Politics
Alberta votes in the strangest — and closest — election in its political history
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A year ago, it looked like Rachel Notley’s race to lose. Danielle Smith has caught up in high-drama, low-issue battle
But this time, with the two parties neck-and-neck as voting day approaches, the election is not about jobs or pipelines or even party platforms.
It’s about Rachel Notley, leader of the NDP, and Danielle Smith, leader of the United Conservative Party.
Issues have surfaced, none of them campaign-defining. The NDP has hammered away on health care. They’ve promised a recruitment strategy for doctors and nurses, and repeatedly raised the spectre of private medicine, which is actually part of the UCP’s handbook. It’s an issue the NDP poll better on than the UCP.
And the UCP have talked extensively about the economy. Former prime minister Stephen Harper even put out a video early in the campaign warning about the economic damage he believes the NDP would do if they were re-elected. The UCP polls well on the economy.
Albertans seem to put Smith and Notley in a dead heat in terms of who they like more: 39 per cent have a positive view of Notley, 38 per cent have a positive view of Smith. The numbers are equally tight for those who dislike Notley (46 per cent) and Smith (47 per cent), per recent Abacus Data polling.
Six months, a year ago, it looked like Notley’s race to lose. The NDP had good polling numbers, and Notley was well-liked. The party out-fundraised their opponents and was flush with cash.
After Jason Kenney quit the UCP, a leadership campaign last summer saw the party’s right edge emerge victorious, with Smith taking the helm in a narrow victory. By the time the UCP held its convention last fall, the party was united to defeat Notley’s NDP.
The latest polling — the bulk of it from Mainstreet Research — shows the United Conservatives with a modest lead. On May 25, the pollster reported 46 per cent of Albertans planned to cast a ballot for the UCP, and 42 per cent for the NDP, with seven per cent still undecided, and the remainder scattered between small parties.
“The fact that the NDP are even close is already an indictment of the Danielle Smith era of the UCP,” said Boessenkool. “There’s no way that any party should be close to a united conservative tent.”
At least part of the reason has been the “bozo eruptions.” In a country where an impropriety or an inelegant comment has been enough to end a political career — and scuppered Smith’s last crack at becoming premier in 2012 — the UCP has largely kept its candidates while dealing with a steady drip of controversy.
“I think these things will affect turnout: they’ll hurt UCP turnout and they’ll boost NDP turnout,” said Boessenkool.
Jennifer Johnson, a nurse and farmer who lives near the central Alberta town of Bentley, was the UCP candidate for Lacombe-Ponoka, at least until audio of her comparing transgender children in the classroom to feces in cookie dough leaked out. She’s still technically on the ballot — it was too late to remove her — but Smith said she won’t sit in caucus.
“(They’re) focusing on the UCP’s record on the economy, and really sowing equal doubt in the minds of voters about ‘do you want to go back to to a Rachel Notley-led government,’” Myatt said.
For most of her career in media and politics, Smith has operated on something of the political fringe; the libertarian wing of Alberta politics. As recently as June 2021, Smith argued in a position paper that out-of-pocket payments would be necessary to sustain the health-care system, and in October 2021, suggested selling off several Alberta hospitals. Those positions have been repeated ad nauseam by her NDP opponents, and Smith has had to swear, repeatedly, she doesn’t stand by her previous comments.
Additionally, she promoted hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug, as a “100 per cent” effective treatment for COVID-19, and herself took Ivermectin — an anti-parasitic drug — when she came down with COVID-19, picking up the drug on the same day the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta said it should never be prescribed to treat the viral infection.
Trussler compared Smith’s actions to those of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during the SNC-Lavalin affair. “In the whole scheme of things, it is a threat to democracy to interfere with the administration of justice,” Trussler wrote.
Again, the report didn’t seem to move voters. At least part of the explanation, said Menzies, is that everyone knew the report was coming and anticipated it wouldn’t exonerate Smith. It was already baked in with voters, Menzies said.
The UCP mentions in its campaign advertising that Notley once said Alberta risked being Canada’s “embarrassing cousin” if it didn’t get its environmental record under control. And that Sarah Hoffman, former NDP deputy premier, once called Wildrose supporters “sewer rats.” Campaign literature in Edmonton details “anti-police” NDP candidates, too, but none of it seems to have broken into the popular discourse.
“I think voters kind of look past the noise now,” said Menzies.
On May 18, Rachel Notley and Danielle Smith faced off in a one-on-one leaders debate. It was just hours after Trussler had released her report. The UCP had crowed victory, as Trussler also said that she could find no evidence that Smith had contacted Crown prosecutors directly regarding COVID prosecutions, a central allegation the CBC had been reporting that the NDP had seized on.
“Ms. Notley, the NDP and the CBC lied for months saying I was calling Crown prosecutors and my staff were calling Crown prosecutors and it wasn’t true, and that is what the ethics commissioner found,” Smith responded.
For Smith, the debate was a strong showing. Perhaps her best day on the campaign.
“The NDP has had a full campaign of draws and the UCP has had a full campaign of losses, with one draw,” said Boessenkool.
Anecdotal evidence from those working the doors around the province for the NDP suggests voters do care about some of the scandals.
There have been some high-profile defections from conservative camps, who aren’t voting blue this time.
There’s no way that any party should be close to a united conservative tent
Doug Griffiths, who served as a cabinet minister under former Progressive Conservative premier Ed Stelmach, said he’d be giving his vote to the New Democrat in Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville, a suburban and rural riding east of Edmonton.
“I don’t believe the UCP party is conservative anymore,” Griffiths said in a video. “They are conspiratorial, they are feeding anger. They are anti-science, anti-truth, anti-fact.”
“I’m a lifelong conservative both federally and provincially, and this is a big change for me to abandon my party, but I simply cannot any longer tolerate this,” Foster told the Calgary Herald.
“The vast majority of conservatives who are nervous about Danielle are ultimately going to wind up supporting her,” Myatt predicted.
The tight popular vote polling doesn’t break down cleanly in terms of seat count, which are weighted towards Calgary and small-town Alberta — conservative heartlands. There are 87 seats in the Alberta legislature, 20 of them in Edmonton, 26 in Calgary and 41 in the rest of the province.
On Monday, it may come down to who can get people out the door and to the polling stations.
“The only thing left to do is to motivate and mobilize your supporters to get to the polls,” said Leah Ward, Notley’s former communications director, now with Wellington Advocacy. “There’s very little persuading left to do.”
• Email: tdawson@postmedia.com | Twitter:
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The core issue at hand is preserving their agency and autonomy over the ideological content of their children’s education
In the coming days, Canada will see heightened activity in the nation’s ongoing gender identity politics debate. The “1 Million March 4 Children” protest against how gender identity is taught in schools, is set to occur on Wednesday, with synchronized events in more than 50 cities countrywide. Two days later, separate Toronto rally will spotlight two figures prominent in the gender-critical movement: Chris Elston, colloquially known as “Billboard Chris” for his distinctive method of protesting against childhood medical transition, and Josh Alexander, a Renfrew, Ontario student who was expelled earlier this year after objecting in class to his school’s transgender washroom policy.
As parents’ voices grow louder, there’s a perception in the progressive left that all of these emerging movements are rooted and inspired by “far-right” extremism. Many in leftist circles suggest that parental rights advocacy is a dog-whistle: a veiled attempt to advance anti-transgender policies. A recently leaked video from an Ontario Federation of Labour meeting offers a glimpse into how some of the province’s most influential union members perceive these protests. As one member notably stated during the meeting: “The fascists are organizing in the streets … . This is far more than a far-right transphobic protest. They’re fundamentally racist, they’re fundamentally anti-union, they are fundamentally transphobic, and it’s just a matter of time before they come for us.”
It’s a grave mistake to deride the parental collective pushing back against the status-quo as fascist sympathizers motivated by transgender hate. A glance past such alarmist rhetoric reveals that — while a fringe group of hate has always existed — the concerns many parents are championing are much more moderate than a “far-right” moniker suggests.
For many parents, the core issue at hand is preserving their agency and autonomy over the ideological content of their children’s education. They want transparency about what is being taught, the option to excuse their child from content they believe doesn’t align with their values, and the discretion to determine age-appropriateness for activities, such as certain reading material or events like drag queen performances at schools. Perhaps least surprisingly, parents want to be involved in the key decisions of their own child undergoing a social transition in the classroom.
The matter of social transition behind parents’ backs in particular is so condemning of their role in upbringing that it has thrust the entire gamut of gender identity matters into the national spotlight, revealing just how out of balance transgender accommodation has become. The manner in which the left has responded — by doubling down in their rhetoric and deriding parents as militant zealots, has played powerfully into the rapid growth of this grassroots movement.
Many parents, even amid those who will stand in protest, have little desire to limit other families’ decisions regarding gender teachings and expression for their children. They realize that their objective of ensuring their own parental autonomy is intertwined with safeguarding those same freedoms for other families as well.
So where do we go from here? What might a balanced approach to parental rights look like within the nuanced landscape of gender identity politics? Fortunately, we need not start from scratch; history offers us a model for the coexistence of diverse ideologies within our educational institutions. Look no further than religion.
Amid religious diversity, we teach acceptance. Students are taught to make space for varied faith expression among their peers, whether through clothing or other customs, and with a strong desire to maintain neutral, religious symbols are not adorned by the institution. The lesson for students is to embrace and include, even where personal beliefs diverge; Meanwhile, the guiding principle for the institution is to avoid actions that display favouritism toward any specific religious doctrine.
Such a solution could address a significant portion of the concerns fuelling the rising parental unrest. Moderate parents would applaud such an education system, and this would still be inclusive of transgender students. But in order for this to be realized, the two factions moving ever further apart will first need to come to the table and talk. Given the recent rhetoric from progressive quarters, the prospect of this dialogue anytime soon appears distant.
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A month after Global Affairs Canada told CBC News it was looking into claims that the Polish government asked one of its diplomats in Canada to gather information on a former Alberta cabinet minister, the dismissed consul general at the centre of the affair says he still hasn’t heard from the department on the matter.
Andrzej Mańkowski told CBC News the only official he has heard from is a B.C. bureaucrat who asked him to return his diplomatic licence plates and identification.
“[Officials with Global Affairs] haven’t tried talking to me,” he said.
Mańkowski showed CBC News a copy of a letter dated Aug. 31 he received from B.C.’s Chief of Protocol for Intergovernmental Relations Lucy Lobmeier asking him to turn in his identity card and to return his diplomatic plates “within 30 days of this letter.” She also thanked him for his service.
Mańkowski alleges he was dismissed from his post in late July after he refused to carry out orders from the Polish government to gather information about Thomas Lukaszuk, a former deputy premier of Alberta who often provides commentary to CBC News about the province’s politics.
“It’s clear that Polish diplomacy during Communist times, the main responsibility was to collect information, to gather information on some Polish representatives abroad,” Mańkowski said, adding he felt as if the request was a throwback to that time.
“The analogy’s extremely evident.”
Last month, Global Affairs Canada said it was taking the allegations seriously.
Spying allegations ‘out of this world’: ambassador
In August, Lukaszuk said he believed he had been targeted by Poland’s department of foreign affairs over his activism against a controversial Polish pastor, Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, who has private radio and television stations in Poland.
Rydzyk, who has ties to the Polish government, has been criticized for delivering sermons featuring homophobic and anti-Semitic views and for preaching against the European Union.
Lukaszuk also shared what he said were encrypted messages Polish government officials sent to Mańkowski asking him over the course of a year to prepare notes on the former Alberta politician.
CBC News has not independently verified these messages were official government communications. Mańkowski did not dispute their veracity in his interview.
“Asking for my opinion about Lukaszuk was just a kind of trap, was just a political test of my loyalty,” he said.
Poland’s Ambassador to Canada Witold Dzielski called the allegation “totally absurd.”
“The idea of Polish diplomacy spying on a former provincial politician … it’s really out of this world,” Dzielski said.
He said he has never met Lukaszuk and did not know of his previous career in politics before Lukaszuk emailed him about an unrelated consular matter long before the reports about Mańkowski came out.
Dzielski said that if the notes cited by Lukaszuk are real, they were leaked illegally because they would constitute private diplomatic communications.
The affair has captured attention in Polish media, where the story first broke.
In July, Polish opposition politicians cited the messages released by Lukaszuk when they asked Piotr Wawrzyk, a secretary of state in the government’s foreign affairs department, whether Mańkowski was dismissed because he refused to spy on Lukaszuk.
In reply, Wawrzyk said the government could recall a diplomat who refused to carry out an assignment.
Wawrzyk, who was also a deputy foreign minister, has since been fired himself over an unrelated matter both local media outlets and Reuters have linked to a clandestine scheme awarding migrants visas in exchange for cash.
On Saturday, The Associated Press noted he had been hospitalized following an apparent sucide attempt.
“The minister, Wawrzyk, was laid off because of a totally different subject,” Dzielski said.
He pointed out that those documents were cited by opposition politicians in the context of a heated election campaign.
Dzielski� also said it’s normal for diplomats to be asked to gather information on notable members of diaspora communities.
‘A very marginal conversation’
“We are working very closely with them,” he said. “It is obvious and natural, and it is an element of diplomatic workshops, that we provide and we build ourselves opinions about the quality of cooperation with particular actors.”
He said Global Affairs has spoken to him about the allegations. “We had a very marginal conversation on this which reflects the level of seriousness of this topic,” he said.
A NATO member, Poland has worked closely with Canada to help out its neighbour Ukraine ever since Russia launched its full-scale invasion last year.
Asked for comment, Global Affairs said in a media statement it “continues to work closely with security and intelligence community partners to assess the situation and identify next steps as appropriate.”
The department said last month it had contacted Lukaszuk and that it took the responsibility of protecting Canadians from “transnational repression” very seriously.
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The Current20:05Putting politics aside to tackle the housing crisis
Political leaders of all stripes must find a way to work together to solve the housing and climate crises impacting Canadians, says former Conservative MP Lisa Raitt.
“Toronto is the best example. NDP mayor, provincial premier who’s Conservative, federal Liberal who’s the prime minister,” said Raitt, co-lead of the new non-governmental Task Force for Housing and Climate, which launched Tuesday.
“And if they don’t figure this out, one voter is going to punish them all.”
The new task force is concerned with accelerating the construction of new homes, while ensuring that’s done in a sustainable way. In a press release, the group of former city mayors, planners, developers, economists and affordable housing advocates said it intends to convene until April 2024 to develop policy recommendations. The work is supported by the Clean Economy Fund, a charitable foundation.
Raitt held several senior cabinet posts under former prime minister Stephen Harper. But as co-lead of the task force, Raitt said she won’t engage in the political partisanship that she thinks “poisons the well” around these issues.
“Part of the reason why we’re coming together as the task force is to have a real pragmatic and practical conversation about these issues instead of weaponizing it into a political arena, and finger pointing back and forth,” she told The Current’s Matt Galloway.
Justin Trudeau announced funding to build more housing in London, Ont., as he and Liberal MPs kicked off their caucus retreat. The agreement comes as the government faces growing pressure to help make housing more affordable.
Canada needs to build an extra 3.5 million new units by the end of the decade, over and above what’s already in the works, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. A report this week showed rental costs have increased 9.6 per cent from Aug. 2022 to 2023, to an average now of $2,117 a month.
This week, the federal government announced it would cut the federal goods and services tax (GST) from the construction of new rental apartments, in an effort to spur new development. The Liberal government also pledged $74 million to build thousands of homes in London, Ont., — the first in what it hopes will be a series of agreements to accelerate housing construction.
Speaking in London on Wednesday, Housing Minister Sean Fraser called on municipalities to “legalize housing,” urging them to remove “sluggish permit-approval processes” and zoning obstacles if they expect federal investment in housing construction.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre took aim at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s housing plans Thursday, saying the Liberal government’s ‘inflationary deficits’ and ‘taxes and bureaucracy’ are holding back construction of new homes.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre criticized the government’s plans as not going far enough, while pointing out it echoes some of his party’s proposals. He’s proposed measures that tie federal funding to the number of housing starts. Funding would be withheld from cities that fail to increase the number of homes built by 15 per cent, while cities that pass that threshold would receive bonuses.
Poilievre’s proposals also include a “NIMBY” fine on municipalities that block construction because of opposition from local residents, and the sale of 15 per cent of federally owned buildings so the land can be used to build affordable homes.
Don Iveson, former mayor of Edmonton and co-lead of the task force, said he understands why partisan politics can creep into the debate — but Canadians expect more.
He said the task force intends “to help all orders of government” understand what’s needed to tackle these problems from an economic, technical and planning perspective.
“We’re not going to be able to solve the housing crisis [by] building housing the way we built it for the last several generations,” said said Iveson, who was mayor of Edmonton from 2013 to 2021.
Your kids need a place to live: Raitt
Iveson said the challenge of scaling up housing construction will require some new ways of thinking.
That might mean a greater emphasis on automation and building houses from components prefabricated off-site, which he described as “essentially a more factory approach” that could also reduce construction costs.
Raitt said the task force will examine where houses are built, and in what kind of density, to ensure scaling up can “get the most bang for the buck.”
That might mean Canadians might need to have difficult conversations, including whether to build multi-storey buildings instead of single-family homes.
Raitt said older Canadians who already own their own homes might not like the idea of taller buildings going up around them, but they should speak to their kids about it.
CBC’s Sohrab Sandhu reports on an unorthodox strategy where some people are deciding to buy homes with strangers.
“They don’t care if it’s going to be four, six storeys in a residential neighbourhood. They just want a place that they know that they can purchase,” she said.
“Talk about whether or not our kids are going to have a place to live, let alone rent, let alone own, let alone a house in the communities where they were brought up, because right now it’s not looking so good.”
Counting the cost of climate change
When it comes to climate change and sustainability, the task force’s goals come down to a “very simple equation,” Raitt said.
“Whatever we’re building now is going to be here in 2050. So if it’s going to be part of the calculation of our net-zero aspirations, whatever they’re going to be,” she said.
She said the task force will work to formulate ways to build housing that take emissions into account, but don’t include prohibitive costs that slow down the rate of construction.
“It’s going to be a little bit more costly to build with climate indications built in … but you’ve got to make sure that there’s policies surrounding that to make sure it still makes it affordable,” she said.
Officials say the fire, which is burning out of control as of Monday morning, is expected to grow.
Iveson said wildfires, floods, heat domes and extreme weather events are already disrupting the economy, as well as posing huge financial burdens for the Canadians caught up in them.
“Climate change is already costing us a fortune,” he told Galloway.
Building without those climate considerations “maybe seems affordable in the short term, but it’s false economy when it comes to the real costs ahead of us,” he said.
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