No surprise, Edmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi confirmed Sunday he will be running as a Liberal in the April 28 federal election.
A former Liberal cabinet minister, Mr. Sohi will run in the new Edmonton Southeast riding, which includes some of the territory he represented as MP for Edmonton Mill Woods from 2015 to 2019 and as a city councillor before that.
It’s been rumoured for weeks longer than Mark Carney has been Liberal leader that the new prime minister wanted Mr. Sohi on his team and that the mayor was seriously considering the call.
“This is the most consequential election of our lifetime,” he said in a letter to constituents published on his social media accounts. “President Trump is attacking our sovereignty, jobs, economy and our way of life. Given the threat of this disruption, it is imperative that strong and experienced leaders step up to defend our workers, working families, local businesses and our community.
“We must fight to defend our sovereignty, economy and workers against President Trump.”
It’s hard to argue with the mayor’s assertions that “Canada is facing a critical moment in its history” and that, “while we can’t control President Trump, we can control how we respond” – that is to say, not the way federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre likely would.
Unspoken in that letter, though, was the reality that Mr. Sohi can probably do more for Edmonton and Alberta in Ottawa than he can in the Mayor’s Office – where he and other progressive members of Edmonton City Council have faced hostility, opposition and obstruction from the United Conservative Party Government, and can expect more obstacles to be thrown in their path in the future.
Indeed, the policy it appears that nobody in Alberta wanted except the strategic brain trust in the Premier’s Office – civic political parties – have been ginned up specifically to make it easier to elect conservative councils more likely to be onboard with the UCP’s increasingly MAGAfied program.
Legislation implementing municipal parties and spending regulations that tilt the field against independent candidates is widely thought to be aimed directly at Mayor Sohi and his counterpart in Calgary, Jyoti Gondek. The government’s own research, after all, suggests 70 per cent of Albertans are opposed to the idea.
“Candidates who run under a political party will benefit from greater funding,” Alberta Municipalities, the association representing province’s towns, villages and rural municipalities, complained in a statement last fall. “This creates an environment in which independent candidates are at a significant disadvantage, a concern we raised during our consultations with the provincial government.”
Well, the UCP didn’t pay much attention to the near-universal opposition to the idea, but it restricted political parties for the time being to Edmonton and Calgary, where the progressive inclinations of the mayors and some councillors get up the UCP’s anti-woke noses.
The Municipal Affairs Statutes Amendment Act, 2024, came into force on Oct. 31 last year. The first municipal election under the new act will take place next Oct. 20.
The UCP has also inserted provincial caretakers into the Edmonton Police Commission, which operates almost as a separate branch of government, overruled city plans to encourage green housing developments, interfered in federal funding agreements with the city, and bullied city council into subsidizing billionaire Daryl Katz’s entertainment empire, just to name a few obstacles.
So the federal election gives Mayor Sohi a chance to maintain his influence if he wins on April 28, and a graceful way to step out of what is likely to be an unpleasant, unproductive and partisan situation at City Hall if he doesn’t.
A news release Sunday from his office said he would take a leave of absence until the election, and would resign immediately if the voters send him to Ottawa. However, it also said, he will not seek re-election this fall regardless.
Meanwhile, late yesterday news broke that Rod Loyola, the NDP MLA for the Edmonton-Ellerslie provincial riding in the city’s south, was resigning his seat. His resignation will take effect today.
What The Canadian Press didn’t say it its story last night, however, was that Mr. Loyola, who was first elected in the 2015 provincial election, is widely assumed to be quitting to run for the Carney Liberals in a south Edmonton riding, as yet unspecified.
Mr. Loyola sought the leadership of the Alberta NDP in 2014 in a party election won by Rachel Notley.
A by-election will be required to fill Mr. Loyola’s seat – an opportunity for the UCP to win a seat within Edmonton city limits, a feat that eluded the governing party in 2023.
Perhaps this possibility will encourage Premier Danielle Smith to finally get cracking and set a date for the by-election in Edmonton-Strathcona, where NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi has been the party’s nominated candidate since Jan. 23.
As a former Banker I know the insanity our mayors and councillors are going through to try to find the money for projects desperately needed when the provincial government is working against them and helping the rich steal your oil and corporate tax wealth and not providing our municipalities along with our healthcare and education systems with proper financial support.
Yet everywhere in Alberta the mayors and councillors are getting blamed and not the people responsible for the mess, that’s how stupid the people are.
Alan K. Spiller: You are right about that. Look at all the nasty insults they hurl at people for admitting that.
I believe it is Danielle Smith’s intention to delay calling the by-election for Edmonton Strathcona for as long as possible. Summer would be best for her purposes, when fewer students are around. So maybe a late June by-election? The most chaotic thing she could do would be to call it today, so we’d have a federal election and two provincial by-elections in quick succession. That would be entertaining. Would she dare call the Edmonton-Ellerslie by-election first? It will be interesting to see if Albertans paid attention to her conversation with Breitbart.
I’ll be waiting to see if the Alberta NDP change their rule that membership automatically confers federal NDP membership. I suspect this policy is unpopular with members who vote Liberal federally. We’ll see after their annual convention in early May. By then, the federal party will likely be looking for a new leader after disappointing election results.
No one, outside of a few kooks that hate their neighbours will vote UCP in strathcona. The idea that half the NDP voting block leaves when the university breaks for summer is a laughable hallucination. Trashcan Dani can wait as long as she wants, and it looks more and more pathetic the longer she waits. If she was capable of shame however, she would never get out of bed.
Yes, running Federally does provide the Mayor with a good opportunity to escape the clutches of the UCP which seems to be inclined to micro manage and control municipalities more and more, which will limit what they can do. It would be ironic if Sohi is elected Federally and Smith has to go ask things of him, rather than the other way around.
It is interesting that Loyola a long time NDP MLA may be also running Federally in an Edmonton area riding. With some prominent, experienced candidates in Edmonton for other parties and political support for the Federal Conservatives now declining some, it may turn out that the Conservatives will not win all those Edmonton area ridings that they were expecting to win
Another high profile candidate for the Liberals has emerged in Lethbridge. Former Mayor Chris Spearman won the nomination on the weekend. Spearman has been one of the leaders in the fight against coal mining on the Eastern Slopes. The current Conservative MP has been around for 10 years. A typical seat warmer. Watch this riding.
So Manitoba, Nova Scotia, and BC have excluded Tesla from their EV rebate programs. Perhaps Dani can impress Trump by introducing a “Tesla Only” rebate program for Alberta or perhaps just in Mill Woods to “own” Sohi.
Canada did as well, had not heard of individual provincial rebates. Looks like a he GoC has a pretty lock solid case for fraud in this instance, being that hundreds of Teslas have been spotted dumped in dodgy parking lots all over Ontario. How bout we just ban Teslas and drop the tariffs on Chinese EVS. I don’t need to see Elon on bracelets, he’ll shuffle off his mortal coil soon enough… we all do.
Sigh.
Although https://338canada.com/alberta.htm shows 1 Liberal leading-, and 3 CPC/Lib toss-ups-, in Calgary ridings …
the Liberal party is only able to field candidates in 5 of the 11 ridings.
I’m an adult so I’ll be considering a vote for a candidate in another party…
but not a good look on the Liberals to leave opportunities on the table like this.
One has to imagine they’re betting a strong NDP will help them form a coalition and from where I’m sitting it looks more like they’ll keep their powder dry for ridings they can win, rather than fight heavy incumbents. Have they fielded a candidate in strathcona? Heather McPherson looks unchallenged from where I’m sitting even if they do.
Can’t wait for Pierre Poilievre to face defeat.