NDP in Quandary about Calling Election

Edmonton (ATB): UCP wants to push in elections. There are bubbling party discontents and investigations that carry a whiff of scandal. Delay could mean danger.
Premier Rachel Notley’s nomination in Edmonton-Strathcona is set for Sunday, March 17. The NDP has now nominated candidates in almost all 87 ridings.
On Monday, March 18, the legislature opens with a throne speech.
Notley could go to the lieutenant-governor the next day and ask that the writ be dropped for an election April 16. But by all accounts, she hasn’t made the timing decision yet.
The province is at a strange point of pre-election drift. Kenney keeps saying he’ll cancel many NDP plans. He vows to halt $3.7 billion in spending on rail cars to carry oil, and to quit contracts for big solar projects.
He promised to stop the huge project to centralize medical lab testing in a new building in Edmonton. Kenney claimed this would save $650 million — almost enough for a new hospital.
He says the current system for X-rays, blood work and many other tests works pretty well, without spending anything extra.
That’s certainly true in Calgary, where quick access to tests has improved enormously over the past decade.
Kenney also said that he’ll soon promise cuts to more projects the UCP considers wasteful.
With the widespread view that Kenney has a pending election already won, these promises have the ring of government policy.
But the UCP isn’t the government. The NDP is, and may remain so. Until the election’s done, investors won’t know where to put themselves or their money.
Any government in trouble is always tempted to stall. The public mood can shift in a moment — look what happened to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in just a couple of weeks.
The New Democrats foresee a similar popularity plummet for Kenney. Their belief is that Notley is personally more liked and respected.
The goal is to discredit him. In that work, the NDP is getting plenty of help from Kenney’s own kind.
Press Progress reported that Happy Mann, a fired UCP candidate, says Kenney was involved in the “kamikaze candidate” scheme, and in leadership voting irregularities.
Mann confirmed that the story accurately reflected what he said. But Kenney insists that Mann’s charges are themselves “a ridiculous conspiracy theory” motivated by sour grapes.
In return, Mann challenges Kenney to deny that a key meeting took place.
Mann is under investigation by the Election Commissioner, Lorne Gibson. He and two family members contributed $3,000 each to Jeff Callaway’s leadership campaign.
One associate, Karen Brown, has already been fined $3,500 for donating money that wasn’t her own.
Asked about that, Mann becomes vague. But he says Kenney was involved in plans for Callaway to run, with the goal of hurting Brian Jean’s campaign.
Kenney denies that. He asks hotly why anybody would believe a person “whose campaign beat a Calgary journalist almost to the point of unconsciousness.”
Last August, journalist and radio host Kumar Sharma was hit and kicked by as many as seven men at a concert.
Before that, he said, he’d been threatened by men affiliated with Happy Mann’s campaign for a UCP nomination.
The UCP then disqualified Mann. Kenney feels that’s when the grapes went sour.
Of course, there is solid evidence something funny was going on with leadership donations. Gibson has already fined people for supporting Callaway with funds supplied by someone else, and for impeding the subsequent investigation.
This issue is burning like a slow fuse right up to the election call. It helps explain why the UCP wants to get the voting over with. And why the NDP might prefer to wait a while.