Welcome to Alberta's 2023 election cycle. Campaigning has effectively been going on for some time now, but the writ was issued yesterday and now it's official. We're in an election cycle.
This is basically a two horse race. Alberta either elects the UCP, now led by Danielle Smith, or it elects the NDP. There are a handful of other parties, but frankly between them they might be lucky to pull one or two seats - such is the nature of Alberta politics.
But, voters need to be absolutely clear: The UCP is not the PCAA - not even close. The PCAA had drifted a long ways away from where it was when the venerated Peter Lougheed was leading it, but the UCP is even more extreme. Under Klein, the PCAA went strongly towards the 'market fundamentalist' politics of the 90s, the frankenparty that Kenney mashed together is even further to the right with strong roots in rural social conservatism.
The UCP under Danielle Smith is a much different creature again. Smith herself is a libertarian, but Take Back Alberta (TBA) is something else again, holding much stronger views on a variety of topics and they see Smith as a convenient puppet.
Let's explore what a TBA controlled UCP seems to actually believe:
