Former Alberta NDP MLA Rod Loyola announced he will be running as a federal Liberal candidate shortly after resigning from his seat in the provincial legislature. Loyola has a history of slamming the federal Liberals and previously insisting he would never work with the party.
“You won’t catch me working with the (Liberal Party) of Canada. They talk like NDPers, but they act like Cons,” wrote Loyola in a post to X (then Twitter) on March 25, 2014.
The Alberta NDP MLA resigned his provincial seat in the Edmonton-Ellerslie riding on Tuesday.
He announced his candidacy for the federal Liberal nomination in Edmonton Gateway the following day and was confirmed as a candidate soon after.
In 2014, Loyola also criticized then-Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, writing in a post to X that he “only cares about his Liberal party, not the hard-working Canadians that built this country.”
Despite his past statements, Loyola claimed he was excited to be a part of Carney’s team. He called Carney the first “Edmontonian Prime Minister” and celebrated him cutting the carbon tax.
Carney was born in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories. He moved to Edmonton at age six, and his father ran as a Liberal candidate for Edmonton South shortly after the 1980 federal election.
The Liberal leader has taken flack online for residing outside of Canada over the past decade and being unclear about whether he had a Canadian residence. Carney has been an Irish citizen since birth and a citizen of the United Kingdom since 2018 when he was the former governor of the Bank of England.
Loyola also previously shared a quote from Anne McGrath in 2013, the former president of the Alberta NDP, who said, “We must win as who we are… We must not win as a Liberal party.”
Alberta Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz blasted Loyola for his change of heart.
“There is ZERO difference between the NDP and the Liberal Party of Canada now. Maybe a different colour, but same ideological activists, same broken promises,” she said.
Loyola did not reply to True North’s request for comment.
Popular poll aggregator 338Canada currently has Edmonton Gateway as a toss up between the Liberals and Conservatives, giving the Conservatives a slight edge.
The Conservative candidate in the district is Tim Uppal, who currently sits as a MP for Edmonton Mill Woods. Edmonton Gateway is a new federal riding. The 2022 Canadian federal electoral redistribution saw it created out of parts of Edmonton Mill Woods, Edmonton Riverbend, and Edmonton—Wetaskiwin.
The federal election will take place on April 28, 2025.