Premier Smith visits rural Alberta to lend voice to local byelection candidate
THREE HILLS – Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is winning applause but also facing pointed questions from party members ahead of three byelections.
Smith, in her role as United Conservative leader, appeared at a town hall meeting attended by about 300 in Three Hills Monday.
She came with Tara Sawyer, who is running under the party banner in the June 23 byelection in the area.
Smith was applauded for policies including a demanding a better deal from the federal government, her government's income tax cut, her vow to protect unvaccinated Albertans from discrimination, and new rules including a ban on transgender athletes in women's sport.
'Ten years of (federal) Liberal policies have gotten us nowhere,' Smith told the crowd.
'Alberta will move forward with confidence and clarity. We will develop our economy. We will exercise our constitutional rights, we will forge the future that Alberta deserves.'
Sawyer is running in Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills against Bev Toews of the NDP, Cameron Davies of the Republican Party of Alberta, and Bill Tufts of the Wildrose Loyalty Coalition.
Davies has criticized the UCP for failing to agree to a byelection debate while the UCP said it wasn't possible due to a scheduling conflict. Davies said the UCP was dodging accountability and democracy and avoiding the elephant in the room: talk of Alberta independence.
Sawyer disagreed, telling the crowd, 'Some forces are trying to divide us and split the vote. We cannot let that happen.'
Not everyone was on side.
Jon Sedore, a longtime UCP member who lives in the nearby town of Trochu, said that argument doesn't hold water.
'We're in the most conservative riding of Alberta and of Canada, so I'm not concerned about the NDP here,' he said in an interview.
He said he doesn't think Sawyer and the UCP have been clear about where they stand on separation, and he doesn't like Smith appointing Sawyer rather than holding a candidate race.
'I don't like the top-down approach,' he said, while also expressing strong support for Smith and her efforts to exercise more constitutional rights for the province.
Sedore said questions about Alberta's independence should be answered by all candidates so voters know where they each stand.
Smith has long held that she wants to see Alberta remain in Canada, but recently passed legislation to lower the threshold for citizens to spark a referendum on leaving Confederation.
She's also noted that her party wanted to move quickly to have a candidate in Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills in place in order to save taxpayers' money by holding the vote in conjunction with byelections in Edmonton Strathcona and Edmonton Ellerslie.
NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi is running in Edmonton Strathcona to gain a seat in the legislature about a year after winning the party's top job.
The Edmonton-Ellerslie byelection is to replace NDP member Rod Loyola. He stepped down earlier this year to run in the federal election.
Sawyer, speaking with The Canadian Press, echoed Smith's stance, saying she's fighting for a strong, sovereign Alberta within Canada, but it's up to the people to decide whether a referendum is held.
'I understand we're in a pressure cooker situation. I think it's important for (Albertans) to know that they are being heard,' she said.
Sawyer, a farmer and former chair of the Grain Growers of Canada, said Davies' suggestion that she is the UCP's hand-picked 'Ottawa-first' candidate is 'hogwash.'
'I have raised my family here. I grew up here, and my entire life has been to be a voice to improve my community,' she said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 10, 2025.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
National Post
an hour ago
- National Post
Tom Flanagan: Apologizing for slavery would be a distortion of history
One of the first petitions to Canada's new Parliament has landed, and the topic is slavery. Endorsed by Gord Johns, an MP from British Columbia who managed to survive the recent NDP annihilation, it demands an apology to Black-Canadians from the Government of Canada: 'Black Canadians have endured centuries of systemic racism, beginning with transatlantic slavery, followed by legalized segregation and ongoing institutional discrimination in policing, education, employment, housing, health care and the justice system.… The Government of Canada has yet to formally apologize.' Article content Article content With only 125 signatures so far from a country of 40 million people, the petition is not exactly a milestone of populist politics. Nonetheless, the issues it raises are worth clarification. Article content Article content Article content The institution of slavery was not brought to the New World with the arrival of the European settlers. Slavery had been practised since time immemorial over most of North and South America. When the French arrived in what is now Quebec, they brought a few African slaves with them by way of their Caribbean outposts, but mostly they purchased Indigenous slaves from the Iroquois, the Illinois and other far-ranging tribes. These slaves became known as 'Panis,' after the Pawnee tribe of Nebraska that furnished many of the captives. The noted historian Marcel Trudel has estimated that, prior to 1760, the Panis made up two-thirds of all slaves in New France. Africans afterwards became more common, but overall numbers remained relatively small. New France lacked the plantations and mines that were worked by millions of slaves in Latin America, the American south and the Caribbean, so slaves were mainly personal servants and craftsmen. Article content After the Conquest, more African slaves were brought in from the United States and the Caribbean, but the English conquerors also imported the philosophy of abolition, then starting to make headway in England and its colonies. In 1793, the Government of Upper Canada (now Ontario), under the leadership of Gov. John Simcoe, passed the Act Against Slavery, outlawing the importation of slaves, one of the modern world's first anti-slavery statutes. In contrast, slavery was not abolished in the British Empire until 1834, in the United States until 1865 (with the end of a bloody civil war) and in Brazil in 1888. Far from being a mainstay of slavery and the slave trade, Canada was a leader in its abolition. Article content
Toronto Star
an hour ago
- Toronto Star
Sir John A. Macdonald statue back in view at Queen's Park after five years boarded up
TORONTO - The Sir John A. Macdonald statue outside the Ontario legislature is back in full view after spending the past five years in a box. The statue of Canada's first prime minister has been under hoarding since 2020, when it was vandalized with pink paint. The monument was one of many that were targeted across the country amid anti-racism protests and as Canadians grappled with the history of residential schools. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Macdonald is considered an architect of the country's notorious residential school system, which took Indigenous children from their families in an effort to assimilate them. Progressive Conservative and Liberal members of a non-partisan board of the legislative assembly agreed earlier this month on a motion to remove the hoarding after the statue is cleaned. Speaker Donna Skelly says she recognizes the sensitivities surrounding Macdonald and welcomes Ontarians to come and share their views peacefully. This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 11, 2025. Politics Headlines Newsletter Get the latest news and unmatched insights in your inbox every evening Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. Please enter a valid email address. Sign Up Yes, I'd also like to receive customized content suggestions and promotional messages from the Star. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Politics Headlines Newsletter You're signed up! You'll start getting Politics Headlines in your inbox soon. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page.
National Observer
2 hours ago
- National Observer
NDP grassroots buck against 'top-down' leadership race
After the unmitigated disaster that was the NDP's 2025 election result, prominent members are pushing back against an 'elitist' leadership race and want the party to rebuild from the grassroots up. 'We lost touch, and we have to be honest about that,' former MP Charlie Angus said at a June 11 press conference in Ottawa. 'We have to re-engage with people.' When asked about Angus' comments, NDP interim leader Don Davies said it was a 'tough election' but he doesn't think the party lost touch. The question of how to rebuild has become existential: the NDP is down to seven MPs and lost official party status for the first time since 1993. This limits the party's influence significantly. They no longer get a seat on committees to study issues and amend legislation, and no longer have the right to ask daily questions of the government during Question Period, among other lost privileges. The party is searching for a way out of the wilderness, and doing so without a leader. According to Angus, the party needs two things: a strong leader and a return to grassroots organizing. But the NDP must do more than just rally behind a leader, he emphasized. 'Nothing against Jagmeet [Singh], but we stopped being the New Democratic Party. We became Team Jagmeet, and that wasn't selling,' Angus said in an interview with Canada's National Observer. With the NDP reduced to seven seats, Former MP Charlie Angus and party activists are pushing back against a "top-down approach" to the NDP leadership race and instead are advocating for a return to grassroots organizing. 'If it's all about just going to cheer on the leader, then the riding associations start to disintegrate,' he said. Proposed leadership contest rules controversial Angus, who once again ruled out a bid for the leadership, has run before: he ran against Singh in the 2017 NDP leadership race. At the time, the entry fee was $30,000. Now, there are rumblings among a handful of prominent New Democrats that the entry fee could go up to $150,000, the Globe and Mail reported last month. Angus said he doesn't know what an acceptable fee for entry is but said $150,000 'seems like a high number.' Brad Lavigne, a key member of former NDP leader Jack Layton's leadership team who also participated in Thomas Mulclair's race, said the leadership campaign needs to strike the balance between duration, financial viability and broad support. Running a long leadership race can make the costs of a campaign for both the candidates and party unsustainable, Lavigne said. Lavigne didn't speculate about an appropriate leadership fee, but noted fee thresholds self-select tenable candidates that have grassroots support from across the country. "If you can't find 1,000 people to contribute $20, then how viable are you as a leadership candidate?' Lavigne said. The primary objective of running any leadership campaign is to find a leader that has broad support from party members and get the majority of Canadians to vote NDP at the polls so it can implement the party's policies, he said. 'Grassroots members that I've talked to want to see a successful electoral game plan,' he said. 'It's not enough to make the case for policy ideas in the hopes that other parties will adopt them and enact them in Parliament.' Grassroots 'tired of this top-down approach' Des Bissonnette and Ashley Zarbatany, co-chairs of the Indigenous People's Commission, criticized the proposed leadership race fee and short race, arguing the plan is the brainchild of an unelected party elite that wasn't vetted by the executive council and will potentially exclude grassroots supporters and ideas. 'There are a lot of grassroots and team members who are tired of this top-down approach by the consultant class in our party,' said Zarbatany, who added the proposed fee is 'abysmal' and didn't represent the values or pocketbooks of a working-class party. Ideas about the leadership race were floated in the press before discussing them with the federal executive, she added, reflecting the poor internal communication that also led to pushback by half the elected caucus around the selection of the interim leader, Don Davies. Bissonnette, the NDP candidate for Lakeland, Sask. in the last election, agreed. 'There's never really any consultation with [federal NDP] council members on what direction the party is going to take most of the time,' she said. 'You're rubber-stamping decisions that they've already made, rather than actively engaging in the democratic process.' The party has also shifted away from grassroots progressive values, she said, citing the decision to remove socialist language from the party's constitution and the failure to push hard for electoral reform while backing the Liberal government or in the election campaign. 'People like myself in the grassroots, the volunteers who are passionate about progressive politics want to see a real progressive party,' Bissonnette said. Bissonnette and Zarbatany said the climate crisis is a key issue with many grassroots members of the party who feel environmental policy proposals get ignored. Doubling down on centralist ideas that are too similar to the Liberal Party isn't going to lead to the renewal of the party, Zarbatany said. 'They are the reason why our party has suffered catastrophic electoral losses.' 'Kill Zoom' Rebuilding the party is about far more than the leadership race, and last time round, the party's leader-centric focus undermined the role of local riding associations, Angus said. 'People living in 12 ridings probably decided the leadership last time and that left a lot of parts of the country out in the cold,' he said. The party must find a way for members in New Brunswick or rural Saskatchewan to feel like a part of the movement. Angus' main recommendation to bring the party back to its grassroots origins? 'We need to kill Zoom,' he said. 'Everything by the NDP is done on Zoom. Zoom doesn't include anybody,' he told Canada's National Observer at Parliament Hill. 'We used to do pub nights. We used to do bean dinners,' he said. Angus said 'doing old-school organizing' with an emphasis on public meetings and getting people involved to vote at the party's convention are key, adding that TikTok views did not translate into votes. Mobilizing the grassroots is trickier when you're strapped for cash, Dennis Pilon, a political science professor at York University, told Canada's National Observer last month. 'On the right, they just buy people, they just hire people to go out and go door to door, but the NDP don't have the resources to do that,' Pilon said. With fewer people voting in general elections, the NDP is suffering more than other parties, Pilon said. In the postwar period, voter turnout was about 75 to 80 per cent, but in recent elections, it has slipped to between 60 and 65 per cent. 'The missing voters aren't just anyone. They tend to be poor. They tend to be less integrated with the political system. They tend to have less sense of social entitlement,' Pilon said. The NDP needs to reconnect with these missing voters, but it will be challenging because you have to actually go out and meet them, he said. The party lost touch with its traditional working-class base because it lacked an 'on-the-ground force,' Angus said. 'We need an honest appraisal of what went wrong,' he said. 'New Democrats aren't very honest when it comes to disasters. We sort of blame strategic voting, or we blame something. We made a lot of mistakes. I think people just want an honest accounting.' Angus would not speculate on who might run for the party leadership. 'At the end of the day, this has to be about winning,' Angus said. Rather than repeat the mistake of gambling everything on a likeable leader, Angus prefers to focus on how the party finds its people again. 'We don't need big ideas. We've got tons of big ideas … We don't need dramatic and bold moves. We need to re-engage and be the party that ordinary people feel has their back. It's pretty simple stuff, but maybe that's the hardest thing, is just going back to the grassroots, going back to coffee shops, going back to inviting people in and making them feel like they belong and that they're welcome, regardless of whether they say the right thing or not.'
