rob Renner, who was the Progressive Conservative MLA for Medicine Hat from 1993 to 2004, and Bob Wanner, who represented Medicine Hat as an NDP MLA from 2015 to 2019, argued that pairing the Medicine Hat with the City of Brooks in the current Brooks-Medicine Hat riding doesn’t well-serve the interests of Alberta’s sixth largest city.