The Alberta NDP leadership race has been characterized to date by its lack of substantive disagreement and policy debate, but here and there some candidates have had some surprising things to say—and one of the biggest surprises has been a reversal from former justice minister Kathleen Ganley on the issue of carding.

The UCP have appointed four people who have collectively donated more than $15,000 to the UCP to university boards of governors, including Minister of Advanced Education Rajan Sawhney’s former chief of staff and the party’s former executive director, bringing the total of UCP donations from its university board appointees to nearly $92,000. 

Documents obtained by independent journalist Euan Thomson show that Alberta police chiefs, including Calgary’s Mark Neufeld and Edmonton’s Dale McFee, campaigned for the United Conservative Party in the run-up to the 2023 election—even using publicly-funded police resources to help secure Danielle Smith’s victory. 

An Edmonton judge lifted the publication ban last week on a video of former EPS Constable Oli Olason kicking Lee Van Beaver in the head multiple times while also stepping on his head with the full weight of his body. Olason was recorded committing this act of police brutality, which the judge called “deeply disturbing,” on March 23, 2021 outside of Ritchie Market.

Former provincial politician and publisher of the Western Standard Derek Fildebrandt has been charged with four counts of uttering threats against teenagers in his neighborhood. 

While on the job as a powerline technician on October 6, 2022 a power pole slammed into Sean Mowat’s ankle, breaking it in at least two places. Then his day got really bad. 

The latest decision by the Alberta Crown Prosecution Service (ACPS) to not prosecute the Lethbridge cops who spied on a sitting cabinet minister, despite the recommendation from ASIRT that the cops had committed a crime, lays bare a disturbing reality: there is one set of laws for cops and one set of laws for everybody else.

On May 9, the People's University for Palestine (PUP) established an encampment on a small portion of the University of Alberta's main quad. The PUP was student-led, but supported by faculty, staff, alumni, and members of the community. Its demands: that the University disclose and divest from institutional and financial investments that profit from the colonization and genocide of Palestinians.  On May 11, at the behest of the leadership of the University, the Edmonton Police Services (EPS) cleared the encampment, including through the use of non-lethal weapons.

In order to defeat the UCP, the Alberta NDP are going to have to do something they’ve never really done in their life as a political party—engage in mass politics. While early signs from the leadership race are encouraging, they must be nurtured to grow a party that can defeat the UCP behemoth. 

Edmonton police chief Dale McFee finally emerged, Punxsutawney Phil-like, to speak about the reasons why his officers used pepper spray and batons at dawn to clear a pro-Palestinian protest encampment at the University of Alberta quad over the weekend. And because we are stuck in a Groundhog Day-esque time loop McFee employed a cynical trope political leaders have used for nearly two centuries to violently smash effective protest movements—outside agitators.