Central Alberta, the region between Edmonton and Calgary around Red Deer, includes the mountain parks of Banff and Jasper. Constituencies here include Maskwacis-Wetaskiwin, Camrose, Drumheller, Olds, Rimbey, Innisfail-Sylvan Lake and Lacombe-Ponoka. This is traditionally a deeply conservative area, but the NDP took some seats here provincially in 2015, and could do so again.
Banff-Kananaskis: Environmental issues boost the NDP in a rural riding
Main candidates in 2023:
– UCP: Miranda Rosin lives in Canmore and worked for Coca-Cola before entering politics in 2019.
– NDP: Sarah Elmeligi is a wildlife biologist who studies how humans and wildlife can better coexist.
– Green: Regan Boychuk founded Reclaim Alberta and is a researcher with the Alberta Liabilities Disclosure Project.
The UCP government decided to charge Kananaskis hikers and campers $90 annually, but not to do the same for ATVers and “mudboggers” in McLean Creek.
In 2015, when this riding included Cochrane, the PC’s and Wildrose split the vote almost exactly (28.2 and 28.9 per cent). This allowed operating-room nurse and NDP candidate Cam Westhead to run up the middle, taking the seat with 42.8 per cent of the vote. In 2019 Westhead’s voters stuck by him (42 per cent), but the by-then-reunited conservatives—represented by neophyte Miranda Rosin—wrested the riding back.
The citizens of Banff voted heavily for the NDP in both recent elections, as did members of the Stoney Nation and many residents of Canmore. But people in Bragg Creek and Cochrane were more drawn to the UCP. The riding is drifting leftwards, however, thanks to new boundaries and unpopular UCP policy. Even as Alberta’s 2017 boundaries redistribution gave the riding the Springbank area—the fifth-richest postal code in Canada—it lopped off Cochrane, which now gets its own riding.
Kenney-era policy also angered many people here. The UCP proposed to shut down 175 provincial parks and recreation areas, only reversing course after huge protests. It brought in a
$90 Kananaskis Park user fee, then backtracked on a promise to similarly charge a fee to destructive ATVers and “mudboggers” in McLean Creek. And it pushed ahead with the Springbank Dry Dam, a project designed to protect Calgary from floods, even over ranchers’, acreage owners’ and incumbent MLA Rosin’s objections. Rosin herself has been largely invisible other than to make a social media comment on supposed federal “COVID concentration camps” and to express her preference for two-tier healthcare. Now poll aggregator 338 is calling this riding an NDP pickup.
The 2023 contest will principally be between Rosin and Sarah Elmeligi, who won the NDP nomination over three other candidates. The leader of Alberta’s Greens, Jordan Wilkie, was slated to run in this riding but switched to Edmonton-Rutherford. Regan Boychuk will now represent that party here.
Red Deer South: City solicitor challenges libertarian
Main candidates in 2023:
– NDP: Michelle Baer is the City Solicitor of Red Deer. She also sponsors refugees and supports newcomers to Canada as they integrate into Red Deer.
– UCP: Jason Stephan is a tax lawyer, chartered accountant and founder of the Red Deer Taxpayers Association.
Michelle Baer (right), City of Red Deer solicitor, is the local NDP candidate.
Red Deer is the third-biggest city in the province – population 107,073. Last year it had its largest growth of international migration in 20 years. Red Deer-South went NDP in 2015, electing Barb Miller. In 2019 the UCP’s Jason Stephan soundly defeated Miller (16,159 votes to her 6,844). The NDP were leading in the polls in 2021 and tied with the UCP in late 2022. But now poll aggregator 338 predicts the UCP will get 48 per cent of the popular vote in this constituency compared to the NDP’s 41 per cent.
The Red Deer Regional Hospital is the number-one issue in the constituency and a lightning rod for political controversy. It serves an area of a half-million people and has been over capacity and understaffed for years. In 2022 Jason Kenney’s government committed $1.8-billion for expansion and renovation, which included $100-million previously promised in early 2020. At that time construction was supposed to begin in 2021, but nothing happened. Still nothing has happened. When deputy premier Nathan Neudorf said in early 2023 that construction of a healthcare facility “has complexities that most of the general public doesn’t understand,” local NDP candidate Michelle Baer responded, “For the minister to imply that residents wouldn’t understand the complexities of its construction and the delay is a slap in the face.”
Hospital construction was to begin in 2021; nothing happened.
The irony is that back in 2019 incumbent Jason Stephan blamed the NDP for not taking enough action to protect citizens. “Red Deer hospital must provide necessary life-saving services for residents,” he said. “The provincial government under Rachel Notley has failed to do that.” During the pandemic he vacationed in Phoenix and as a result lost his position on the Treasury Board. Later Stephan called on Kenney to resign, and said about the UCP government’s mask mandates that “the cure was worse than the disease.”
