Your End of Summer Political Primer
Everything you need to know about Alberta politics going into the referendum.
Here we go:
The NDP
Naheed Nenshi is unelectable, and his party knows it. He will not be running as Leader in the next election.
The NDP is grooming two candidates right now: Kathleen Ganley and Rakhi Pancholi. One of them will be party leader, which means one of them will be running for Premier in 2027.
Those are the only KNOWNS. There is a dense fog of UNKNOWNS.
A year ago, the NDP’s strategy was simple: let Danielle continue destroying herself; be the loud (and only) opposition to Danielle; and flip a handful of Calgary ridings for the win. Now, it’s not so simple, for two reasons.
First, Nenshi turned out to be a dud, and now the party has little time to test, select and promote its new leader before the next election.
Second, they’ll be battling a centrist third party for votes. Will Peter Guthrie’s Tory Party find candidates and form organizations in all Alberta’s ridings in time for the next election? Will they have time to establish a platform and a message, and raise enough money to get voters’ attention? Nobody knows yet.
But we DO know that if the Tory Party can get its act together sooner than later, it will steal a massive amount of votes from the UCP separatists, and probably even some from the moderate end of the NDP.
It’s safe to say that the UCP, if it still exists, will come in third in the next election. Which of the NDP or Tories will come first/second is anyone’s guess.
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The UCP
The party has already self-destructed; we are living in its wreckage. It is still controlled by Separatists; indeed, as almost all its former supporters have come to realize, it has been all along.
If the Oct 19 Referendum provides a strong result for the Separatists then the UCP will continue on with Danielle in charge and carry the torch for Separation into the 2027 election. But the UCP has an AGM coming up in November. If the Referendum goes badly for the Separatists, then the UCP will have little reason to exist, and Danielle Smith will be sacked as leader.
At that point, one of two things will happen: an explicitly separatist leader will take over and the party will fight the next election on an openly Separatist platform; or the Separatists will abandon the UCP and form their own party, leaving the UCP to try to pick up the pieces as a big-tent conservative party. Such a move would fail, as Peter Guthrie’s Tory party would easily inherit this mantle.
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The Separatists
They had a good plan for the last election: Take over the UCP from within, get elected as “Conservatives”, and then persuade people that to be Separatist and Conservative are the same thing. Before Danielle Smith came along, the Seppies never had more than 3 to 5% support, now they have at least 15%. Three to five-fold growth in two years is an impressive achievement, and it was ALL due to the oxygen and amplification that Danielle gave them.
Now they all hate her, of course, for many excellent reasons that are now irrelevant, because everything they accomplished under Danielle Smith now lies in ashes. Forget all the names you heard in the past year: Alberta Prosperity Project, Let Alberta Decide, Alberta Next Panel, Pathway to Independence, Stay Free Alberta, the Centurion Project, Jeff Rath, Mitch Sylvestre, David Parker, Keith Wilson…all of it is wreckage, and has been since Danielle Smith threw them all under the bus in her May 21 speech (it’s online).
As a Movement, though, Separatism will be with us for a generation, and that’s too bad. Behind all the selfish leaders there is a small but strong grassroots movement that is indistinguishable from MAGA. New leaders will emerge and new parties will form; the Movement will live on, perhaps animating the corpse of the UCP, but my money says those three letters are so tainted that no one will want them a year from now.
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Danielle Smith
Danielle Smith cooked herself with the May 21st speech. Interestingly, she also fractured the Movement. Or rather, she forced the hidden fractures into the open. At the time, she said she’s voting for Canada and she will spend her time campaigning for the Stay side, but she clearly changed her mind. The only thing she has done well as Premier has been Separatism, and even as they now throw bombs at her on the internet, she remains loyal to their cause.
The only voters Smith might possibly count on anymore are comfortable boomers who don’t pay any attention to politics and therefore haven’t registered what a snake she is; people who will simply vote for the word ‘Conservative’ because that’s the only word they will ever vote for. (Which of course is why she made it illegal for any party except hers to use the word.)
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The Referendum
Here’s the problem: 15% of Albertans are separatists, and only 50% of Albertans vote. Therefore the Referendum will return a 30% result in favor of Separation, and Danielle will then say “A third of Albertans want to have this settled at the ballot box. We have to continue.” And then she dooms us to another two years of anger and distraction.
Only Danielle wants this, even though it’s the most likely outcome. There is no realistic possibility of a voter turnout higher than 65%, and even that number is a moonshot. That would give the Seppies a 23% result in the Referendum, which is still too high. On the other hand, if the Seppies convince a few more folks that we can strip power from Ottawa and seize it for Alberta, and if the polling stations are such a shitshow on Oct 19 that moderate people give up on voting, then the Seppies could conceivably pull a result of 40 or even 45% out of the hat.
Then everything would go to hell. That’s why turnout matters so much for this Referendum. If the Seppies come out with only 22%, then the knives will be out and Danielle will lose her place as leader in November and the UCP will dissolve into chaos, ideally leading to an early Election.
But if the Seppies come up with 42% of the vote, then Danielle stays in place, keeps stoking our anger because that’s the wave she rides best, and throughout next year she will spend, spend, spend, using billions of tax dollars to buy herself votes in 2027. In the end, she won’t win and we’ll be stuck with the debt.
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The Future
Danielle Smith and the UCP are finished. Whether it comes this October or next, or somewhere in between is anyone’s guess, but the die is cast. Moving on.
The Separatists have one, and only one, intelligent leader: Chris Scott, the owner of Whistlestop Cafe in Mirror, Alberta. What sets him apart is the fact that he has kept to the grassroots issues of freedom and conservative values. While everyone else has jumped on the populist MAGA platform, Scott has humbly maintained a human-sized ego and tried to create a vision of Alberta independence for the average person. The others speak only as voices of Trump, white supremacy, and fear.
Scott lacks the charisma to be the Leader, though. So as the Separatists leave their childhood (and their mommy) behind and move into their political adolescence, I hope that their new leadership looks to Scott for inspiration, rather than Donald Trump, because the Seppies do have things to offer Alberta politics.
We can have legitimate discussions about immigration, as long as we’re talking about economic, housing and education policy, not about race. It is valid to ask how public money can be used to provide your kids with an education that aligns with your values, as long as we’re not trying to erase people. You have the right to insist not to be coerced into being injected with something you don’t trust, or be forced to declare your gender at the start of every conversation. I’m a progressive, and you are not my people, but if you can capture 5 or 10 seats in the next election and have 10 or 15% of the seats in the Legislature, I think that would be good for all of us. Imagine this:
Election results in 2027:
Tory 42%
NDP 25%
Separatist Party 12%
UCP 6%
Green/Independent 2%
What this would mean is that we’d have to talk to each other for a change. It would be messy, and it could be glorious. This legislature would have to take on one issue at a time and talk things through to pass any law, any budget. They couldn’t plow ahead according to some bullshit ideology dreamed up by billionaires and crazy people, because none of them would have the votes by themselves. It might be amazing.
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What to watch for:
1. Positivity. The UCP offers Mordor, the NDP offers criticism, and all we get now is yelling. Understood. But that means there is a lot of unclaimed territory to offer us some sunshine, some vision of a better life. Like cheaper everything; and more money for schools and teachers and universities; and opportunities for young people. And freedom from mass surveillance. And dental care. And listening to First Nations and cooperating with them. And safety and security for all of us, not just the rich. And seeing some benefits to all this oil wealth we’re sitting on. Stuff like that.
2. Project Canada: We’re neck deep in the separatist debate, but no one has taken leadership of the Remain side: not Poilievre or Kenney, not Danielle, not the NDP or the Tories. Carney is doing a great job combating Separatism just by making Canada awesome again, but there is still a LOT of room for our local politicians to pour some glitter on the proper flag.
3. First Nations/Wab Kinew: The First Nations peoples have gained some power and spotlight out of Danielle’s failures; it will be interesting to see what comes of it. And Wab Kinew is a rock star.
4. The sheer fun of a free-for-all: The UCP, NDP and Separatists all need new leaders. The Tories and NDP need platforms. Everyone wants to promise the voters something better. So no matter who knocks on your door, it doesn’t matter which party, just tell them what you want. Talk to everyone, because the field is wide open, and even though we already know who’s going to lose, we don’t know who’s going to win.
