Categories
Brian Mason Ed Stelmach Guy Boutilier Ken Kowalski Raymond Speaker Walt Buck

will the wildrose alliance now recieve official party status?

According to Alberta’s Legislative Assembly Act:

Allowance to leader of recognized opposition party
42(1) In this section, “recognized opposition party” means a party that:
(a) is represented in the Assembly by at least 4 Members, and
(b) received at least 5% of the popular vote in the general election immediately preceding the year in which the allowance in subsection (2) is to be paid.

Will Assembly Speaker Ken Kowalski allow an exception for the now three MLA Wildrose Alliance to be a recognized opposition party? While political rather than virtuous, from 1997 to 2004 and 2008 to the present, NDP leader Brian Mason has been recognized as an opposition party leader with a two MLA caucus. The Liberals currently form Official Opposition with nine MLAs and former PC MLA Guy Boutilier now sits as an Independent MLA.

On the March 3, 2008 election, the Wildrose Alliance received 6.77% of the popular vote, but did not elect any MLAs. Even though they now have more MLAs than the officially recognized NDP caucus, there is a possibility that they could be denied official party status because none of the current three MLAs were elected under their current party banner in the previous election.

A precedent for denying the Wildrose Alliance official party status may have been set in 1984, when former Social Credit MLAs Walt Buck and Raymond Speaker formed the Representative Party of Alberta. Both MLAs were elected as Independents in the 1982 election and they were denied official opposition status in the Assembly (their party also did not exist in the previous election). Denying the Wildrose Alliance the status would be a pure political attempt at squashing the insurgent party, but could backfire if it is seen as dirty politics on Premier Ed Stelmach‘s behalf.

If recognized as the Third Party in the Assembly, Wildrose Alliance MLAs will be afforded a daily spot in the Question Period lineup and will receive additional funding for caucus resources and support staff. Holding Third Party status since 1997, the NDP have be impressively effective at using their spot in the QP line-up to generate media coverage in the past.

(ht @shandro for the Act link)

Categories
Alberta Electoral Boundary Review Alison Redford Bauni Mackay Craig Copeland Guy Boutilier Laurie Blakeman Robert Bouchard Stephen Mandel

alberta redrawing boundaries.

Alberta’s Electoral Boundaries Commission is now into its third week of its first round of public hearings. My previous post on the Commission has generated some great discussion about the challenges of representing rural electoral districts and I am looking forward to an upcoming post by a guest contributor to this blog that will delve deeper into some of the issues raised in that discussion.

Thanks to the good people at Hansard, transcripts and audio are now available from the last two weeks of hearings in Fort McMurray: (afternoon, evening), St. Paul, Wainwright, Edmonton (September 22nd afternoon, evening). The transcripts and audio from the September 23rd public hearings in Edmonton and September 24th & 25th in Calgary are not available yet, but I would expect that they should be posted at some point this week. 

So far, it has been a relatively small number of Albertans who have presented to the commission, including MLAs Laurie Blakeman and Guy Boutilier, municipal officials including Cold Lake Mayor Craig Copeland, County of St. Paul Reeve Robert Bouchard, Edmonton Mayor Stephen Mandel, and a number of representatives from Liberal and Progressive Conservatives constituency associations.

Due to legislative amendments introduced into the Legislative Assembly by Justice Minister Alison Redford during the Spring session, the Electoral Boundaries Commission will increase the amount of electoral districts from 83 to 87. While it’s very questionable why Albertans would need more MLAs, the increase may help the case presented by Mandel, who urged the Commissioners to increase Edmonton’s representation by two seats. The outcome of the 2002/2003 Boundaries Commission saw Edmonton’s representation in the Legislative Assembly decrease by one MLA, a move that is widely believed to have contributed to the defeats of seven capital city PC MLAs in the 2004 provincial election (Commission member Bauni Mackay penned a spirited defence of Edmonton in her minority position).

These public hearings haven’t been overflowing with presenters, but I expect that interest will rise after the interim report and interim map are released in the coming months. The submission deadline for the first round of public hearings is on October 13.

Related:
Brian Dell: My Submission to the Alberta Electoral Boundaries Commission
Trish Audette: Rural vs Urban tug of war

Categories
Bill Bonko Ed Stelmach Gary Masyk Guy Boutilier Lyle Oberg Pearl Calahasen Ron Liepert

guy boutilier’s free agency.

There is a serious leadership vacuum in Alberta. Most of the time it appears that PC Premier Ed Stelmach is absent from the important political debates and indecisive as our provincial leader, but every now and then he sporadically overcompensates. We saw this overcompensation with his recent pledge to never raise taxes and again this weekend with the over the phone firing of Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo MLA Guy Boutilier.

I wasn’t shocked to learn that Guy Boutilier had been kicked out of the Progressive Conservative caucus and I have a difficult time believing that Boutilier didn’t know exactly what he was doing. Boutilier must have known that he was playing with political fire when he publicly accused Health & Wellness Minister Ron Liepert of “talking gibberish” and then criticized Stelmach for not wanting a cabinet minister “who graduated from Harvard with Barack Obama.” Boutilier admitted that he never met Obama while at Harvard, but I imagine that comment was a bit stinging to a Premier who never completed his University degree.

Boutilier’s criticisms of Liepert stemmed from the state of seniors care in Fort McMurray, and while it would be easy to commended him for breaking from the party line, his 12 years in the governing PC caucus have given him many better opportunities to publicly champion health care in Fort McMurray. He is now on his way out.

This isn’t the first time that Boutilier’s bizarre political actions have raised eyebrows.

While testifying to the Alberta Energy Utilities Board in 2006, Boutilier told Mikisew Cree First Nation lawyer Don Mallon that at the time, he was not speaking as the Minister of the Environment, but as an MLA. When asked how he could do this, Boutilier testified that he could actually turn off the part of his brain where he was the Minister of Environment. An impressive feat.

Boutilier led a loose coalition of PC MLAs who had yet to endorse a candidate in their party’s 2006 leadership contest. The group called itself the C5 (“Conservative, Competitive, Caring, Conservationist Coalition”) and included Clint Dunford, Ty Lund, Pearl Calahasen, Ivan Strang and LeRoy Johnson. Boutilier and Calahasen eventually endorsed Lyle Oberg, and were both eventually dumped from their cabinet positions after Stelmach became Premier.

During my time as Chairperson of the Council of Alberta University Students from 2006 to 2007, I met with many MLAs and Cabinet Ministers. None of the meetings I experienced was more bizarre than my final meeting in that role in May 2007, when I met with then-Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Guy Boutilier. In his office at the Legislature, myself and the CAUS Executive Director presented our post-secondary education advocacy points, only to be continually interrupted by Boutilier’s gesturing to his wall-mounted Harvard degree and giant wall photo of his first Bull riding experience as Mayor of Wood Buffalo. He was obviously quite proud of both of these, but his focus on them may have prevented him from actually digesting anything we had to say during the meeting. It gave me a glimpse of how difficult a person he must have been to work with at the cabinet table, so I’m not shocked that he has quickly fallen out of favour with the cabal of Stelmach loyalists that replaced Ralph Klein‘s inner circle in 2006.

What are Boutilier’s options now?

He could sit as an Independent MLA, as Oberg did, and then wait for a chance to return to the PC caucus if that opportunity presents itself. Not many Independent MLAs have been successful in their bids of seek re-elected in Alberta. In 1993, Clover Bar MLA Kurt Gesell left the PC caucus and ran as an Independent candidate in the newly created Clover Bar-Fort Saskatchewan riding. He was defeated by former Fort Saskatchewan Mayor and Liberal candidate Muriel Abdurahman.

He could join another political party. While there isn’t much precedent of PC MLAs joining the Liberal Party in Alberta, a couple of PC MLAs have joined other parties. Former Edmonton-Norwood MLA Gary Masyk left the PC caucus in 2004 to join the fledgling Alberta Alliance after his riding was abolished. Masyk ended up running in the newly created Edmonton-Decore riding, but was defeated by Liberal Bill Bonko.

With three years until the next expected election, Boutilier has the option of representing Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo in Alberta’s Legislative Assembly without having to adhere to the discipline of a party Whip. For better or worse, citizens in Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo are no longer represented by a PC backbencher, they are now represented by a free agent MLA.

Categories
Ed Stelmach Guy Boutilier Ron Liepert

stelmach boots boutilier.

Premier Ed Stelmach booted Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo MLA and former Cabinet Minister Guy Boutilier out of the PC caucus today, over the phone

Fort McMurray MLA Guy Boutilier is “shocked and disappointed” after being kicked out of the Tory caucus by Premier Ed Stelmach late Friday during a phone conversation. …

“He (Stelmach) said ‘you’re out, you’re not welcome at caucus on Tuesday.’ I asked to meet caucus but he refused.

“I always thought you got to face your accuser, but the premier categorically refused to meet me or let me meet the members of caucus I’ve served with for 12 years.”

Boutilier recently accused Health Minister Ron Liepert of “talking gibberish” on the poor state of seniors care in Fort McMurray. He recently endeared himself to Stelmach by criticizing him for not wanting a cabinet minister “who graduated from Harvard with Barack Obama.”

Categories
Alberta Tories Environment Guy Boutilier Larry Johnsrude

john cleese, the mla for fort mcmurray-wood buffalo.

Larry Johnsrude posted a bizarre transcript of an Alberta Energy Utilities Board hearing starring Alberta’s Environment Minister Guy Boutilier who was not answering questions as a Minister, but only as an MLA…

Here’s a portion of the transcript, I encourage you to read the rest, bizarre, monty pythonesq…

Judge for yourself. The following is an excerpt from an exchange between Boutilier and Don Mallon, lawyer for the Mikisew Cree First Nation:

Q (Mallon). I’m going to talk about the paragraph where you look forward to fishing with your grandson, and today you said granddaughter, but I gather from what you said today and what it says in the following paragraph that you don’t have a
grandchild yet, or am I mistaken?

A (Boutilier). Actually my wife and I don’t have a son or daughter yet, but we’re in the process of privately adopting, so as a follow-up to our adoption, we expect to have grandsons and granddaughters.

Q. All right. So I’m going to assume that your grandson is precocious. And has become a river ecologist, a river biologist. And your son advises you as the Minister of Environment that the Athabasca River system’s ecosystem is in danger of imminent collapse and that you and he are not going to be able to fish in that river anymore. And the reason for it is that the flows are too low and that we’re removing too much water. Now, the responsibility that you have, which is an absolute responsibility, then, is to protect the river, right?

A. It’s important to recognize that I’m here as MLA, I’m quite prepared to answer any question, but not as Minister of Environment.

Q. Well, I’m sorry, sir, you don’t get to pick and chose who you are one minute and who you are not the next. You are the Minister of the Environment.

A. Right.

Q. And I’m asking you, sir, that as the Minister of Environment, is it not appropriate, if that ecosystem is in danger, to reduce or completely stop the withdrawal of those flows for the period of time that it takes in order to allow that system to get back to square one?

A. Mr. Chairman, I am here today as the MLA representing the region and citizens.

Q. And we know that Alberta Environment is the protector of the environment in this province.

A. Yes, I’m here today, though not as Alberta Environment but as the MLA.

Read the rest