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Alberta politics takes another wild turn as Brian Jean re-enters the political arena – CBC.ca

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This column is an opinion from Graham Thomson, an award-winning journalist who has covered Alberta politics for more than 30 years. For more information about CBC’s Opinion section, please see the FAQ.


Brian Jean is back.

And the former leader of the Wildrose Party has a chip on his shoulder the size of a Rocky Mountain Douglas fir.

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Jean’s announcement this week that he’ll run in the yet-to-be-called byelection in his home riding of Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche wasn’t exactly a shock.

Besides escalating his criticism of Premier Jason Kenney online in recent weeks, Jean telegraphed his political intentions in the form of a rhetorical question on Facebook in September: “There is a byelection coming soon in my old riding in Fort McMurray. Should I run?”

The answer was always going to be yes.

“You spoke and I listened,” said Jean in his Facebook I-have-returned announcement Wednesday evening. “Something must be done or Rachel Notley will win the next election with an overwhelming majority.”

The target here, though, is not Notley but Kenney.

Jean is using the spectre of an NDP government returning to power as a club to batter away at Kenney.

Brian Jean to re-enter Alberta politics

21 hours ago

The former Wildrose Party leader will run in the upcoming Fort McMurray byelection, saying that change is needed if the conservatives want to remain in power in Alberta. 1:26

As if Kenney isn’t bruised enough being the most unpopular premier in the country, according to public opinion polls that also indicate Kenney’s United Conservative government would fall to the NDP if an election were held today.

Kenney is under attack from critics inside and outside the government who point to his broken election promises of “jobs, economy, pipelines” and his mishandling of the pandemic.

And now one of his loudest critics outside of government wants inside and is using Kenney’s unpopularity as the key to unlock the door.

Jean and others in the UCP’s anti-Kenney camp say they need to get rid of the leader soon to give the party time before the 2023 general election to choose a new leader and rebrand the UCP as something other than Kenney’s sock puppet. 

Or in the words of Jean: “I think my leadership style, my way of building teams, can get the best out of the UCP caucus and turn things around.”

Jean has filed his nomination papers with Elections Alberta and is in the process of collecting names of party members before submitting his nomination papers with the UCP.

The party says it welcomes anybody to run for a nomination, as long as the prospective candidate has been a UCP member for at least six months.

Jean has been a member since the UCP was formed by members of the Wildrose and the Progressive Conservative Party in 2017. He resigned his seat in 2018 after losing to Kenney in the bitterly contested and controversial UCP leadership race.

Power battle

Jean initially slipped into relative obscurity, but when Kenney’s star began to fall, Jean began to pop up on social media and in op-eds taking shots at his political nemesis. His announcement this week has sent a jolt of excitement through Alberta’s chattering classes.

This is Game of Thrones meets The Revenant.

It is not only a battle for power, but the return of a man left for dead.

Brian Jean casts his vote during the unity vote at the Wildrose Party’s special general meeting in Red Deer in 2017. (Jason Franson/Canadian Press )

So, what’s a beleaguered premier to do?

Under the party’s rules, it would seem he cannot unilaterally bar anyone from seeking the party’s nomination.

Thus, if Jean were to win the nomination, Kenney would be faced with the unprecedented, awkward and embarrassing prospect of his most vocal critic campaigning as a UCP candidate to bring down the UCP leader. Such a scenario boggles the mind and quickens the heart of Kenney’s critics.

Kenney’s best defence against Jean is to have him lose the nomination contest. There is one other person so far in the yet-to-be-declared UCP nomination contest: newcomer ​​Joshua Gogo, an economist who was appointed to the province’s Automobile Insurance Rate Board last year.

On the other hand, Jean is a former MLA and MP for Fort McMurray who is well-known in the region. And, even if he were to end up as an independent candidate, he’d be a sympathetic character running in a byelection against a premier whose popularity is so low you’d need an oilsands hydraulic shovel to find it.

Kenney has until Feb. 15 to call the byelection to replace UCP MLA Laila Goodridge, who quit her seat in August to run successfully for the federal Conservatives in September’s federal election.

Jean would get a real boost in his fight if he were to receive support from disgruntled UCP MLAs such as Leela Aheer, who has not only called for Kenney to resign but supported Jean in the 2017 leadership race. She has not returned my calls and a spokesman for Jean will only say he has been in contact with some UCP MLAs.

The NDP has already started a nomination contest to choose its candidate for the byelection.

You have to wonder if Kenney wouldn’t simply prefer having another NDP MLA across the floor of the legislative assembly floor staring daggers at him, rather than having Brian Jean inside the UCP tent sharpening his knives.

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Opinion: Canada's foreign policy and its domestic politics on Israel's war against Hamas are shifting – The Globe and Mail

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The vote in the House of Commons last week on Israel’s war against Hamas represents a shift in both Canada’s foreign policy and its domestic politics.

The Liberal government is now markedly more supportive of the rights of Palestinians and less supportive of the state of Israel than in the past. That shift mirrors changing demographics, and the increasing importance of Muslim voters within the Liberal coalition.

Both the Liberal and Conservative parties once voiced unqualified support for Israel’s right to defend itself from hostile neighbours. But the Muslim community is growing in Canada. Today it represents 5 per cent of the population, compared with 1 per cent who identify as Jewish.

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Although data is sparse prior to 2015, it is believed that Muslim Canadians tended to prefer the Liberal Party over the Conservative Party. They were also less likely to vote than the general population.

But the Conservative Party under Stephen Harper deeply angered the community with talk about “barbaric cultural practices” and musing during the 2015 election campaign about banning public servants from wearing the niqab. Meanwhile, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau was promising to bring in 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada if elected.

These factors galvanized community groups to encourage Muslims to vote. And they did. According to an Environics poll, 79 per cent of eligible Muslims cast a ballot in the 2015 election, compared with an overall turnout of 68 per cent. Sixty-five per cent of Muslim voters cast ballots for the Liberal Party, compared with 10 per cent who voted for the NDP and just 2 per cent for the Conservatives. (Telephone interviews of 600 adults across Canada who self-identified as Muslim, were conducted between Nov. 19, 2015 and Jan. 23, 2016, with an expected margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points 19 times out of 20.)

Muslim Canadians also strongly supported the Liberals in the elections of 2019 and 2021. The party is understandably anxious not to lose that support. I’m told that Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly often mentions the large Muslim community in her Montreal riding. (According to the 2021 census, 18 per cent of the people in Ahuntsic-Cartierville identify as Muslim.)

This is one reason why the Liberal leadership laboured so mightily to find a way to support last week’s NDP motion that would, among other measures, have recognized the state of Palestine. The Liberal caucus was deeply divided on the issue. My colleague Marieke Walsh reports that dozens of Liberal MPs were prepared to vote for the NDP motion.

In the end, almost all Liberal MPs ended up voting for a watered-down version of the motion – statehood recognition was taken off the table – while three Liberal MPs voted against it. One of them, Anthony Housefather, is considering whether to remain inside the Liberal caucus.

This is not simply a question of political calculation. Many Canadians are deeply concerned over the sufferings of the people in Gaza as the Israel Defence Forces seek to root out Hamas fighters.

The Conservatives enjoy the moral clarity of their unreserved support for the state of Israel in this conflict. The NDP place greater emphasis on supporting the rights of Palestinians.

The Liberals have tried to keep both Jewish and Muslim constituencies onside. But as last week’s vote suggests, they increasingly accord a high priority to the rights of Palestinians and to the Muslim community in Canada.

As with other religious communities, Muslims are hardly monolithic. Someone who comes to Canada from Senegal may have different values and priorities than a Canadian who comes from Syria or Pakistan or Indonesia.

And the plight of Palestinians in Gaza may not be the only issue influencing Muslims, who struggle with inflation, interest rates and housing affordability as much as other voters.

Many new Canadians come from societies that are socially conservative. Some Muslim voters may be uncomfortable with the Liberal Party’s strong support for the rights of LGBTQ Canadians.

Finally, Muslim voters for whom supporting the rights of Palestinians is the ballot question may be drawn more to the NDP than the Liberals.

Regardless, the days of Liberal/Conservative bipartisan consensus in support of Israel are over. This is the new lay of the land.

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Recall Gondek group planned to launch its own petition before political novice did – CBC.ca

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The third-party group helping promote the recall campaign against Mayor Jyoti Gondek had devised plans to launch its own petition drive, as part of a broader mission to make Calgary council more conservative.

Project YYC had planned with other conservative political organizations to gather signatures demanding Calgary’s mayor be removed, says group leader Roy Beyer. But their drive would have begun later in the year, when nicer weather made for easier canvassing for supporters, he said.

Those efforts were stymied when Landon Johnston, an HVAC contractor largely unknown in local politics, applied at city hall to launch his own recall drive in early February. Since provincial recall laws allow only one recall attempt per politician per term, Project YYC chose to lend support to Johnston’s bid.

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“Now we have to try to do door-knocking in the winter, and there’s a lot of preparation that you have to contemplate prior to starting. And Landon didn’t do that,” Beyer told CBC News in an interview.

Project YYC has helped gather signatures, created a website and erected large, anti-Gondek signs around town. It has supplied organizational heft that Johnston admits to lacking.

Their task is daunting.

According to provincial law, in order to force a recall plebiscite to oust the mayor before the term is up, they have two months to gather more than 514,000 signatures, an amount equal to 40 per cent of Calgary’s population in 2019.

They have until April 4 to collect that many signatures, and by March 21 had only 42,000.

Beyer criticizes the victory threshold for recall petition as so high that it’s “a joke,” and the province may as well not have politician recall laws.

So if he thinks it’s an impossible pursuit, why is he involved with this?

“You can send a message to the mayor that she should be sitting down and resigning … without achieving those numbers,” Beyer said.

Project YYC founder Roy Beyer, from a Take Back Alberta video in 2022. He is no longer with that provincial activist group. (royjbeyer screenshot/Rumble)

He likened it to former premier Jason Kenney getting 52 per cent support in a UCP leadership review — enough to technically continue as leader, but a lousy enough show of confidence that he announced immediately he would step down.

Gondek has given no indication she’ll voluntarily leave before her term is up next year. But she did emerge from a meeting last week with Johnston to admit the petition has resonated with many Calgarians and is a signal she must work harder to listen to public concerns and explain council’s decisions.

The mayor also told the Calgary Sun this week that she’s undecided about running for re-election in 2025. 

“There used to be this thing where if you’re the mayor, of course you’re going to run for another term because there’s unfinished business,” Gondek told the newspaper.

“And yes, there will be unfinished business, but the times are not what they were. You need to make sure you’re the right leader for the times you’re in.”

The last several Calgary mayors have enjoyed multiple terms in office, going back to Ralph Klein in the 1980s. The last one-term mayor was Ross Alger, the man Klein defeated in 1980.

Beyer and fellow conservative organizers launched Project YYC before the recall campaign. The goal was to elect a conservative mayor and councillors — “a common-sense city council, instead of what we currently have,” he said.

Beyer is one of a few former activists with the provincial pressure group Take Back Alberta to have latched themselves to the recall bid and Project YYC, along with some United Conservative Party riding officials in Calgary. 

Beyer’s acknowledgment of his group’s broader mission comes as Premier Danielle Smith and her cabinet ministers have said they want to introduce political party politics in large municipalities — even though most civic politicians have said they don’t want to bring clear partisanship into city halls.

Although Beyer admits Project YYC’s own recall campaign would have been a coalition effort with other conservative groups, he wouldn’t specify which ones. He did insist that Take Back Alberta wasn’t one of them.

A man in a grey baseball cap speaks to reporters.
Calgary business owner Landon Johnston speaks to reporters at City Hall on March 22 following his 15-minute conversation with Mayor Jyoti Gondek. (Laurence Taschereau/CBC)

Johnston says he was approached by Beyer’s group shortly after applying to recall Gondek, and gave them $3,000 from donations he’d raised.

He initially denied any knowledge of Project YYC when documents first emerged about that group’s role in the recall, but later said he didn’t initially realize that was the organizational name of his campaign allies.

“They said they could get me signatures, so I said, ‘OK, if you can do it by the book, here’s some money.’ And it’s worked,” he said.

Johnston has said he’s new to politics but simply wants to remove Gondek because of policies he’s disagreed with, like the soon-to-be-ended ban on single-use plastics and bags at restaurant takeouts and drive-thrus.

He’s no steadfast conservative, either. He told CBC’s Calgary Eyeopener that he voted for Rachel Notley’s NDP because one of its green-renovation incentives helped his HVAC business.

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Larry David shares how he feels about Trump – CNN

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Larry David shares how he feels about Trump

“Curb Your Enthusiasm” star Larry David shares how he feels about former President Donald Trump and the 2020 election. Watch the full episode of “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace,” streaming March 29 on Max.


03:21

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CNN

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