Shannon Phillips stepping down, opening Lethbridge-West by-election
"Never ever take the voters for granted," Phillips reminds her NDP colleagues
I usually share Daveberta newsletters later in the week, but with MLA Shannon Phillips announcing her resignation yesterday, I wanted to share my thoughts on this development in Alberta politics. Enjoy!
NDP MLA Shannon Phillips stepping down, opening Lethbridge-West by-election
Shannon Phillips is as smart as a whip and tough as nails but after nine years in the Alberta Legislature, she is stepping down as the NDP MLA for Lethbridge-West.
“I am very proud of what I have accomplished throughout my political career,” said Phillips in a statement released by the NDP Caucus. “We have made significant gains in building the party outside of Edmonton and Calgary. Being elected for three terms outside of the major cities in Alberta shows that with focus, discipline and community connection, I could achieve something as a New Democrat that everyone told me was impossible just a decade ago.”
Speaking to Globe & Mail reporter Carrie Tait, Phillips cited feeling “worn out by the polarization and disinformation infecting today’s politics” as one of the reasons for leaving. “Jesus Christ himself couldn’t have kept me,” she said.
Phillips is longtime NDP partisan who made a name for herself in political circles as a sharp communications and research staffer with the tiny NDP Caucus in the 2000s and as a talented election organizer in-between Legislative sessions (having first met Phillips during my time as a Liberal Party staffer, I can personally attest to her elbows-out approach to opposition politics).
When she jumped on the ballot in 2012, Phillips surprised many political watchers by coming just over 1,000 votes away from unseating Lethbridge-West Progressive Conservative MLA Greg Weadick. The NDP’s previous high water mark in the riding had been 24.4% of the vote in 1986.
Three years of intense on the ground organizing and endless hours of door-knocking helped Phillips win big in the riding when the NDP swept Alberta in 2015. She was narrowly re-elected in 2019 in one of the closest races of that year’s election and was returned for a third term in 2023 with a comfortable margin of victory.
As Environment and Parks Minister during the NDP’s time in government, Phillips led her party’s flagship initiatives on climate change, coal phase-out, and expansion of provincial parks and protected areas.
A fiercely partisan activist before putting her name on a ballot, Phillips wrote the forward for environmental activist and former University of Alberta Students’ Union President Mike Hudema’s 2004 book, “An Action a Day Keeps Global Capitalism Away.”
Years later, she was front and center among Canada’s top oil industry CEOs and environmental NGO leaders who gathered to support Alberta’s Climate Leadership Plan.
In some ways, Phillips personified the sometimes rocky transition of the Alberta NDP from punchy and ideologically-ridged opposition to mature pragmatic government (and now government-in-waiting). Walking the line between activism and government is not always an easy path but like some of her colleagues, Phillips came by her activist roots honestly.
In 1992, at the age of 17, Phillips organized a student protest against a City Council-imposed curfew for youth in her hometown of Spruce Grove, a bedroom community west of Edmonton. “It’s a total infringement of our basic constitutional rights. It feels like a police state,” Phillips told the Edmonton Journal.
The Edmonton Journal’s editorial board agreed and published an editorial arguing that “adults with power are ganging up on adolescents with none. That’s not a fair fight.” Not long after, the curfew was lifted by Spruce Grove City Council.
As environment minister, Phillips championed investments in the Castle parks region and the proposed creation of a Bighorn Country park area, two files that were worth fighting for but took an enormous personal toll.
She was harassed by male-dominated Off-Highway Vehicle enthusiast groups and surveilled by officers of the Lethbridge Police who opposed the expansion of the park areas, something that the city’s police service has yet to apologize for. For this alone, you can’t blame her for leaving.
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