Higher minimum wage, deficits, pipeline among Notley’s legacy as Alberta premier

One of Rachel Notley’s prized possessions from her time as Alberta premier sits on her bedroom dresser: a framed picture of hell freezing over.

It’s a photo of a newspaper headline taken the day after Notley’s NDP delivered a shocking political upset, forming majority government for the first time while delivering the coup de grace to a wheezing, scandal-plagued 44-year Progressive Conservative dynasty.

“They had the paper with the headline, ‘NDP Ends Tory Dynasty,'” Notley said of the anonymous gift.

“They took the front page of the Edmonton Journal and they put it on my Dad’s statue (in a downtown park named after him) and they took a picture and they framed it and they sent it.

“And there was this snowfall over all of it,” she said in an interview, smiling while tearing up and looking to an aide for a tissue.

“Because hell did freeze over May 6, as you’ll recall.”

Notley announced Tuesday she would be stepping down as party and caucus leader after almost a decade at the helm.

During her time in government, the 59-year-old dog-loving, marathon running, Fluevog-shoe-wearing labour lawyer became the face and dominant force of the party.

She took it from four members to the heights of majority government in 2015, exploiting a rift on the centre-right to end the PCs’ four-decade run.

The NDP lost government four years later to an opposition reunited under Jason Kenney as the new United Conservative Party.

In 2023, Notley lost again to the UCP, under new Premier Danielle Smith, but with the consolation of a record-setting 38-member Opposition in the 87-seat house.

As premier, Notley’s government was handed a somewhat poisoned chalice, governing when oil and gas prices were at the nadir of their boom-and-bust cycle.

Nevertheless, it