From Peace River to Grande Prairie and Fort McMurray to Cold Lake, the oil, gas and forestry industries are dominant, and a majority of voters have reliably voted for conservative parties for generations. In 2015 the NDP did win several northern seats and could regain them with a vision of stability and a good ground game. But it’ll be tough—whipped-up fear of vaccines and an oil and gas “transition” have inflamed polarization.
Lesser Slave Lake: Poor UCP representation signals a close election
Main candidates in 2023:
– NDP: Danielle Larivee is a public health nurse and First Vice-president of the United Nurses of Alberta. She was a cabinet minister, 2015-2019.
– UCP: Scott Sinclair owns an auto glass shop in Sherwood Park. He grew up in Slave Lake and played junior hockey.
Main Street in Slave Lake. Lesser Slave Lake could be the only competitive race in northern Alberta.
“Our communities have really suffered from poor representation since 2019,” said Lesser Slave Lake NDP candidate Danielle Larivee when nominated to run in the upcoming election. Larivee won the riding in 2015 with 43.2 per cent of the vote. The UCP’s Pat Rehn won the seat in 2019, garnering 57.7 per cent. Rehn served a turbulent term in which he vacationed in Mexico at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and spent so little time in the riding that the mayor and all six councillors in Slave Lake publicly called on him to resign. Former premier Jason Kenney kicked Rehn out of the UCP caucus in January 2021 but reinstated him six months later. Rehn is not running for re-election in 2023.
That Rehn was a poor MLA is a point of agreement between the NDP and the UCP. Rehn’s former constituency office manager, Martine Carifelle, ran for the UCP nomination, telling the local paper that while serving under Rehn she “came to believe people were not getting the representation they deserved.” Another candidate, Scott Sinclair, said he was running “to restore trust in our community’s Member of the Legislative Assembly.” Sinclair won the race over Carifelle by five votes.
The largely rural riding has two municipalities—Slave Lake and High Prairie—11 First Nations and three Métis settlements. Nearly 56 per cent of the population is either First Nations, Métis or Inuit, making it Alberta’s only constituency where a majority of the population is Indigenous. Pearl Calahasen, the first Métis woman elected as an MLA in Alberta, won seven elections here for the Progressive Conservatives, holding the sprawling north-central seat from 1989 to 2015.
In 2023 the riding is one of the few in the north that is up for grabs; poll aggregator 338 has the NDP only a few percentage points behind the UCP. For the NDP’s Larivee, a nurse in Slave Lake, healthcare and economic issues are top of mind. “How do we make sure people in this community have the jobs they need to take care of their families?” she asks. “And how do we ensure we continue to have strong communities?”
Central Peace-Notley: Convoy politics cloud rural issues
Main candidates in 2023:
– NDP: Megan Ciurysek is an analyst for the public sector in northern Alberta.
– Alberta Party: Lynn Lekisch is an environmental scientist from Fairview.
– UCP: Todd Loewen is the Minister of Forestry, Parks and Tourism.
Fox Creek is one of few municipalities in the largely rural Central Peace-Notley riding.
From Fox Creek to Fairview and the BC boundary, this vast riding encompasses six rural municipalities, several towns and a lot of boreal forest. All three main candidates in 2023 grew up on farms in the region, and rural concerns dominate this race—in different ways. A policy analyst, Megan Ciurysek acknowledges “the unique challenges rural Albertans face” and advocates for “quality healthcare, long-term job growth and opportunities, maternity and emergency care, and a competent government steering the ship.” Todd Loewen, who joined the “Freedom Convoy” to Ottawa after he was kicked out of Jason Kenney’s UCP caucus for opposing vaccine mandates, is calling for a “volunteer citizen corps” to help police fight rural crime. “It would not be an avenue for vigilante justice,” he assured the legislature. “We want volunteers to assist police in getting the bad guys behind bars.”
