Byelection date draws anger from opposition
Critics predict poor voter turnout for Calgary- Foothills poll on Sept. 3
Alberta’s opposition parties warned of extremely low voter turnout and political confusion after Premier Rachel Notley called a provincial byelection in Calgary-Foothills for Sept. 3.
The byelection will take place amid a federal election campaign on the eve of a holiday long weekend, with the move sending voters in the riding to the polls for the third time in less than a year.
The byelection is needed because then- premier Jim Prentice resigned the seat, which he had just won, on election night May 5 as Notley’s NDP knocked off the fourdecade old Tory dynasty. Prentice, who also resigned his leadership of the Progressive Conservative party, had first won the seat in an October 2014 byelection after he became premier.
“It would not surprise me at all if we see the lowest voter turnout in Foothills history in this byelection,” said Wildrose Party house leader Nathan Cooper.
In a news conference in Edmonton, Notley said she had hoped to have the byelection done before the writ was dropped for the Oct. 19 federal election but Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s unexpected early call of the federal vote last week made that impossible.
“However, I still believe very strongly that it is absolutely appropriate to call this byelection now to ensure that the people of Foothills are represented in the legislature when the Alberta legislature reconvenes this fall,” said Notley. The legislature is set to reconvene on Oct. 26, with a provincial budget to follow shortly thereafter.
But “if that was the case, there’s no reason why she couldn’t have called the election in the end of May,” said Cooper. “We’ve had all of May, all of June, all of July. If that was her primary driver, she’s had lots of opportunity.”
The PCs and the Alberta Party have not yet nominated candidates, while neither has the Wildrose, which has set its nomination date for Aug. 15. Wildrose candidates Kathy Macdonald, Prasad Panda and John Huang are vying for the party’s nod. The NDP recently nominated former MLA and alderman Bob Hawkesworth as its candidate in the northwest Calgary riding.
Cooper said the byelection’s timing allows the NDP to avoid running on the record of their budget and instead capitalize on the opposition’s lack of readiness.
“These types of tactics are the very thing that the NDP opposition used to get very frustrated at the government about,” he said. “I don’t think that this is the type of change Albertans were hoping for.”
In a statement, PC leader Ric McIver accused the NDP of “hiding details of the budget” until after the byelection. “Are people expected to decide who to elect on blind faith?” McIver asked. “It delayed the budget until after the fall federal election. When is this government going to start worrying about Alberta concerns instead of its federal cousins?”
Hawkesworth said the timing is intended to get ahead of the federal election before it “goes into overdrive” closer to October.
Notley said issues such as the NDP’s commitment to a new Calgary cancer centre, the southwest ring road and new flood mitigation projects will be factors in the vote.
The Liberals have nominated engineer Ali Bin Zahid while Green party leader Janet Keeping will run for her party. Both were candidates in Calgary- Foothills in the provincial election.
Bin Zahid, who finished fourth to Prentice in May, believes voters will see the Liberals as an alternative to both the PCs and NDP that they can count on to hold the government accountable.
“The scenario has changed obviously with the NDP victory. Back then people were more concerned about defeating the PCs and sending a message to them. It was a protest vote,” said Bin Zahid. “The honeymoon period, so to say, is over.”
Keeping said May’s orange wave has opened voters’ eyes to the realistic possibility of change, which could benefit a seatless party like the Greens. Calgary- Foothills has been a Progressive Conservative riding since it was established in 1971, but Hawkesworth said its tendency to elect a government MLA would benefit him as an NDP candidate.
Meanwhile, Alberta Party leader Greg Clark also chastised Notley for calling a summer byelection, claiming the provincial party would “piggyback” on the federal NDP campaign and that he’d be surprised if the voter turnout was higher than 15 per cent.
“If Jim Prentice did this, Albertans would be outraged. It’s just cynical, cold, old- fashioned politics that Albertans rejected when they voted out the PCs,” said Clark.
“It doesn’t need to be this way. We could have a proper byelection after the federal election and we can do that with full knowledge of what the NDP budget will be … We naively assumed that the new NDP government would behave differently than the old PC government. The NDP doesn’t want a fair fight.”
Clark said the Alberta Party planned to hold its nomination towards the end of August, but was meeting to decide whether to simply appoint a candidate, which it preferred not to do.
But Notley noted that parties have known since May that a byelection was coming and likely to be held before the scheduled federal vote. “Anybody could have looked at a calendar,” she said.