Progressive Tory Party enters early campaign mode with announcement of first MLA candidate

The Progressive Tory Party of Alberta has announced its first candidate for next year’s provincial election, and is set to unveil its nominee for an upcoming byelection in Calgary.

Bonnie Critchley, who made a name for herself running as an Independent against Conservative Party of Canada Leader Pierre Poilievre last summer in a federal byelection in Battle River-Crowfoot, will represent the upstart provincial party in the Camrose constituency.

Critchley, a 22-year veteran of the Canadian Forces, finished a distant second in last summer’s federal byelection — a race she said she entered reluctantly, largely in protest of Poilievre’s lack of ties to the rural riding in east Alberta. Poilievre ran in the rural riding after losing his longtime Ottawa-Carleton seat in the 2025 general election.

Your weekday lunchtime roundup of curated links, news highlights, analysis and features.

A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.

She said her decision to re-enter the political arena, this time at the provincial level, was also made begrudgingly.

“I’d much rather be riding my horse and doing fun things, doing my hobbies,” Critchley said. “But I simply cannot stomach sitting by and watching what I see as foreign interference with the separatist debate and Albertans losing rights — like, literally losing rights.”

Critchley said her decision was influenced by the governing UCP’s decision last fall to invoke the notwithstanding clause to force striking teachers back to work, as well as what she sees as the government placating Alberta separatists and an erosion in freedom of expression.

What attracted the military veteran to the Progressive Tory Party rather than the Opposition NDP, she said, is the fledgling party’s more moderate conservative slant.

“Regardless of what all the talking heads have said, I’ve always been a centrist with right leanings,” Critchley said. “I’ve always said I’m an old-school, Lougheed-style PC.

“People need to be able to vote for what they believe in, not against what they’re scared of.”

Critchley is the Progressive Tory Party’s first confirmed candidate, but three or four more will be unveiled by early September, according to Peter Guthrie, the party’s founder and leader.

Guthrie, a former UCP cabinet minister and currently the MLA for Airdrie-Cochrane, was ejected from the UCP caucus in 2025 after publicly criticizing the governing party’s handling of a health-care procurement scandal, which made headlines after the ousting of former AHS chief executive Athana Mentzelopoulos. Guthrie voted against party lines when he supported an NDP-led motion to launch a public inquiry into the scandal.

After his removal from the UCP, Guthrie launched the Progressive Tory Party last December. While he originally sought to revive the progressive conservative party banner, he was blocked from using that branding by legislation introduced by the UCP last year that prohibits new parties from adopting words already used in other parties’ names.