New Year's party decorations.
New Year's party decorations.

As befits New Year’s Eve, the topic of the last AlbertaPolitics.ca post of 2022 is New Year’s parties. 

Specifically, political parties that would like to gain official status in 2023. 

According to Elections Alberta, there are currently 16 parties for which someone has gone to the trouble of reserving their names in the hopes they can become real political parties in 2023. 

By the sound of it, most of them, possibly all of them, are conservative political parties, as the term “conservative” is defined nowadays in Alberta, to wit, far to the right. 

And as former Alberta NDP leader Brian Mason has accurately said on many occasions, you just can’t have too many right-wing political parties in Alberta.

Leastways, there is no Wildrose Communist Party among the 16, although one supposes that, arguably, given the zeitgeist, the Workers United Party could nowadays be either one thing or the other. If this were 1958, I’d say it was definitely a party of the left. In 2023, that would be less certain.

Elections Alberta says there are only three ways to make the registration cut: 

–       Hold three seats in the Legislative Assembly.
–       Endorse candidates in at least half of the electoral divisions in the province (there are 87 at the moment).
–       Complete a petition containing the names and signatures of at least 8,473 eligible electors.

This is a fairly high bar to jump. Nevertheless, there seems to be no shortage of folks who would like to try. 

Here is the list of party names that have been approved by Chief Electoral Officer Glen Resler and are now reserved while their founders work to meet Elections Alberta’s qualifications for registration:

–       Alberta 1st Party (A1P)
–       Alberta’s Best Choice (ABC)
–       Alberta Maverick Party (AMP)
–       Alberta National Party (ANP)
–       Alberta Peoples Statehood (APS)
–       Alberta Prosperity Party (APP)
–       Alberta Statehood Party (ABSP)
–       Conservative Democratic Union (CDU)
–       Independent Political Alliance of Alberta (IPAA)
–       Legalize Real Democracy Party (LRDP)
–       The Justice Party (JP)
–       Land and Labour Party of Alberta (LLPA)
–       True Alberta Party (TAP)
–       Wildrose Liberty Party (WLP)
–       Wildrose Loyalty Coalition (WLC)
–       Workers United Party (WUP)

Only two of the 16 political entities seem to have a presence on the Internet. 

According to the Alberta Statehood Party’s Facebook page, its founders aspire for Alberta to become part of the United States – a project that might turn out to be more complicated than its adherents innocently believe. Still, they have swag, including “Alberta, USA” hats, and they had a booth at the Red Deer Gun Show. 

Moving to the Legalize Democracy Party, it would appear from its website its founders think we should have referenda about everything, including all bills before the Legislature. One sees practical problems with this approach. If we’re all members of the Legislature, can anyone call quorum? And where will we all sit? Readers will get the idea. 

As for the rest, we can only guess. 

It is possible, one supposes, that the Alberta 1st Party is a spinoff of the now-defunct pro-separation Alberta First Party, and that the Alberta Maverick Party is a spinoff of the Maverick Party, the federal separatist party that seems to have given Canada Tamara Lich, which should be quite enough, thank you very much. 

As previously noted, whether the Workers United Party or the Land and Labour Party of Alberta are entities of the right or the left is not yet clear.

Likewise, what is the difference between the Alberta Statehood Party, referenced above, and the Alberta People’s Statehood Party? Is the Alberta Peoples Statehood Party the Democrat version of the, presumably Republican leaning, Alberta Statehood Party? 

And what’s with the True Alberta Party? Does this suggest that the hapless Alberta Party, which exists and is registered but has never really registered with Alberta voters, has an ideology with which the founders of the TAB disagree profoundly enough to form a new version of the same thing? Ditto all those Wildrose variants. 

Is the IPAA a beer?

And finally, why is there no Natural Law Party of Alberta, since there’s so clearly a desire by some to transcend the current politics of the place? 

Have a great New Year’s party, everyone! See y’all in 2023. 

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...