Saddle up. Calgary Stampede politics are back.
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Saddle up. Calgary Stampede politics are back.
A full week of free pancakes and politicians dressed up like cowboys.
Dust off your cowboy boots and hat. It’s that time of year again. It’s the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth. It’s the Calgary Stampede.
I’ve been to the Stampede a handful of times and as a long-time Edmontonian I’ve always felt like an outsider to the event. The spectacle of urbanites playing cowboy for a week every summer always felt a little silly, but it also symbolized something my city didn’t have - a somewhat uniting celebration week. Edmonton has a lot of great festivals, but nothing that rivals the scope of the Stampede.
The Stampede is a must attend event for politicians of all stripes. Aside from the actual rodeo (the Chuckwagon races are a must see), the free pancake breakfast and BBQ circuit is unparalleled and a huge opportunity for local, provincial and federal politicians to connect with Calgarians. Proper attire is key, as is the ability to wear it properly.
Former premier Jason Kenney used his Stampede breakfast to demonstrate solidarity between Conservative premiers in 2019 with a pancake flipping photo-op with Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, and New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs. Kenney’s ill-fated Best Summer Ever Stampede in 2021 made sure that 2022 would be his last Stampede as premier.
The political spotlight at last year’s Stampede shone on the United Conservative Party leadership race, and to a lesser degree on the federal Conservative leadership race. This year’s Stampede is happening in the wake of the May provincial election, in which Calgary was a key electoral battleground in a way the city hasn’t been in a long time.
So, as you prepare to stand in line for some syrupy pancakes or delicious burgers, here are a few ways the political landscape in Cowtown has changed ahead of this year’s Stampede.
Calgary is a little bit more orange than blue
Rachel Notley’s Alberta NDP saw their path to victory going straight through Calgary, and accordingly, spent years of resources, time and money in the city. Notley spent every spare day and weekend in Calgary, and succeeded in recruiting a pretty high calibre (and politically moderate) slate of candidates.
The NDP did make big gains in Calgary, electing MLAs in 14 of 26 ridings and winning 272,351 votes (49% of the vote), narrowly ahead of the 266,429 votes earned by the UCP (48% of the vote).
It wasn’t enough to form government, but it was one of the best results the NDP has ever had in the city.
And, unlike 2015, when the NDP’s win in Calgary was amplified by a vote split with the Wildrose and Progressive Conservatives, there was no vote split in 2023. It was a two party race. The NDP’s gains were no accident. It was on purpose.
A quick glance at the city-level results makes it appear that the NDP gains in Calgary were largely due to Alberta Party voters from 2019 swinging en masse to Notley’s party. That’s probably a big part of the story.
The large number of advance voters (45% in Calgary!) who are not reported by the poll they live in and Elections Alberta’s decision to not release poll level results (instead releasing broader “voting location” results) means that it is difficult to compare riding level results to previous elections and track local voting trends.
It’s not a great development for the psephologists among us.
Hopefully, Elections Alberta will include more detailed voting results when the Official Report is tabled in the Legislature.
Lots of cabinet ministers
The NDP’s gains in Calgary came at the expense of the UCP, which now only has 12 MLAs in the province’s biggest city. But the upside of that loss is that most of the city’s remaining UCP MLAs ended up with prominent roles in Premier Danielle Smith’s cabinet. Nine of the 12 Calgary UCP MLAs are cabinet ministers.
Lots of new faces
Term limits for MLAs are not something that gets discussed often in Alberta politics because turnover in the Legislature has been so high in the past four elections.
Twelve of Calgary’s 26 MLAs were first elected in May 2023, nine were first elected in 2019, and only five of the city’s current MLAs were elected before 2019.
The city’s longest serving MLA is Calgary-Hays’ Ric McIver, who was first elected as a Progressive Conservative in 2012, and the second longest serving is Mike Ellis, who won a 2014 by-election in Calgary-West as a PC candidate. Three current NDP MLAs were elected in 2015 - Calgary-Buffalo MLA Joe Ceci, Calgary-Bhullar-McCall MLA Irfan Sabir, and Calgary-Mountain View MLA Kathleen Ganley.
Along with the new faces comes more diversity. Eleven of Calgary’s 26 MLAs are women, up from the 7 elected in 2019. And at least 10 of the city’s MLAs are from visible minority communities.
Most of the closest races were in Calgary
Reflecting how competitive this election was in Calgary, ten of the twelve closest races in the 2023 election were inside the city’s limits. Of those ten, six were won by the NDP and four by the UCP.
The UCP was a juggernaut in Calgary in 2019 but 2023 saw huge shifts in the margins of victory in the city. The NDP vote shifted upwards by 20 points or more in 17 of the city’s ridings. The shift was most dramatic in Calgary-Shaw, where UCP MLA Rebecca Schulz’s margin of victory shrunk by 26.1 points from 39.7% in 2019 to 13.6% in 2023.
Other big swings happened in Calgary-West, where UCP MLA Mike Ellis was re-elected with a 14.7% margin of victory, a 25.9 point swing from his 40.6% margin of victory in 2019, and in Calgary-Foothills where NDP candidate Court Ellingson was elected with a 1.2% margin of victory. That’s a 25.8 point swing from UCP MLA Jason Luan’s 24.5% margin of victory in 2019.
The UCP’s widest margin of victory was in Calgary-South East, where UCP MLA Matt Jones was re-elected with a 19.4 point lead over NDP challenger Justin Huseby. The NDP’s biggest win was in Calgary-Mountain View, where NDP MLA Kathleen Ganley was re-elected with a 31.5 point margin of victory over UCP challenger Pamela Rath.
The Calgary riding with the highest voter turnout was in Calgary-Varsity at 70.7%. Turnout was at 70.2% in Calgary-Glenmore and 70.1% in Calgary-North West.
The riding with the lowest voter turnout was Calgary-East with 44.4%.
What you can write on your ballot
Writing the name of a "1980s hair metal band...in correct font, in the blank white space below the voting area" does not invalidate a vote in Alberta. This is the finding of the Court of King’s Bench judicial review of the ballots cast in the very close elections in Calgary-Acadia and Calgary-Glenmore. Both ridings were won by the NDP.
In the ruling, Honourable Justice N.E. Devlin determined that:
“In one instance, an otherwise properly marked advance ballot had the name of a 1980s hair metal band written, in correct font, in the blank white space below the voting area. While this may suggest that offering a large blank canvas on the voting surface is not ideal ballot design, I was persuaded that this annotation, unrelated to the election, did not undo the otherwise properly marked vote.”
The 1980’s hair metal band was not named in the ruling but I suspect I know what it was. (A tip of the hat to Tony Clark for spotting this gem)
Mark your Stampede calendars
Premier Smith is hosting the annual Premier’s Pancake breakfast on July 10 from 7:00 am to 9:00 am at the McDougall Centre (455-6 Street SW).
Notley and the NDP Caucus are hosting their annual Stampede breakfast on July 11 from 8:00 am to 12:00 pm at the Meadowlark Community Association (623-58 Avenue SW).
Federal Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre is hosting a Stampede BBQ on July 8 starting at 5:30 pm at Heritage Park. Tickets are $200. Poilievre is also hosting a fundraising reception at Centini on July 7 (160 8th Ave SE).
The federal Liberals are coming to town and have a handful of events scheduled:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is speaking at a July 7 reception at the MobSquad Café for members of the Liberal Party’s donor club known as the Laurier Club.
Minister of National Defence Anita Anand is hosting a meet and greet on July 8 with members of the Alberta Women's Liberal Commission at Madame Premier (1012-9 Avenue SE).
The Liberal Party’s Indigenous People’s Commission is hosting a Stampede fundraiser with Nova Scotia MP Jaime Battiste on July 8 at the Trolley 5 Brewpub.
Minister of Natural Resources Jonathan Wilkinson is speaking at a fundraising event for Calgary Heritage by-election candidate Elliot Weinstein on July 10.
A few more things
A shocking news report from APTN’s Danielle Paradis found that between 2015 and 2021 the life expectancy dropped seven years for First Nations men and women living in Alberta due in part to drug poisoning deaths. In 2015, the average life expectancy for a First Nation man was 67 – today that has dropped to 60. For First Nations women, it’s gone from 73 in 2015 to 66 years in 2021. The life expectancy of a non-First Nations man is 79. For non-First Nations women it is 84.
The interim report from the government’s COVID-19 review panel led by former federal politician Preston Manning will not be released to the public. Instead, a final version will be released in November 2023.
Public Interest Alberta is organizing a post-election community summit in Edmonton on July 8.
A few weeks ago I shared a link to Raymond Biesinger’s “Rat Control in Alberta” prints. Now you can learn all about Alberta’s rat patrol on a recent episode of This American Life.
Thank you.
Thank you for reading (and hopefully subscribing!) to the Daveberta Substack.
I am looking forward to sharing some fun Alberta politics and history columns over the summer that I think many of you will enjoy.
If you like what you read on here, feel free to share it with a friend or colleague or post it on your social media. And if you have any feedback, please leave a comment below or send me an email.
Thanks,
Dave
Saddle up. Calgary Stampede politics are back.
One of the most disappointing aspects of the provincial election was the abject failure of Elections Alberta in providing timely and efficient vote results. Waiting over two hours after polls closed to get any meaningful results was completely unacceptable. This is the computer age. Elections Alberta would have been faster at counting had they used an abacus in every returning office. No excuses. Results! Chief Returning Officer for the province must carry the can for this. He had four years to get ready for the election.
Thanks for the comment, Marc. I’m hoping there will be some explanation in the Elections Alberta final report on the election. The slow release of results on election night should also be a bit of a wake up call for the TV networks that were broadcasting live that night. The lack of immediate results made for some pretty bad live TV, with almost meaningless circular discussions among panelists and pundits stalling for time. I thought CBC brining on specific issue content experts was actually pretty useful to fill this time.