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Alberta Politics

Former PC activist Troy Wason takes over as Alberta Party new executive director

The Alberta Party hasn’t been making many headlines lately, but there will soon be a significant staff change in the ranks of the small moderate conservative party. The party announced today that former Progressive Conservative executive director Troy Wason is taking over as interim executive director of the Alberta Party, replacing outgoing interim executive director Mark Taylor.

Troy Wason
Troy Wason

A well-respected long-time PC Party activist, Wason took over as executive director of the PC Party following the long-time governing party’s defeat in the 2015 election and resigned on the day Jason Kenney became that party’s leader in 2017.

Wason’s joining the Alberta Party could provide some internal direction for the party, which lost all of 3 of its seats in the 2019 election. The party continues to struggle to define itself and remains without a bigger key player – a permanent leader.

The Alberta Party has been without a permanent leader since the resignation of former leader Stephen Mandel in June 2019. The role remained vacant until earlier this year when former Fort Sasktachewan-Vegreville PC MLA Jacquie Fenske was named as interim leader, solidifying the party’s image as a refuge for former PC supporters uncomfortable with the social conservative flavour of the United Conservative Party and unable to support the moderate New Democratic Party.

The party was expected to have held a leadership race in 2020 but, like most other things, it was delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

4 replies on “Former PC activist Troy Wason takes over as Alberta Party new executive director”

The Alberta Parry is redundant & irrelevant. It’s far more interesting to pundits & bloggers than it is to ordinary voters.

The bottom line for Alberta politics today is that it has become a binary, zero-sum game. If you’re not against the UCP, you’re for them. Conversely, if you’re not for the NDP, you’re against them.

There isn’t any room in today’s political climate for wishy-washy pseudo-centrist wets to waste their efforts supporting some quixotic third party, whether it’s the Alberta Party or the Alberta Liberal Party. We are in an existential crisis of governance in the province, with a doctrinaire, extremist neo-fascist government threatening health care workers in the midst of a deadly global pandemic … and threatening the public health at large through their pandering to extremist anti-mask, anti-vax, anti-worker elements in their supporter base.

The Alberta Party refuses to die so far, but then the same thing could be said about the also leaderless Alberta Liberals, who I think have long ago slipped past relevancy.

It does seem to very much be a two party system in Alberta now. I feel the time for the Alberta Party may have been 6 or 7 years ago or so when the PC’s were faltering, but alas it did not come to pass. I suspect that was in part because most of the PC’s were still comfortable in their deck chairs not realizing the disaster that was to hit their party. Renewal is something best done proactively, not as a grudging last option.

Maybe the Alberta Party will somehow hang in there and not drift and fall to quite the depths the Alberta Liberals have, but I don’t see much hope for them in the next few years.

I think there’s room for the Alberta Party. It doesn’t hurt to have another voice in the room, especially when the 2 current parties are so diametrically opposed. The Alberta Party could, as Greg Clark often did, advocate for Albertans on a case by case basis. They would often land on the side of social issues with the NDP and not automatically dismiss things just because they came from NDP. Same for the other way. If there’s a solid policy coming from another party, they could support it if it was good for constituents. And not automatically reject it. This attack mode is getting exhausting for many Albertans. It might not hurt to have another voice in the room?

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