Alberta Provincial Elections, 29 May 2023

Wildfires, spring 2023 

Canada’s wildfire season typically runs from 1 March to 31 October (Austen et al. 2023). As of June 2023, Canada was on track to be recording its worst season ever, with 10 million acres already burned by hundreds of wildfires across the country. Tens of thousands of Canadians were forced to evacuate their homes; air quality was dramatically worsened (and in neighbouring parts of the United States) (Kaminsky 2023).  

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and partners have confirmed the link between increased forest fire risk and climate change worldwide – including risk in regions that did not previously experience wildfires (UNEP/GRID-Arendal 2022). According to World Weather Attribution, climate change ‘doubled the likelihood of extreme fire weather in eastern Canada’ (WWA 2023). 

In a survey of 1,200 Albertans after the election, 75 per cent of voters said they experienced some impact from the wildfires, with 54 per cent saying they had to stay inside and 39 per cent suffering health problems. The survey findings suggest that the issue influenced voter perceptions of candidates and government responses (Ayrle 2023). 

Impact on the electoral process 

The fires coincided with a provincial election in Alberta, a province in Canada’s west, scheduled for 29 May (Gaspard et al. 2025). In mid-May, as 2,500 firefighters from the US and Canada battled blazes in the province, air quality in cities including Calgary, Alberta’s largest, reached the maximum hazard level on Environment Canada’s Air Quality Health Index (Shakil and Kumar 2023). On 6 May, a state of emergency was declared across the province, and some local elected officials called for the elections to be postponed. The responsibility for moving to postpone an election in such emergency cases falls to the nonpartisan Chief Election Officer of Elections Alberta, who would need to demonstrate on a constituency-by-constituency basis, to a judge, that it was not possible to hold the election using special ballots (Mertz 2023).  

Ultimately, no delay was sought, and the elections proceeded as scheduled. Advance voting was offered in over 300 locations across Alberta from 23 May to 27 May, offering electors the “Vote Anywhere Service” by which any elector from any constituency could vote at any of these locations and receive the ballot for their district (Elections Alberta 2023a). Elections Alberta gave Albertans affected by evacuation orders – who numbered about 29,000 as of 7 May – the option to have a special ballot package mailed to them, which could then be submitted by mail or by drop-off at the local returning office. The application for the package was posted on the Elections Alberta website. Elections Alberta also published webpages tracking the impact of the fires on voting places and issued updates on their website and on social media about the localities where the fires had affected voting (Tran and Heidenreich 2023). Additionally, mobile voting stations were placed in evacuation centres (Calgary Herald 2023). 

Some aspects of the electoral framework had changed since the 2019 provincial elections. As well as covering electoral timing and campaign finance(Bellefontaine 2021), the legislation increased the number of early voting stations and required voters to present identification to vote in provincial elections (Government of Alberta 2021). 

There was both praise and criticism for the Premier of Alberta, Danielle Smith of the governing United Conservative Party (UCP), for remaining at the forefront of the wildfire response instead of leaving this to civil servants in the pre-electoral phase (Williams 2023); Bennett 2023; Black 2023). Voters were quite evenly split on the question of whether the electoral campaigns were sufficiently addressing the fires, with a third saying they were, a third saying they were not, and a third stating they did not know enough to have an opinion (Ayrle 2023). 

Further complicating the situation, misinformation about the wildfires spread online: concerning when polls would close, how votes are collected and what documentation was required, among others  (Weingarten 2023). For example, photos circulated on Facebook showing specific communities suffering from the wildfires, though these photos actually dated from 2016 (Weingarten 2023). 

Turnout was 59.5 per cent with a record-breaking 42.7 per cent of those who voted doing so during the advance voting days (Elections Alberta 2023b). Turnout in the 2019 election had been very much higher at 67.5 per cent (Elections Alberta n.d.).