daveberta.ca - Alberta Politics and Elections

K, it’s from 630CHED, so the credibility of the article may be in question, but still…

Oberg to Alliance party?
Mar, 24 2006 – 12:10 PM

EDMONTON/630 CHED – The leader of the Alberta Alliance Party is throwing down the welcome mat for Lyle Oberg after he was ousted from the government caucus and stripped of his cabinet post.

Alliance Leader Paul Hinman says he’s hearing rumours that Oberg is being urged by at least one of his supporters to join the Alliance, rather than sit as an independent.

Hinman says he doesn’t condone Oberg speaking out against his own party, but the Alliance Leader says the former cabinet minister may want to challenge the government from the outside.

Hinman says he’s also eager to talk with any other disenchanted government members who might want to cross the floor of the legislature and join the Alliance.

Well, it has happened, the extremely rare and elusive “shake up” in Alberta Conservative politics… Infrastructure and Transportation Minister and PC leadership hopeful Lyle Oberg has been officially booted from cabinet and suspended from the PC caucus…

Alta. minister Oberg loses rank over remarks about premier
Click here to find out more!

The Canadian Press
Published: Thursday, March 23, 2006

EDMONTON — Alberta Tory leadership contender Lyle Oberg was suspended indefinitely from caucus and stripped of his cabinet post Thursday over remarks he made about Premier Ralph Klein.

Deputy premier Shirley McClellan made the announcement after an emergency meeting at the legislature that lasted well into the evening.

The furore arose after Oberg told his constituency association in Brooks he wouldn’t ask members to support Klein during an upcoming leadership review. Read le rest ici.

(1000% Props to Duncan who beat me to the punch in posting the story!)

(PROPS UPDATE: Upon further examination, I’ve discovered that Allie beat Ducan to the punch. So, 5000% props for Allie for beating both Duncan and I to the blogging punch. And yes, Duncan can still keep his 1000% props as he still beat me to the punch).

The Alberta Tory caucus is holding an emergency caucus meeting today following what shall now be known as the “Prince Oberg threat” – Infrastructure and Transportation Minister and PC leadership candidate Lyle Oberg has threatened PC leader Ralph Klein.

Strong political whispers are saying that the Tory caucus is currently meeting as I blog to decide whether Oberg should be kicked out of the Tory caucus.

The Edmonton Journal reported on the Oberg incident, which occurred at a meeting of the PC Constituency Association in Strathmore-Brooks:

Oberg went on to say “there is a leadership vote coming up, and a week ago I was ready to come up here and say that you should support Ralph.

“Today I am going to stand here and say you must vote with your conscience. I will not stand here and say you must support Ralph.”

Chronicle reporter Ryan Kiedrowski, 28, said at that point the constituency members burst into cheers and applause.

“When I take off the gloves, my gloves come off completely,” Oberg continued. “Everything is fair ball now, everything is open. It’s going to be very interesting what happens in the next while.”

Oberg warned that “if I were the premier, I wouldn’t want me sitting as a backbencher … I know where all the skeletons are.”

As well, Finance Minister Shirley McClellan was seen noticeably rushing out of her Finance Ministerial Breakfast to the emergency caucus meeting this morning after reportedly being 5 minutes late, skipping breakfast, and cutting her question and answer period short.

More soon…

What do two people who had a key hand in one of the worst, disastrous, and entertaining national election campaigns do when the dust has settled?

Start a private consulting firm: Feschuk.Reid

(Props to Public Eye Online for the linkage)

“Sort of update:” To be fair, I really did enjoy Mr. Feschuk’s blog during the election, but I think that is all I really enjoyed about that election campaign.

More of an “addition update:” …um… yeah… the always insightful Derek Raymaker has an update on the whereabouts of another survivor of the S.S. Team Martin 2006, David Herle, and his smashing debut in Toronto’s business community…

I went to Budget Day at the Alberta Legislature this afternoon. A longer recap will come soon, but some of the highlights in this compassionate budget of the people include:

-38% increase in a subsidy to Alberta’s Horse Racing Industry.

-$400 Million Corporate tax cuts to Alberta Corporations (Who are clearly hurting and in need of a tax cut with $60 barrel oil…)

As well, Finance Minister Shirley McClellan’s speeches are still as boring as dirt.

Stelmach leaves cabinet post to seek leadership

Last updated Mar 21 2006 12:44 PM MST
CBC News

Alberta’s intergovernmental affairs minister is resigning from cabinet to run for the leadership of the Tory party although Premier Ralph Klein has said he plans to stay for another two years.

Ed Stelmach says he is stepping down at this early date because of Klein’s directive that any contenders for his job should leave a cabinet posting by June 1 to prevent any conflict of interest. Stelmach isn’t saying when his own campaign will get underway, and wants to be extra careful to avoid any measure of impropriety. Read le rest ici.

I should start a prediction pool to see who’ll be next. Any takers?

After thoughts – Who do you think will replace Stelmach as Intergovernmental Affairs Minister when he resigns? My prediction is George Rogers – MLA for Leduc-Beaumont-Devon, former Mayor of Leduc, and former President of the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association. Though he has more of a municipal government background, I could see him being a good fit for this ministry.

For those of you wondering, no, I haven’t totally tuned out of the goings-on of federal Liberal leadership race – it’s just that I’m finding it quite boring at this point.

When running through a list of declared/likely/possible candidates for the coveted Stornoway parking spot, there are only a few candidates that I would feel comfortable with as leader, namely Gerard Kennedy and perhaps Michael Ignatieff.

We’ll just have to see what happens as most of the leadership candidates will most likely be in Edmonton for the Liberal Party of Canada in Alberta convention during the weekend of April 8-10. I’m probably going to be out of town for the weekend anyway, but if I get the chance, I’d like to meet up with some of the potential candidates.

Also, the “braintrust” of the federal Liberals have laid out the rules for the race – Jason has a good analysis if you’re interested – but one of the points that stuck out for me is the rush to get a new leader.

Under the rules, the membership sales cutoff is July 1st – this leaves me with two thoughts.

1. It’s damn soon and will isolate the influence of the summer BBQ circuit to people who already have memberships.

2. With the academic year ending in less than 2 months, the timeline leaves little or no time for campus clubs to organize membership and recruitment drives.

It looks to me like it was a plan written up by a group of Toronto-centric Liberals who believe that Harper will crash and burn as the Liberals return from the indiginity of opposition by next spring – something which is most likely not going to happen.

And yes, for the sake of throwing it out there, even though I didn’t vote Liberal in the last federal election, I’m probably going to renew my lapsed Liberal membership before July 1st so I can vote against Belinda Stronach and Bob Rae. 😉

In other interesting news, I will be going to the budget announcement at the Alberta Legislature on Wednesday afternoon. Perhaps if I have time, I’ll write up a recap similar to the one I did for budget 2005. Care to place bets on how big this year’s surplus will be?

One of the biggest pet peeves I have are people who take their blogging too seriously.

It now appears that blogrolls are not imune from these symptoms.

For example, Allie’s blog was recently denied membership in the Blogging Tories by blogroll overlord Stephen Taylor because she has other political blogrolls listed on her blog, none of which she is a member.

Wow, seriously folks…

LAME.

As the title of this blog post would suggest, there is a 5-foot icicle hanging outside my bedroom window. These are times I wish I had a digital camera.

Well, for the first time in about 4 months, I shovelled the sidewalk in front of my house. I think we must have got at least a foot of snow yesterday. I really wish we would have had this much snow for Christmas, instead of in March.

After going for an Irish breakfast yesterday morning (beer included), I stopped by Second Cup at the Varscona Hotel with Sam and Chris. While ordering my coffee, I really didn’t know how to react when I saw that Second Cup had named one of their coffee flavours – I kid you not – the “Rwandan Cup of Hope” … holy smokes… talk about a heavy name for a cup of coffee… 500,000 dead… cream and sugar please… “I’ll have a large Rwandan Cup of Hope and a cranberry muffin, please…“

And on the lighter side of things… as you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been fiddling around with the blog template here at daveberta. I don’t think this will be the final version, but I’m working on it inbetween essay writing. I was getting bored with the last version, so it was time for a change.

I like suggestions as well. So, if you have any ideas for my new template, feel free to comment! 🙂

Gearing up for Premier Ralph Klein’s leadership review at PC AGM in Calgary on March 31st, there’s no shortage of rumours floating around.

Here’s a quick sample of the rumours that floated my way over the past week…

Thanks, Clay Aitken! One of the main reasons Klein announced his ultimatum to the PC leadership candidates last week was to spurn the massive “roads for votes” campaign (see here, here, here, here, here, and here) spending spree of Infrastructure and Transportation Minister and PC leadership candidate Lyle Oberg.

– The flying Dutchman flying away? PC Party Executive Director Peter Elzinga is threatening to resign (whether this threat has something to do with Elzinga’s rumoured power struggle with Klein’s Chief of Staff, Peter Kruselnicki, is unknown – but suspected).

– Klein won’t survive the leadership review. This one doesn’t really surprise me. After the shockwave of Klein’s announcement this week, many Tories I’ve spoken to were slightly jared by the tone of the announcement (18 months?).

The question is, what does a winning mandate look like for Klein? Considering he usually recieves Hussienian support levels of 97%, anything below this is bad for Klein. I would expect anything less than 80% to be a huge slap in the face to a man who has led the Alberta Progressive Conservatives to four majority governments.

– Nothing to lose. Tory backbencher, former Senator-in-waiting, and leadership candidate Ted Morton‘s organizers have been directing delegates to vote “yes” for the review.

– Everything to lose. Former Alberta Treasurer and leadership candidate Jim Dinning‘s organizers have been giving the “vote to support Klein… (wink wink, nudge nudge)…”

– Talkin’ PC. This one isn’t really a rumour, but judging from content of the latest “PC Talk” newsletter, the Tory establishment looks desperately worried about the potential outcome of the leadership review (the newsletter is filled to the brims with editorials, letters, and cleverly hidden suggestions from the party elites urging members to “VOTE NO” to the leadership review).

When a party has to drown its membership in “VOTE NO” propaganda, it should be clear that something is a foot.

And now this, from James Baxter in today’s Edmonton Journal…

“According to well-placed sources, Klein and his chief of staff, Peter Kruselnicki, planned to use undated letters of resignation as leverage against any candidate seen to be misusing his office to further his ambitions. Klein had warned Oberg, Stelmach and Hancock to be discreet and beyond reproach.”

And I fully expect things to get juicier…

SUNDAY UPDATE! And things have gotten juicier! Defeated Tory MLA and Leadership candidate Mark Norris is now a separatist…

I loved this part of the interview with the Calgary Sun‘s Licia Corbella:

“as soon as there’s a carbon tax announced or any of those things like the NEP, then you stand up on the highest mountain top and you say ‘no, we’re going to fight this and if this isn’t reversed, then we’re going to take steps to secede.'”

It was only a matter of time before one of the candidates (other than Ted Morton) dragged out the dreaded NEP! Seriously, folks, the program was cancelled over 20 years ago, we now have a Conservative government in Ottawa, and the Prime Minister is from Calgary. No one is talking about a new NEP.

I’m really not sure what Norris plans to accomplish by saying this, but then again, I really can’t understand why anyone in their right mind would want to support Norris for the Alberta PC Leadership…

In a huge almost Chretienian move, Premier Ralph Klein has called on Ministers in his cabinet who are planning to run in the Alberta PC Leadership Race to resign by June 1st…

Klein orders ministers running for Alberta PC leadership to quit by June 1

Jim Macdonald, Canadian Press
Published: Wednesday, March 15, 2006

EDMONTON (CP) – Alberta cabinet ministers who want to take a run at Ralph Klein’s job in two years will have to resign their portfolios by June 1, the premier said Wednesday.

Klein told The Canadian Press that he made the announcement at the daily government caucus meeting. So far three cabinet members are among the six men who have indicated interest in the leadership of Alberta’s Progressive Conservative Party – Transportation Minister Lyle Oberg, Advanced Education Minister Dave Hancock, and Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Ed Stelmach.…

I would say that this move is probably good for Jim Dinning and Ted Morton as they will now have a “level” playing feild in terms of media exposure and will be able to see who their real competition is.

I met Jim Dinning today.

For those of you who don’t know, Mr. Dinning is considered the frontrunner in the race to replace Alberta Progressive Conservative Premier Ralph Klein when he retires (in a Chrétienian move, Mr. Klein announced yesterday that he will be retiring in October of 2007, but won’t leave office until March 2008).

Though he seemed like a nice guy, I nearly drowned in the uninsipiringness of his presentation.

He talked a lot about “choices” and his vision for Alberta while staying fairly vague about most issues. It was really disappointing coming from someone with a Masters in Public Administration from Queen’s and former Deputy Minister. Hopefully we’ll see some more detailed plans from Mr. Dinning as the leadership campaign ensues. Though I suppose 20 years of political hackery will do that to someone. An unfortunate casualty?

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but he really reminds me of someone we are all very familiar with, though without the “isms.”

I’m not sure whether it was the uninsipiring attitude of the near-dead crowd of frat boys loaded with questions starting with “Jim, in your vision for Alberta…” that killed it for me, or the fact that the future Premier of Alberta was only able to attract around 10 people (including at least 3 Liberal/ND voters) to hear him speak.

I did enjoy a small swipe he made at Ted Morton though – I can’t remember what he exactly said, but it was a swipe at Dr. Morton’s “More Alberta, Less Ottawa” slogan from his 2004 provincial election campaign in Foothills-Rockyview.

So, in conclusion: meh.

…because he seriously has to be the lamest superhero ever.

Enough of that.

Well, as the most loyal of the daveberta readership must have noticed, over the past couple weeks, blog posting has become more and more sporatic. So, here’s an update…

Bill Clinton! – Last Thursday evening, I went and listened to former US President Bill Clinton speak at Rexall Place. Wow. The man is such an amazing speaker. Thoughout the entire talk (around an hour and a half or so) he referred to no notes and didn’t even take a sip of water!

Skiing! – Now that there is snow in the great City of Edmonton, I’ve finally taken my cross-country skis out of hiding! I’m hoping to hop down to the river valley this weekend and get some skiing done before the winter is completely over.

Used Book Sales! – Last week, the Anthropology Graduate Students had a used-book sale in the Tory/Business Atrium. For $5, I was able to grab Volumes One and Two of Peter C. Newman‘s “The Canadian Establishment” and a great book for nerds like me called “Urban Politics and Public Policy.“

Speech from the Throne…? – As much as I would really like to write about my visit to the Speech from the Throne at the Alberta Legislature three weeks ago, it would be extremely boring. Other than having nice conversations with people ranging from Graham Thomson, Ms. Katz, Laurie Blakeman, and Rob Lougheed, let’s just say that the cookies and juice were nice.

X-Men! – There is an ENTIRE Wikipedia Universe dedicated to the X-Men! Sweet!

Liberals, partisans, hacks? – While there are many many reasons why I am no longer a member of the Liberal Party of Canada (or any party for that matter), stuff like this makes it even easier to justify…

Work! – After a three week leave of absence, I’m back at work! Thank goodness. I missed my office. At least there will be some sense of normality over the next couple weeks.

Election? – oh, yeah. I won. thanks.

There is sooo much to post about – elections, Bill Clinton, Speech from the Throne review, Tory Leadership gossip, etc etc etc…. but that will have to wait as I have two major papers to get done…

In the meantime, I shall leave you with this:

Your results:
You are Green Lantern

Green Lantern 80% Superman 75% Spider-Man 75% Supergirl 55% Catwoman 50% Iron Man 50% Robin 45% Hulk 45% Wonder Woman 40% The Flash 40% Batman 15%

Hot-headed. You have strong will power and a good imagination.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

Well, other than a bit of a soar throat this morning, I’m feeling good.

Regular blogging will resume in the near future.