The Alberta Liberal Party (french: Parti libéral de l'Alberta) is a
provincial political party
A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology ...
in
Alberta
Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...
, Canada. Founded in 1905, it is the oldest active political party in Alberta and was the dominant political party until the
1921 election, with the first three provincial Premiers being Liberals. Since 1921, it has formed the
official opposition in the
Legislative Assembly of Alberta
The Legislative Assembly of Alberta is the deliberative assembly of the province of Alberta, Canada. It sits in the Alberta Legislature Building in Edmonton. The Legislative Assembly currently has 87 members, elected first past the post from sin ...
several times, most recently from 1993 until 2012. Fourteen Liberals have served as
Leader of the Opposition of Alberta.
History
Early years
The Alberta Liberal Party was formed on September 1, 1905. The Liberals formed the government in Alberta for the first 16 years of the province's existence.
Alexander C. Rutherford (1905–1910),
Arthur L. Sifton (1910–1917) and
Charles Stewart (1917–1921) led Liberal governments, until the party was swept from office in the
1921 election by the
United Farmers of Alberta
The United Farmers of Alberta (UFA) is an association of Alberta farmers that has served different roles in its 100-year history – as a lobby group, a successful political party, and as a farm-supply retail chain. As a political party, it forme ...
.
1921: Loss of power
When Premier
Charles Stewart resigned as leader after his government's defeat at the hands of the
United Farmers of Alberta
The United Farmers of Alberta (UFA) is an association of Alberta farmers that has served different roles in its 100-year history – as a lobby group, a successful political party, and as a farm-supply retail chain. As a political party, it forme ...
in the
1921 election,
John R. Boyle
John Robert Boyle, (February 1, 1870 or February 3, 1871 – February 15, 1936) was a Canadian politician and jurist who served as a Member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, a cabinet minister in the Government of Alberta, and a judge on ...
, a former
Attorney-General
In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general or attorney-general (sometimes abbreviated AG or Atty.-Gen) is the main legal advisor to the government. The plural is attorneys general.
In some jurisdictions, attorneys general also have exec ...
, led the legislative caucus until he was appointed to the judiciary in 1924, and
Charles R. Mitchell
Charles Richmond Mitchell (November 30, 1872 – August 16, 1942) was a Canadian lawyer, judge, cabinet minister and former Leader of the Official Opposition in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta.
Early life
Mitchell was born in Newcastle, Ne ...
, also a former cabinet minister succeeded him.
John C. Bowen
John Campbell Bowen (October 3, 1872 – January 2, 1957) was a clergyman, insurance broker and long serving politician. He served as an alderman in the City of Edmonton and went on to serve as a member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta fr ...
acted in the interim until a party convention chose
Joseph Tweed Shaw
Joseph Tweed Shaw (August 30, 1883 – July 12, 1944) was a Canadian politician. He served in the House of Commons of Canada from 1921 to 1925 as an independent Labour Member of Parliament (MP), and later became an MLA and leader of the Albert ...
, a former independent
left-wing
Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in soci ...
M.P.
In the lead-up to the
1930 election, the party chose
George H. Webster, M.L.A. for Calgary City. He resigned in favour of
William R. Howson
William Robinson Howson (March 6, 1883 – June 25, 1952) was a politician, judge, debt collector, soldier, banker, and real estate agent from Alberta, Canada. He served as a member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta from 1930 to 1936 sit ...
, who led the party energetically if unsuccessfully in
1935. After he was appointed to the provincial superior court in 1936,
Edward Leslie Gray
Edward Leslie Gray (April 8, 1895 – June 13, 1992) was a politician and member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta from Alberta, Canada.
Gray was born April 8, 1895, in Maple Valley, Ontario to Samuel Gray and Mary Taylor, both of Irish de ...
succeeded him.
Unity coalition
Discussions on a coalition of opposition forces began in the early thirties to put together a strong opposition to the United Farmers government. The Liberals refused to join when their fortunes were going up during the leadership
William Howson. At the height of Liberal popularity they had managed to lure two United Farmers MLAs to sit in the Liberal caucus.
After the defeat of old line parties by Social Credit in the
1935 Alberta general election, the coalition idea picked up steam. Edward Gray, Liberal leader cautiously entered the party into the Unity Movement giving riding associations the opportunity to support Liberal candidates or Independent candidates.
The Alberta Liberals were tepid to support the
Independent Citizens' Association led by
John Percy Page
John Percy Page (May 14, 1887 – March 2, 1973) was a Canadian teacher, basketball coach, provincial politician, and the eighth Lieutenant Governor of Alberta.
Early life and education
Born in Rochester, New York, the son of Absalom Bell Page ...
. They wanted the Independents to remain independent and were against having a new party formed based on the coalition. The Liberals maintained the party organization by keeping the Constituency Associations and Party Executive Intact. After Gray resigned the leadership on April 19, 1941, to accept a patronage position the party did not officially replace him as leader until James Prowse in 1947.
The President of the Party who stood for election annually, became the official face of the party in all matters of party business. The party also kept a rump caucus from 1940 to 1944 that started out with one member and got to three by dissolution in 1944. The Liberals despite internal pressure to break with the coalition agreed not to run candidates in the 1944 election.
Cooperation with the Independents officially came to an end when the federal
Camrose riding association passed a motion at a meeting in August 1945 calling on the executive of the provincial Liberal party to reorganize in all Alberta provincial constituencies free of alliances and arrangements with other parties.
The party held a meeting on January 7, 1946, to discuss proposals to participate in the
1948 Alberta general election.
Post-war
Prowse became the first true leader of the party in the post coalition era. He led the party from 1947 to 1958 leading to significant gains in popular votes and seats. He resigned the leadership to run for Mayor of Edmonton, and was succeeded by
John Walter Grant MacEwan, M.L.A. for Calgary City. MacEwan was beset by problems entirely beyond his ability to control. The electoral ability of any
opposition party
Parliamentary opposition is a form of political opposition to a designated government, particularly in a Westminster-based parliamentary system. This article uses the term ''government'' as it is used in Parliamentary systems, i.e. meaning ''t ...
leader became very chancy with the abolition of the STV
electoral system
An electoral system or voting system is a set of rules that determine how elections and Referendum, referendums are conducted and how their results are determined. Electoral systems are used in politics to elect governments, while non-political ...
used for Edmonton and Calgary cities.
The Manning government had successfully renewed and reinvigorated itself, and recovered much of the ground it had previously lost, while the recent Diefenbaker landslide made the Progressive Conservative Party seem a more attractive vehicle for the party's traditional supporters.
MacEwan was the first of many leaders who faced a problem similar to those of Liberals in Britain and other Western
Canadian provinces. Ideologically, the party was being squeezed between traditional conservatism and
social democracy
Social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism that supports political and economic democracy. As a policy regime, it is described by academics as advocating economic and social interventions to promote s ...
. In a social sense, the party presented an older and more traditional image in comparison to the Alberta Progressive Conservatives, who, given the predominance of Social Credit, seemed fairly liberal. Almost inevitably, the Liberals were reduced to a single member,
Michael Maccagno
Michael Maccagno (July 15, 1914 – November 25, 2000) was a politician from Alberta, Canada. He served as a Member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta from 1955 to 1968, and leader of the Alberta Liberal Party from 1964 to 1968.
Political car ...
of
Lac La Biche. MacEwan retired shortly after this disaster.
1960s
He was succeeded by
David B. Hunter, then mayor of Athabasca, who campaigned aggressively on the creation of a
publicly owned electrical power
Electric power is the rate at which electrical energy is transferred by an electric circuit. The SI unit of power is the watt, one joule per second. Standard prefixes apply to watts as with other SI units: thousands, millions and billions o ...
company, with strong environmentalist overtones. This likely limited any growth by the
Alberta New Democrats in the
1963 election, and it established the party with a distinct image and identity separate from the Progressive Conservatives. However, it was internally divisive, and a number of candidates, including one of its two successful ones, repudiated the platform's main plank. Hunter himself was defeated personally in Athabasca. He did not resign until after he lost a later byelection, when he decided to run for Parliament (unsuccessfully).
Maccagno, who was leader of the minuscule opposition in the Legislature, served as interim leader, but did not regard himself as leadership material. In a convention which exposed the deep ideological fault lines within the party,
Adrian Douglas Berry, a Calgary alderman, emerged as leader from a highly acrimonious contest. Internal dissensions continued, and late in 1966, Berry resigned under circumstances still not explained. As a provincial election could be expected within months, Maccagno became leader almost by default, and somewhat unwillingly led the party into the
1967 provincial election.
Maccagno was elected, the first Liberal leader since 1955 and the last until 1986 to achieve the feat and the party increased its representation from two to three seats. However, the party placed fourth in the popular vote.
Peter Lougheed
Edgar Peter Lougheed ( ; July 26, 1928 – September 13, 2012) was a Canadian lawyer and Progressive Conservative politician who served as the tenth premier of Alberta from 1971 to 1985, presiding over a period of reform and economic growth.
Bo ...
and the Progressive Conservatives presented the attraction of a modern, urban-based party which was decidedly more liberal than the Social Credit government. The Tories displaced the Liberals as the apparent alternative to the Socreds.
Shut out
The next four years were a bad time for the Liberals. The party placed very poorly in a byelection to replace a Liberal MLA who had died, and the party had lost its other two seats when Maccagno resigned to run in the 1968 federal election and then in November 1969, the last remaining Liberal MLA,
Bill Dickie,
crossed the floor
Crossed may refer to:
* ''Crossed'' (comics), a 2008 comic book series by Garth Ennis
* ''Crossed'' (novel), a 2010 young adult novel by Ally Condie
* "Crossed" (''The Walking Dead''), an episode of the television series ''The Walking Dead''
S ...
to join Lougheed's Progressive Conservatives, who had rapidly established themselves as a credible government-in-waiting.
In 1969, the party chose a Calgary clergyman turned businessman,
John T. Lowery, to succeed Maccagno. Lowery thought he saw some hope in an electoral arrangement with Social Credit, which he believed was showing signs of modernization and rejuvenation under Manning's successor,
Harry Strom
Harry Edwin Strom (July 7, 1914 – October 2, 1984) was the ninth premier of Alberta, from 1968 to 1971. His two-and-a-half years as Premier were the last of the thirty-six-year Social Credit dynasty, as his defeat by Peter Lougheed saw its r ...
. He was likely encouraged in this by the two federal ministers from Alberta,
Bud Olson and
Pat Mahoney
Patrick Morgan (Pat) Mahoney, (January 20, 1929 – June 8, 2012) was a Canadian judge, politician, lawyer and businessman.
Mahoney was first elected to parliament in the 1968 election as the Liberal Member of Parliament for Calgary Sou ...
, both former Socreds. When word of negotiations to that effect came out, it became evident that any such proposal was deeply opposed by the core membership of both parties. Lowery resigned in the face of it.
The following year saw the provincial Liberals come very close to extinction. The party's political credibility had been steadily eroding, and with the negotiations with Social Credit, it was not immediately clear that it had any ideological purpose. There was much discussion of the party abandoning provincial politics altogether (there was only one organization at federal and provincial levels), and concentrating on federal politics, which looked a great deal more hopeful at the time than they did two years later.
It took a major act of will for the party to decide to soldier on as an independent force, which it did in repudiating Lowery, and deciding to contest the
1971 election, however hopeless the prospects might be. The party chose, almost by default,
Robert Russell of St. Albert, a highly controversial figure who had been passed over twice, but who had a strong desire for the position, and who had strongly supported David Hunter's vision for the party.
The party suffered as bad a defeat as anyone could have expected in the 1971 election. It was shut out of the legislature altogether in an election that saw Social Credit defeated after 36 years in power at the hands of Lougheed's Progressive Conservatives.
It is widely argued that the provincial Liberals' popularity in Alberta was especially hurt during the federal government of
Pierre Trudeau's
Liberal Party of Canada
The Liberal Party of Canada (french: Parti libéral du Canada, region=CA) is a federal political party in Canada. The party espouses the principles of liberalism,McCall, Christina; Stephen Clarkson"Liberal Party". ''The Canadian Encyclopedia'' ...
between 1968 and 1984. Trudeau's policies were unpopular in western Canada and especially in Alberta, particularly
official bilingualism
An official is someone who holds an office (function or mandate, regardless whether it carries an actual working space with it) in an organization or government and participates in the exercise of authority, (either their own or that of their ...
, and the
National Energy Program
The National Energy Program (french: Programme énergétique national, NEP) was an energy policy of the Canadian federal government from 1980 to 1985. Created under the Liberal government of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau by Energy Minister Marc ...
(NEP), which exacerbated feelings of
western alienation
In Canadian politics, Western alienation is the notion that the Western provinces – British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba – have been alienated, and in some cases excluded, from mainstream Canadian political affairs in fav ...
. During this period, the provincial Liberal party suffered because of its connections with its federal cousins.
1986: Return to the legislature
The Liberals' fortunes improved in the late 1980s and they returned to the Alberta legislature in the
1986 election, when leader
Nicholas Taylor led them to win 4 seats and 12% of the popular vote. Following the 1987
leadership review
In Canadian politics, a leadership review is a vote held at a political party convention in which delegates decide whether to endorse the incumbent party leader or schedule a leadership convention to elect a new leader. In most parties at present, ...
, a leadership contest was held in 1988.
The race was contested by Taylor, MLA,
Sheldon Chumir
Sheldon Mervin Chumir (December 3, 1940 – January 26, 1992) was a lawyer and politician from Alberta, Canada.
Sheldon Chumir was born in Calgary to a Jewish family. He studied law at the University of Alberta, from which he graduated in 1963 ...
, MLA,
Grant Mitchell, and
Edmonton
Edmonton ( ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Alberta. Edmonton is situated on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, which is surrounded by Alberta's central region. The city ancho ...
Mayor
Laurence Decore
Laurence George Decore (born Lavrentiy Dikur; June 28, 1940 – November 6, 1999) was Canadian lawyer and politician from Alberta. He was of Ukrainian descent. He was mayor of Edmonton, a member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, and ...
. Decore was elected leader of the party on a first ballot victory.
The Alberta Liberal Party ran one candidate in the
1989 Senate Election, Bill Code, who finished with 22.5% of the vote.
The party in the 1990s
In the
1993 election, the Liberals, under former
Edmonton
Edmonton ( ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Alberta. Edmonton is situated on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, which is surrounded by Alberta's central region. The city ancho ...
mayor
Laurence Decore
Laurence George Decore (born Lavrentiy Dikur; June 28, 1940 – November 6, 1999) was Canadian lawyer and politician from Alberta. He was of Ukrainian descent. He was mayor of Edmonton, a member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, and ...
, enjoyed their greatest success since holding power when they swept Edmonton, winning a total of 32 seats, and collecting 39% of the popular vote. This enabled the party to displace the
New Democrats
New Democrats, also known as centrist Democrats, Clinton Democrats, or moderate Democrats, are a centrist ideological faction within the Democratic Party in the United States. As the Third Way faction of the party, they are seen as culturall ...
to become the
Official Opposition to the
Progressive Conservative government of
Ralph Klein
Ralph Philip Klein (November 1, 1942 – March 29, 2013) was a Canadian politician and journalist who served as the 12th premier of Alberta and leader of the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta from 1992 until his retirement in 20 ...
.
Although Decore now led the second-largest opposition caucus in the province's history, the result was still seen as a disappointment to some prominent Liberals who felt the party had missed its best chance in over 70 years to form government. Under increasing pressure, Decore resigned the leadership in 1994. Four MLAs contested the race to succeed him:
Edmonton McClung MLA
Grant Mitchell,
Fort McMurray
Fort McMurray ( ) is an urban service area in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo in Alberta, Canada. It is located in northeast Alberta, in the middle of the Athabasca oil sands, surrounded by boreal forest. It has played a significan ...
MLA
Adam Germain,
Edmonton-Roper MLA
Sine Chadi
Sine Kassim Chadi (born February 13, 1956) is a Canadian businessman, philanthropist and former politician. He is currently CEO and Chairman of Imperial Equities Inc. a publicly traded company on the TSX Venture Exchange. Chadi has been the CE ...
, and
Calgary-Buffalo
Calgary-Buffalo is a current provincial electoral district in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The district is one of 87 districts mandated to return a single member (MLA) to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta using the first past the post method of ...
MLA
Gary Dickson
Robert Gary Dickson is a lawyer and former member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta and the first Saskatchewan Information and Privacy Commissioner.
Dickson was initially elected as a member of the Alberta Liberal Party in a 1992 by-elect ...
. After all the ballots had been counted, Mitchell was elected as party leader.
The party continued to hold its position as Official Opposition, but lost 10 seats in the
1997 election. With 18 seats in the Alberta legislature, Mitchell resigned as leader, and another race was declared.
The 1998
leadership race also saw four contestants: former
Progressive Conservative cabinet minister Nancy MacBeth,
Lethbridge East
Lethbridge-East is a provincial electoral district in Alberta, Canada, covering the eastern half of the city of Lethbridge. The district is one of 87 in the province mandated to return a single member to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta usi ...
MLA
Ken Nicol,
Edmonton Meadowlark
Edmonton Meadowlark was a provincial electoral district in Alberta, Canada, mandated to return a single member to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta using the first past the post method of voting from 1971 to 2019.
The electoral district lo ...
MLA
Karen Leibovici
Karen Leibovici (born May 27, 1952) is a politician from Edmonton, Alberta.
Following a career as a social worker, Leibovici was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta in 1993, representing Edmonton Meadowlark as a member of the Alberta ...
, and
Edmonton Riverview MLA
Linda Sloan
Linda Sloan (born June 27, 1960) is a Canadian politician and municipal councillor in Edmonton, Alberta.
Sloan graduated from the Foothills Hospital School of Nursing in 1982 and began work as a registered nurse. She soon became involved in t ...
. MacBeth was elected on the first ballot.
The 2000s
In the
2001 election, MacBeth led a campaign which ended with only seven Liberal
MLAs being elected. MacBeth also lost her own seat in the election.
In the days following the
2001 election, MacBeth resigned and
Ken Nicol was acclaimed leader. Nicol led the party until 2004, when he ran for the federal
Liberal Party of Canada
The Liberal Party of Canada (french: Parti libéral du Canada, region=CA) is a federal political party in Canada. The party espouses the principles of liberalism,McCall, Christina; Stephen Clarkson"Liberal Party". ''The Canadian Encyclopedia'' ...
in the Lethbridge riding.
Edmonton Mill Woods
Edmonton Mill Woods is a federal electoral district in Alberta, Canada, that has been represented in the House of Commons of Canada since 2015.
Edmonton Mill Woods was created by the 2012 federal electoral boundaries redistribution and was le ...
MLA
Don Massey
Donald Lee Massey is a former municipal and provincial level politician from Alberta, Canada. He served as a Member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta from 1993 until 2004. In that period he also served as Leader of the Official Opposition ...
briefly stood as
interim leader until a leadership race was held.
On March 27, 2004,
Kevin Taft
Kevin Taft (born September 9, 1955) is an author, consultant, speaker, and former provincial politician in Alberta, Canada. Prior to his election, he worked in various public policy roles (1973-2000) in the Government of Alberta, private and no ...
was elected the new leader of the Alberta Liberal Party. In the
2004 provincial election, the Liberals more than doubled their seats to 16 and increased their share of the popular vote to 29%. More significantly, and to the surprise of most observers, the Liberals were able to win three seats in the traditionally conservative city of
Calgary
Calgary ( ) is the largest city in the western Canadian province of Alberta and the largest metro area of the three Prairie Provinces. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806, makin ...
. Additionally, in June 2007, Craig Cheffins won in a by-election, making him the fourth Alberta Liberal MLA in Calgary.
The
provincial election of March 3, 2008, proved to be another setback for the party. Going up against rookie Premier
Ed Stelmach
Edward Michael Stelmach (; born May 11, 1951) is a Canadian politician and served as the 13th premier of Alberta, from 2006 to 2011. The grandson of Ukrainian immigrants, Stelmach was born and raised on a farm near Lamont and fluently speaks ...
, the Alberta Liberals had high hopes of increasing their seat count dramatically, particularly with the supposed discontent with the Tories in Calgary. However, the result was humbling for the Alberta Liberals. The party ended with only nine seats, down from 16 when the election was called. The party's power based in Edmonton was hit especially hard, with eight seats won in 2004 going Conservative. On June 26, 2008, Taft announce his intention to resign as leader. Dr.
David Swann
David Richard Swann (born June 19, 1949) is a Canadian medical doctor and politician. He was the leader of the Alberta Liberal Party and Leader of the Opposition in the Alberta Legislature from December 2008 until resigning as party leader in ...
was elected as the new Liberal leader on December 13, 2008, defeating two other contenders on the first ballot.
After serving as leader for three years on February 1, 2011, Swann announced his resignation as leader. The
2011 leadership election saw another doctor, Dr.
Raj Sherman
Rajnish K. "Raj" Sherman (born 1965) is a Canadian politician from Alberta and former Liberal Member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta for Edmonton-Meadowlark; which he formerly represented as a Progressive Conservative.
Sherman was elect ...
, win the leadership of the party, who then went on to lead the party into the
2012 general election.
Recent history
In the
2012 general election, the Liberals dropped from eight seats in the legislature to five. It was the third party in the legislature. Sherman announced his resignation as leader on January 26, 2015, effective immediately.
Calgary-Mountain View
Calgary-Mountain View is a provincial electoral district in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, mandated to return a single member to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta using the first past the post method of voting. The district was created in 1971 and ...
MLA and former leader
David Swann
David Richard Swann (born June 19, 1949) is a Canadian medical doctor and politician. He was the leader of the Alberta Liberal Party and Leader of the Opposition in the Alberta Legislature from December 2008 until resigning as party leader in ...
was named interim leader on February 1, 2015, chosen over
Edmonton-Centre
Edmonton-Centre formerly styled Edmonton Centre from 1959 to 1971 was a provincial electoral district in Alberta, Canada, mandated to return a single member to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta using the first past the post method of voting f ...
MLA
Laurie Blakeman
Laurie Blakeman (born May 23, 1958) is a Canadian politician, who represented the electoral district of Edmonton-Centre in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. She is a member of the Alberta Liberal Party, and was first elected in the 1997 elect ...
in a vote by the party's board of directors.
Although still interim leader, Swann led the party into the
2015 provincial election in which the
Alberta New Democratic Party
The Alberta New Democratic Party (french: Nouveau Parti démocratique de l'Alberta), commonly shortened to Alberta's NDP, is a social-democratic political party in Alberta, Canada. It is the provincial Alberta affiliate of the federal New Demo ...
swept to power with a majority government, defeating the Progressive Conservatives after 44 years. The Liberal Party was reduced from 5 seats to 1; Swann became the party's sole MLA.
In the
leadership election of 2017, lawyer and former
Calgary-Buffalo
Calgary-Buffalo is a current provincial electoral district in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The district is one of 87 districts mandated to return a single member (MLA) to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta using the first past the post method of ...
candidate
David Khan received 54.8% of the votes, defeating one rival to become the permanent Liberal leader, under controversial circumstances. Under his leadership, the Liberals were shut out of the legislature in the
2019 provincial election for the first time since
1982 and experienced their worst results since 1971. Khan resigned from the leadership on November 22, 2020.
On March 6, 2021, John Roggeveen was selected by the board of directors as the interim leader.
The August 12, 2022 deadline for nominations to for the party's leadership election passed with no candidates signing up to run for the position.
On December 8, 2022, Roggeveen was appointed the permanent leader of the party.
Ideology
The Alberta Liberal Party has a long heritage of adhering to
liberalism
Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality and equality before the law."political rationalism, hostility to autocracy, cultural distaste for c ...
, in both the
classical sense and in terms of modern liberalism (see
social liberalism
Social liberalism (german: Sozialliberalismus, es, socioliberalismo, nl, Sociaalliberalisme), also known as new liberalism in the United Kingdom, modern liberalism, or simply liberalism in the contemporary United States, left-liberalism ...
). The party is a centrist party that is focused on creating the conditions for a strong economy, social progressiveness, and safeguarding the environment.
Party policies
Economic policy:
* Reduce post-secondary tuition fees by a third, eliminate mandatory non-instructional fees, and move to a grant-based system versus student loans for financial aid
* Implement progressive taxation
* Opening government contracts to a bidding process that is accessible to the public with disclosure of all government contracts over $10,000
* Investing in a high-speed rail and other infrastructure connecting Edmonton, Red Deer, and Calgary
Social policy:
* Investing in community, school-based hubs across Alberta that tie the health, educational, and social needs of communities
* Eliminate subsidies to private schools and roll some schools into the public systems
* Not providing resources to enforce cannabis laws in cases of small amounts of possession
* Sustainable and substantially increased funding for Legal Aid Alberta
* Implementing a $10 a day
learn through play program throughout Alberta
Environmental policy:
* Elimination of the use of coal as an energy source for electricity in Alberta
* Support of the
Experimental Lakes Area
IISD Experimental Lakes Area (IISD-ELA, known as ELA before 2014) is an internationally unique research station encompassing 58 formerly pristine freshwater lakes in Kenora District Ontario, Canada. Previously run by Fisheries and Oceans Canada, ...
* Implementing a
carbon tax
A carbon tax is a tax levied on the carbon emissions required to produce goods and services. Carbon taxes are intended to make visible the "hidden" social costs of carbon emissions, which are otherwise felt only in indirect ways like more sev ...
Party leaders
Election results
See also
*
List of Alberta Liberal leadership conventions
This page lists the results of leadership elections held by the Alberta Liberal Party. Delegated conventions were held until 1988. Elections held since 1994 have been on a One member, one vote basis.
1905 leadership convention
(Held August 3, 1 ...
*
Alberta Liberal Party candidates in the 2012 Alberta provincial election
*
List of Alberta general elections
*
List of Canadian political parties
A ''list'' is any set of items in a row. List or lists may also refer to:
People
* List (surname)
Organizations
* List College, an undergraduate division of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
* SC Germania List, German rugby uni ...
References
External links
Alberta Liberal Partyofficial site
Alberta Liberal Caucusofficial site
Glenbow Museum Archives: Alberta Liberals
{{Authority control
1905 establishments in Alberta
Alberta Liberal Party MLAs
Liberal parties in Canada
Organizations based in Edmonton
Political parties established in 1905
Liberal
Liberal or liberalism may refer to:
Politics
* a supporter of liberalism
** Liberalism by country
* an adherent of a Liberal Party
* Liberalism (international relations)
* Sexually liberal feminism
* Social liberalism
Arts, entertainment and m ...