Alberta NDP leader Rachel Notley kicking off her campaign with her staff.
Alberta NDP leader Rachel Notley kicking off her campaign with her staff. Credit: Rachel Notley / Twitter Credit: Rachel Notley / Twitter

May 1, the International Day of the Worker and presumably only by coincidence the day on which Alberta Premier Danielle Smith planned to visit Alberta Lieutenant-Governor Salma Lakhani to ask her to call a general election for May 29.

Recent polling suggests Smith’s United Conservative Party (UCP) and Opposition Leader Rachel Notley’s Alberta NDP are virtually tied in the intentions of voters – a situation not as simple as it seems given the regional strength of the UCP in rural ridings and the NDP in the Edmonton area. 

It is generally agreed the battleground that determines how the election campaign will end is in Calgary.

Indeed, the entire election may hinge on just how unpopular Premier Smith is with traditional Conservative voters. Some polling suggest she may be unpopular enough for many longstanding Conservative supporters to stay home on election day, or even hold their noses and vote NDP to restore a little sanity to the governance of Alberta. 

The apparent horserace will please media and quite likely engage many voters during what is bound to feel like a long month ahead.

In addition to election kick-off events in Calgary and Edmonton on the weekend by both parties, the UCP has obviously been concerned by the impact that the attitudes about diversity in our society held by many in its base appears may have on sophisticated Calgary voters. If readers doubt this assertion, they should take a look at the government’s Flickr royalty-free photographs page, Alberta Newsroom. 

As political commentator Dave Cournoyer pointed out in his Substack column Monday morning, while the UCP may be internally divided between Take Back Alberta insurgents and more traditional conservatives, Alberta’s many federal Conservative MPs can be counted on to pitch in to try to shore up their provincial brethren. 

They should be worried. The success of the NDP provincially if it continues is bound over time to have a progressive impact on the solid blue Conservative wall that other Canadians see in Albertans’ provincial voting patterns.

TBA activists asked to hide their affiliation until after vote

Having the misfortune of seeing their existence made official by the Globe and Mail last week, it seems the Take Back Alberta (TBA) cadres who now dominate Ms. Smith’s UCP have been instructed to hide their light under a bushel until after the election. 

TBA activist Benita Pederson communicated to TBA supporters last week asking them to “please refrain from wearing your TBA T-shirts to UCP events.”

“There are some members of the media that are apparently attempting to twist the facts,” she said. “Let’s deny them fuel for the fire, shall we?” 

“We also recommend that you don’t bring up TBA when interacting with UCP supporters and potential UCP supporters,” she added, noting (not inaccurately) that “not everybody is friendly to TBA.”

Of course, the problem isn’t that some members of the media are twisting the facts, but that the objective facts about TBA and its takeover of the UCP speak for themselves. 

These kind of things take time to sink in to the minds of any democratic electorate, so it is quite possible many Albertans will not be aware of what they are voting for when they cast a ballot for their local UCP candidate. 

As a third-party advertiser, TBA can’t legally advertise during the election period. However, as a now-covert radical movement adopting Leninist tactics within the UCP, one wonders if they’ll try to find other ways to use their clout.

Chelsae Petrovic solves the problem of bad-tweet blowback

They say that what you put online lives forever, but future historians may credit Chelsae Petrovic with solving a problem that has bedevilled loose-lipped election candidates since the beginning of the internet age: Dumb stuff you said social media that comes back to haunt you. 

Ms. Petrovic, UCP candidate in the Livingstone-Macleod riding, has found a solution for the era: She has simply issued a blanket apology for anything that may surface in the future.

Already elected as mayor by the uncritical voters of the southern Alberta town of Claresholm, Ms. Petrovic is well known for blaming folks with heart conditions for their own medical problems. 

With the election in the offing, she took to social media to explain that “as someone who had no intention of ever seeking public life, there are some comments and posts that I now know I should have been more prudent about before engaging with. I regret not researching some topics over the past fifteen years more thoroughly before commenting.” (Uh-oh!)

“I want to apologize unreservedly for these actions and any hurt that I may have caused,” she continued. “I pledge to the residents of Livingstone-Macleod that moving forward, I will communicate in a way that is respectful.” 

So if you’re unhappy with anything Ms. Petrovic has said, get over it now, whatever it may turn out to be.

Dani-defamation deadline passes quietly

Friday was Premier Smith’s deadline to the CBC to apologize for its supposedly defamatory coverage of her notorious chummy conversation with extremist street preacher Artur Pawlowski about the criminal charges he faces in connection with the convoy blockade of the Coutts border crossing in February 2022.

Not surprisingly, nothing happened in public Friday – the date, presumably, having been chosen because it was the last business day before Ms. Smith’s planned trip to the lieutenant governor to call an election today. 

Will she now sue the CBC for defamation during an election campaign, presumably to provide an excuse for not answering questions about her self-described efforts to interfere with the administration of justice in Mr. Pawlowski’s case? 

Hard to say. Easy for it to get lost in today’s election excitement.

David J. Climenhaga

David J. Climenhaga

David Climenhaga is a journalist and trade union communicator who has worked in senior writing and editing positions with the Globe and Mail and the Calgary Herald. He left journalism after the strike...