Four high-profile New Democrat MLAs, two from Edmonton and two from Calgary, will not seek re-election, the Opposition party in the Alberta Legislature said yesterday.
Three of them – Calgary-Buffalo MLA Joe Ceci, Edmonton-Riverview MLA Lori Sigurdson, and Edmonton-Gold Bar MLA Marlin Schmidt – were first elected in the NDP sweep of 2015 and served in important cabinet portfolios in premier Rachel Notley’s cabinet.
Luanne Metz was elected in 2023 in the Calgary-Varsity riding. A physician who was seen at the time as a potential minister of health in the event the NDP won the election, Dr. Metz handily defeated the UCP’s Jason Copping, who was Alberta’s health minister at the time.
None of these departures should come as a particular surprise. Generational change in the NDP ranks was expected. All but Mr. Schmidt are at or past the age of retirement. And all but Dr. Metz have served more than a decade in the Alberta Legislature.
A social worker by profession and a Calgary city councillor from 1995 to 2010, Mr. Ceci, 68, served as finance minister throughout the NDP’s single term in office, which ended in 2019. Given the financial challenges faced by the NDP from circumstances outside Alberta and beyond the government’s control, in particular cratering world oil prices, it would be fair to say he served with distinction in that difficult portfolio. He was first elected in the old Calgary-Fort riding.
Despite the frequently hysterical ranting of the Conservative Opposition parties during his tenure as finance minister, Mr. Ceci delivered was could be called traditional Progressive Conservative budgets.
Mr. Ceci’s 2018 budget, I wrote in this space, “was a conservative political document in that classic Alberta way: enough of a pivot to ‘fiscal responsibility’ to annoy the NDP’s traditional die-hard supporters, a degree of austerity compassionate enough to be deemed insufficient by the perpetually angry conservative base, and a reliance on Alberta’s traditional response to bad times in the oilpatch, a fervent hope oil prices will go up again soon.”
Ms. Sigurdson, 65, worked as a social worker for 25 years before her political career and held the advanced education, labour, and seniors and housing portfolios during the NDP government. As minister of labour, Ms. Sigurdson played a key role in increasing Alberta’s minimum wage in 2015.
In May 2018, Ms. Sigurdson took a leave of absence from her political duties after being diagnosed with acute promyelocytic leukemia.
Mr. Schmidt, 47, served as minister of advanced education from 2016 until the end of the NDP’s mandate. Before entering politics, he worked as a soil and groundwater contamination specialist in the Alberta environment ministry. As an MLA after the UCP was in power, he endured a certain amount of controversy for saying what he thought, a characteristic that is considered “totally inappropriate” in Alberta, at least if the person speaking bluntly is not a Conservative.
Prior to her election, Dr. Metz, 68, was a professor in the University of Calgary’s faculty of medicine best known as a global expert on the treatment of multiple sclerosis, a serious autoimmune disease. In Opposition, she served for a spell as the NDP’s health critic and later in a vaguely defined health-care policy development role for NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi. One never really had the feeling, though, that Dr. Metz took to retail politics with the enthusiasm of her three departing colleagues.
“As I approach 70 years old,” Dr. Metz said in a letter to constituents published on social media yesterday, “I want to be certain that Calgary-Varsity will have a legislative representative for years to come with the necessary stamina to respond to the very real challenges Albertans are facing.”
The NDP said nomination dates for the four ridings will be announced soon. The NDP has already nominated candidates in 21 ridings.