Election 2023: Campaign Roundup - Day 12

Welcome to Day 12 of our Alberta 2023 Campaign Roundup!

With the 2023 Alberta election now finally underway, I'll be bringing you daily updates on all the policy proclamations, platform promises, and political point-scoring from the campaign trail.

Campaign Roundup - Day 12:

• The nomination period is now over, and the list of election candidates has been finalized. The UCP and NDP are running a full slate of 87 candidates - one in every riding. In total, there are 349 nominated candidates, with 49 running for the Green Party, 19 for the Alberta Party, 13 for the Liberal Party, and a host of several smaller parties also fielding candidates.
  
  
• Global News uncovered a video of Kevin Van Tighem, NDP candidate for Livingstone-Macleod, on a podcast promoting his book. In the video, he called Alberta a “province of entitled, grabby, resource-exploiters”, while in the book, he compared resource development to slavery, calling those who work in the industry slaves and energy businesses slave owners.
  
  
• Van Tighem responded by saying that “insights evolve” and that oil will be a vital part of our future.
  
  
• Three UCP candidates, RJ Sigurdson (Highwood), Devin Dreeshen (Innisfail-Sylvan Lake), and Chantelle de Jonge (Chestermere-Strathmore), addressed the comments at a media availability, calling it the most disgusting thing that the NDP has called Albertans since 2019’s “sewer rats” comment.
  
  
• Sayid Ahmed, UCP Candidate for Edmonton-Decore, called on Rachel Notley to remove Van Tighem and decried the comments relating oil and gas work to slavery as “horrific, hurtful, and outrageous.”
  
  
• The NDP promised to modernize Albertans’ healthcare cards. The plan would cost $46 million and see an upgrade to polycarbonate cards with security enhancements. The UCP responded by pointing out that they have already started the work required to replace paper cards, so the NDP is simply promising to do something that is already happening. It should also be noted that the NDP made exactly this same promise in the 2015 election, only to cancel the change in 2018.
  
  
• Lorne Gunter of the Edmonton Sun wrote an op-ed calling the NDP out of touch with ordinary Albertans. He calls them “hardly the party of the little guy, of ordinary taxpayers and working people” owing to the number of union leaders and activists who make up the party’s Board of Directors.
  
  
• Danielle Smith was in the County of Grande Prairie, meeting with firefighters and surveying the wildfire damage to the area. Hot, dry conditions are expected for this coming weekend, which will make firefighting efforts even more challenging.
  
  
• After a halt to production due to the wildfires, some oil and gas producers have restarted their operations again. Production had been cut by more than 300,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day.

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