Pedestrians walk inside in the Plus 15 walkway while Calgary is covered under a blanket of smoke from the forest fires in northern Alberta on May 16, 2023.Todd Korol/The Globe and Mail
Alberta plans to move its fixed election date from May to October, one year after wildfires forced the evacuation of nearly 30,000 people as parties jostled on the campaign trail.
The province’s Public Safety Minister said the change is needed because of the number of springtime natural disasters over the years, including the Slave Lake fire in 2011, the Calgary flood of 2013, the Fort McMurray fire of 2016 and the drought that parts of the province are currently facing.
“These natural disasters, they’re occurring more and more frequently, especially during the spring months,” said Mike Ellis in an interview with The Globe and Mail this week.
It would be “almost negligent” to plan on another spring election going forward, he said.
The change will be outlined in Bill 21, the Emergency Statutes Amendment Act, expected to be introduced on Thursday. It would amend the Election Act to state that provincial elections would be held the third Monday in October every four years, instead of the last Monday in May.
This date change is meant to decrease the likelihood that any cabinet minister, in any government, would face the conflict of having to address a natural disaster during a campaign, Mr. Ellis said.
While some will view it as a United Conservative Party acknowledgement of the effects of climate change, the minister pointed at other factors in last year’s record wildfire season.
“Climate change is a factor, and we always have to be cognizant of that. But the reality is, from a wildfire perspective, 67 per cent were caused by negligence,” Mr. Ellis said. “Sixty-seven per cent of the fires were human-caused.”
Premier Danielle Smith speaks of her province reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, but rarely uses the words “climate change” when discussing the litany of fires, floods and droughts that have hit Alberta in recent years.
The proposed change would apply to the provincial election expected in 2027, and beyond.
The fixed election date change isn’t likely to be controversial. Many other provinces have their elections in the fall, and outgoing Alberta NDP Leader Rachel Notley has also said the course of the 2023 campaign was upended by the wildfires.
However, this same bill also would change several pieces of legislation to tighten provincial responses and give it more control when emergencies are declared. Mr. Ellis said it’s about making “sure that the full capacity of the government is available to address these emergencies.”
It’s unclear whether this legislation will open a new chapter of conflict between the UCP and municipalities, or other groups, which have recently pushed back against two other bills: one that would give the province control over federal funding coming into the province, and another that would allow the government to have the authority to fire councillors and cancel bylaws.
Under Bill 21, the Emergency Management Act would be changed to allow the province to assume authority over local emergency response efforts when local authorities ask for help, are overwhelmed or when the emergency spans across a number of jurisdictions. The Water Act would be amended to allow the province to determine the priority of water use in the area, direct water licence holders and to allow temporary low-risk water transfers between major water basins in the case of emergencies.
“These changes would really help us to act more nimbly should we be in a water-related emergency, whether that be a drought or a flood,” said Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz.
There’s no one cause for natural disasters. But globally, 2023 was the warmest year on record, and the 10 warmest years since 1850 have all occurred in the past decade. Scientists warn that climate change means extreme weather events will become more frequent and severe.
The ferocity of fires in a hotter, drier climate was on full display during last year’s election. Some candidates in affected communities halted their campaigning, and Elections Alberta scrambled to make alternative arrangements for those displaced by the fires. A few municipal leaders had argued the whole election should be postponed. In an effort to set aside the partisan politics of the campaign, Ms. Smith and Ms. Notley met to discuss the wildfire situation.
This week, Mr. Ellis said that as he led the province’s response to the disaster, he, the Premier and other cabinet ministers acted under the threat of thousands of dollars in daily fines from Elections Alberta – where officials watched to see whether politics intruded in the fire updates and the public safety messages.
Mr. Ellis said his role as Public Safety Minister “doesn’t stop during the election.”
“Elections Alberta didn’t want us updating the media,” Mr. Ellis said. “They looked at it as possibly some kind of, we’ll call it interference. And we’re explaining: ‘But we’re not being partisan. We have to let the public know what is going on under these extraordinary circumstances.’”
However, Ms. Smith was also criticized for delivering a fire update at a party news conference, and for announcing to party members she was invoking a state of emergency before she told the public about it later in the day.