– Don Braid has all the latest news on the Highwood PC revolt, including the letter sent by Constituency officials to PC Party President Bill Smith.
– Sometime campaign manager Don Lovett is reporting insider rumours about heightened tension between Liberal Party leader David Swann and his party executive committee. As reported in the Alberta Political Notes 3/09/2010, the tension is nothing new and may create some interesting confrontation at the upcoming Liberal Convention in May 2010.
– According to How’d they Vote, since the beginning of the current session of Parliament on March 3, Alberta MPs Ted Menzies, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Linda Duncan, Mike Lake, and Rob Merrifield are the Alberta MPs who have spoken the most on the floor of the House of Commons. Alberta MPs Brian Storseth, Peter Goldring, and Rob Anders have not spoken a word since the beginning of the current Session.
– Calgary-West MP Rob Anders is the latest Conservative Party convert to the Wildrose Alliance (not to be confused with Wildrose MLA Rob Anderson).
– Via Trish Audette, a new politics magazine has launched in Canada. The first issue features an interview with Danielle Smith and includes a photograph taken by yours truly, which the editors failed to credit under the Creative Commons licensing (#FAIL).
Category: Rob Anderson
This landed in my inbox this afternoon:
From: jcampbell@albertapc.ab.ca
To: bsmith@findlaysmith.com
CC: jcampbell@albertapc.ab.ca
Subject: Executive Committee Resignation
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:56:49 -0700Dear Members of the Executive Committee:
Mr. Shayne Saskiw, until today our VP of Policy and Resolutions, has left us to join the WAP. Although we only received his letter of resignation a few minutes ago, we have expected this move for some time and we also expect the WAP to issue a news release this afternoon. Please refer any media calls to me or to Jim Campbell.
Many of you will know that Mr. Saskiw is one of MLA Rob Anderson’s best friends and we believed that Mr. Saskiw would follow Mr. Anderson. We feel it is appropriate that Mr. Saskiw go where he might be more comfortable and we wish him luck. We always hate to lose a volunteer, no matter whether he or she is a member of the Executive or a member of a constituency board. We value our volunteers and the incredible efforts they make on our behalf -therefore, I want to express my thanks and appreciation to you for your continued hard work.
As we had anticipated this move, I have already spoken to an individual who is willing to assume Mr. Saskiw’s duties until the 2010 AGM and Convention, when the position is up for election. It is important that we put this person in place as soon as possible so that planning for the 2010 Policy Conference can continue without pause, and I hope for your approval of my proposal at our meeting on Saturday.
Again, thank you for all that you do. I am confident that 2010 is going to be a very good year for PC Alberta and I look forward greatly to seeing you all in two days.
Best regards,
Bill Smith
Mr. Saskiw’s position on the PC website is already listed as vacant.
Since stepping into her new role as leader of the Wildrose Alliance, Danielle Smith has taken on more of a celebrity role than that of the leader of a party with 3 seats in a 83 seat Legislative Assembly. Ms. Smith is impressively politically savvy, and judging by the attention she has been receiving from the media, you would have a hard time believing that she is not the elected leader of Alberta’s Official Opposition.
Little of the incredible media attention received by Ms. Smith has focused on her party’s policy or even her political stances. I do not believe that I have read any reporter or columnist seriously dig into Ms. Smith’s only past-experience as an elected official on the Calgary Board of Education which began in 1998 and ended when the Minister of Learning dissolved the board in 1999 (which I covered in part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4). The by-election victory in Calgary-Glenmore, the floor-crossings of PC MLAs Heather Forsyth and Rob Anderson, and rise in the polls are convincing (and exciting) political coups in the context of an otherwise boring political environment. At least in the short-term, Ms. Smith has definitely changed the game.
Ms. Smith has faced some criticism for her confusing views on climate change and her former Chief of Staff felt the repercussions of an uneasy Twitter finger, but she has easily deflected questions about hard policy questions by telling the media to wait until her party’s upcoming policy conference or hiding behind the label of libertarianism.
Premier Ed Stelmach has labelled Wildrose Alliance policies as “draconian,” but in the context of his falling popularity, the Premier’s reaction smacked of desperation and political spin (however accurate his comments may have been). Even the recent cabinet shuffle was framed as a reaction to the increasing popularity of Ms. Smith’s party. The reaction of the Official Opposition Liberal Party was to launch of a YouTube video comparing Premier Stelmach and Ms. Smith to Ronald Reagan and Brian Mulroney (a strategy that top minds are still attempting to decrypt).
An American conservative blogger recently held Ms. Smith up as “a guiding northern star for the building anti-establishment movement in the GOP” and suggested that her “delivery reminds me of Sarah Palin when she’s at her best.” I recognize that these are the words of one individual with a website, but it is not the first time that I have heard conservatives speak of Ms. Smith in that manner.
The Ontario media appears to have warmly embraced Ms. Smith by lobbing softball questions and accepting vague answers. During a stint as a guest panelist on CTVs Question Period, Smith was asked questions about Social Credit leader Harry Strom and almost accepted as the next leader of Alberta. Her coverage on Peter Mansbridge’s One-on-One and upcoming on Rick Mercer’s Report is also unprecedented for an opposition leader in Alberta.
Amidst this flurry of media attention, nearly no additional attention is paid to the actual opposition leaders elected by Albertans in the 2008 election as David Swann and Brian Mason continue to linger stalled in the polls in the unconvincing ranks of the opposition benches. I tend to believe this is symptomatic of the antipathy felt towards to traditional political parties in Alberta. This antipathy is likely why non-traditional groups like the Wildrose Alliance, Renew Alberta, and Reboot Alberta are attracting a growing number of Albertans into their ranks, while the traditional opposition parties are barricading their gates without taking stock of the decreasing value of their guarded treasures. While some people are holding out for change within the two traditional opposition parties (or simply asking them to get their acts together!), I tend to believe that it is likely too late.
With Premier Stelmach appearing politically weak and a provincial election expected in 2012, will the guardians of establishment conservatism in Alberta sit idly while their movement is fractured between the Wildrose Alliance and the Progressive Conservative Party? With this scenario in mind, is it too far fetched to foresee a scenario in the not too distant future where Premier Ted Morton welcomes Danielle Smith as the Finance Minister in a government formed by the newly merged Conservative Party of Alberta?
UPDATE: David Climenhaga has written a response to this blog post listing the top 11 reasons he feels Albertans should not support the Wildrose Alliance . Climenhaga’s list prompted the Alberta Altruist blog to pen a response.
I attended the Wildrose Alliance media conference today at the Alberta Legislature. At the conference, leader Danielle Smith and MLAs Paul Hinman, Heather Forsyth, and Rob Anderson took some questions. Recall was their big issue. I am not the biggest fan of recall. While they could be more vigourous and competitive, I believe that this is the reason why we have elections every four to five years. Sometimes our elected officials are just plain bad at their jobs and sometimes they have to make really tough (and unpopular) decisions. It is easy to confuse the two. Recall focuses on the negative, rather than recognizing the positive role that our elected officials can play in our communities.
Also, If you are looking for a thoughtful read, Duncan Wojtaszek was written an excellent blog post on the topic of floor-crossing.
As mentioned in an update to my previous post, a media release on Airdrie-Chestermere Progressive Conservative MLA Rob Anderson‘s website has announced that he and Calgary-Fish Creek MLA Heather Forsyth are crossing the floor to the Wildrose Alliance. Anderson was quoted in the release:
Over the past two years, I have committed myself to trying to make a positive impact within the government caucus by clearly advocating for the views and needs of my constituents. Unfortunately, the current PC Party Leadership has failed to address my constituent’s concerns and will not permit me to speak publicly about these issues. Instead of remaining silent I have decided to stand up with even greater force for the people who elected me,” stated Anderson. “This is what the citizens of Alberta pay me to do. This is what my constituents expect of me. I have no interest in investing any more of my life and taxpayers’ money defending poor public policy that has been developed by a small band of out-of-touch government appointees and insiders.”
Anderson was first elected in 2008 and Forsyth was first elected in 1993. After serving as Solicitor General and Minister of Children’s Services under Premier Ralph Klein, Forsyth was bumped from cabinet when Premier Ed Stelmach entered office. These defections will now make the Wildrose Alliance caucus the third largest caucus in the Alberta Legislature (with three MLAs), bumping the NDP to fourth.
PC MLAs Jonathan Denis, Doug Griffiths, Rob Anderson, and Kyle Fawcett are coming out of backbenches and labelling themselves as the ‘Fiscal Four.’ In an interview, Anderson told the Calgary Herald:
“There’s a group of people in caucus who are genuinely concerned about the state of our province’s finances,” said Anderson, MLA for Airdrie-Chestermere. “The basic consensus (of the group) is we need to get our spending under control and have a savings strategy. The general direction is that we need to have a strong fiscal framework, and right now that doesn’t exist.”
The group will use question period and members’ statements– as well as their own caucus meetings–to drive home the message. “There are others in caucus who feel as we do,” he added.
It is not difficult to imagine that a significant element of the ‘Fiscal Four’ production is a staged exercise in PC Party myth-building as public criticism from MLAs is not normally welcomed (as former Cabinet Ministers Heather Forsyth and Guy Boutilier discovered). In September 2009, Fawcett publicly apologized and was quietly penalized for pointing out the obvious after his party’s high-profile candidate was thumped in a Calgary by-election. I do not doubt that these four PC MLAs picture themselves as the very models of modern fiscal conservatives, but until now they have either remained largely silent or have risen in the Assembly to praise their party’s fiscal leadership. I have been told that a similar tactic of external criticism only after internal permission was adopted by the Deep-Six, of which Premier Ed Stelmach was a member.
Premier Stelmach told delegates at the recent PC annual general meeting that his biggest challenge was the not the economy, health care, the environment, or the budget, but the media. A lot of recent media attention has been generated around the Wildrose Alliance, who have been the main beneficiary of the PCs recent drop in public support, and this past weekend leader Danielle Smith spoke to a sold out crowd of 200 Calgary oil and gas sector heavyweights at a breakfast organized by FirstEnergy Capital. Last Friday, Liberal leader David Swann hosted a Calgary fundraiser that drew over 530 attendees (note: that is a lot for a Liberal event in Calgary).
With the internal resources available to them, the ‘Fiscal Four’ have the potential to protect Premier Stelmach by shifting media headlines away from criticism by the opposition parties and his more vocal external critics.
As the new leader of the Wildrose Alliance, I believe that Danielle Smith could be a game-changer in Alberta politics. Why should you care if you’re not a conservative? The potential of an insurgence by an non-traditional opposition party should be a wake up call to the other two opposition parties in the Alberta Legislature: the Liberals and NDP.
Hope for the Liberals and NDP?
I know many self-described centrist, centre-left, independent, and progressive-minded Albertans who are engaged in their communities, but see little value in joining and contributing to these two parties. Both the Liberals and NDP have had challenges in growing their ranks since peaking both electorally and in support in the 1980s (for the NDP) and 1990s (for the Liberals). After attending the most recent Liberal and NDP conventions, I am convinced that both parties are stuck in neutral and have become too comfortable in their default positions as Alberta’s legislative opposition.
The recent by-election in Calgary-Glenmore was an important electoral test for the Liberals. With an experienced candidate and campaign team, a leader from Calgary, and their not so distant by-election victory Calgary-Elbow, the Liberals should have won in Calgary-Glenmore. Liberal support held steady on election day, but their opportunity was usurped by Paul Hinman, whose insurgent campaign saw Wildrose Alliance support quadruple since the 2008 election. The NDP candidate barely registered with 148 votes.
Following the 2008 provincial election, the Democratic Renewal Project has promoted the merger of the Liberals and NDP in an effort to defeat the governing Progressive Conservatives. While I don’t believe that their proposal is viable or will lead to the solution they desire, I do think that they are on to something far more valuable than the current parties are offering Albertans: Out of the box thinking.
Where do the Greens go?
With the disappearance of the Alberta Greens, where will the 43,563 Albertans who marked an X beside a Green candidate put their votes in the next election? Many people incorrectly label the Alberta Greens as a left-wing fringe party, but much of their strongest support comes from traditionally conservative areas in central Alberta and Calgary. With no Greens on the ballot in the next election, the party that exerts itself as a non-traditional alternative to the PCs may benefit from much of their support.
What about the PCs?
It would be foolish to underestimate the role that the element of ‘power‘ plays in attracting people to our province’s natural governing party, the Progressive Conservatives. There are many reasons why citizens gravitate to political parties, but much like past carnations of the Liberal Party of Canada, a large factor is the desirability of being on the winning side.
Elections in Alberta have become less about which is the best to slate of candidates to govern our province, and more about whether or not to renew the mandate of the natural governing party (which leads me to believe that it may be more effective to have a ‘none of the above’ choice on the ballot). Given near unlimited financial and organization resources, and facing minimal opposition, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand how the PCs have continually formed large majority governments. The rare existence of real electoral challengers has led to a festering institutional mediocrity that was demonstrated by Premier Ed Stelmach‘s pre-produced televised address.
After nearly 40 years in office, it is sometimes difficult for even an objective person to decipher what actual principles drive Alberta’s natural governing party.
One of the great successes of the Alberta PCs have been their ability to maintain a big tent that includes a broad range of political ideologies and beliefs. Demonstrated over the past 40 years since Peter Lougheed welcomed Liberal MLA Bill Dickie into the PC caucus in 1969, even the current PC caucus includes Red Tories like Dave Hancock and Janice Sarich and social conservatives like Ted Morton and Rob Anderson. In between these two camps includes a large group of MLAs who have very likely chosen to wear the PC brand because it affords them a seat in the government benches.
A number of former PC MLAs and insiders have already joined the now Smith-led party, but will it translate into the kind of migration that led Preston Manning to crush the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada in 1993?
A new party?
I am convinced that it is only a matter of time before a new political movement of independent progressive minded Albertans emerges in our province.
Some political watchers have suggested that the rift on the right is an opportunity to draw progressive Albertans together under a new political banner. Far from a new idea, the prospect of a new political movement in Alberta is something that I am hearing increasingly from friends and associates who have been both politically active or never affiliated with a party or candidate. Their reasons are vast – Bill 44, cuts to health care, the environment, the record deficit – but the underlying message that I continue to hear is that the current government is out of touch, arrogant, and has squandered long-term opportunity for short-term gain.
In the last election, the PCs earned just 501,063 votes, or roughly 22% of the total eligible vote, which suggests that while their vote may be a mile wide it may only be an inch deep. Perhaps a 60% voter turnout is an unreasonable prediction for a modern liberal democracy, but if a new political movement could earn its support by increasing the popular vote by 20% without disturbing the earned votes from the last election, it would be able to challenge the PCs hold on government.
Will apathy win?
Of course, there is the very real possibility that new found support for the Wildrose Alliance will simply flame out, our electoral environment will remain uncompetitive, no new political movement will emerge, and Albertans will once again avoid the polls in droves.
As an Albertan, I have been told that manifest destiny is in my blood. I have little doubt that it is only a matter of time before we witness a big political shift in our province, but it will be up to Albertans to decide what this change will embody.
Alex Abboud and Trish Audette have already written about this, but an anonymous source reported in this week’s subscription-only issue* of Alberta Scan has suggested that 10 Progressive Conservative MLAs could cross the floor to the Wildrose Alliance if potential game changer Danielle Smith is selected in the October 17 leadership vote.
How likely is this?
With 70 MLAs in the 83 seat legislature, the PCs have a broad-range of political diversity in their caucus ranging from liberals/Red Tories to hard-core angry social conservatives, with a large group of simple pro-government pragmatists filling the gap in between. While Ed Stelmach‘s tenure as Premier began three years ago with a number of funding increases and semi-progressive moves (like the creation of the now almost existent lobbyist registry), a number of recent events seem to suggest that the right-wingers in the PC caucus have been taking advantage of the current leadership vacuum to drive their own agenda.
A number of right-wing champions appear to have solidly integrated themselves into the PCs institutional machinery: Ted Morton is widely seen as a competent Minister of Sustainable Resource Development, and following Kyle Fawcett‘s very public apology to Premier Stelmach, it appears that the Stelmach loyalist’s appointment to an important government committee was cancelled in favour of Bill 44 advocate Airdrie-Chestermere MLA Rob Anderson. Right-wing Calgary-Egmont MLA Jonathan Denis has just been appointed as Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Energy, and Cardston-Taber-Warner MLA Broyce Jacobs is now the Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Agriculture.
Many of these MLAs are driving the agenda behind legislation like Bill 44 and pushing Stelmach’s public shift to the right following Alberta’s record budget deficit and Paul Hinman‘s victory in the Calgary-Glenmore by-election. It’s hard to disagree that there is disgruntlement with Stelmach’s leadership inside the PC caucus, it is difficult to understand why the more right-wing conservatives would leave the governing caucus to occupy the opposition benches.
This said, any PC MLA crossing the floor to the Wildrose Alliance could change the political landscape in the Alberta Legislature, especially if they are a cabinet minister. If only a hand full of PC MLAs joined a Danielle Smith-led Wildrose Alliance, they could easily replace the two-MLA NDP caucus as the third party. With only 9 MLAs, the Liberal Official Opposition could become the third-place party if the rumoured 10 PC MLAs joined what would become an 11 MLA official opposition.
*Anyone can read Alberta Scan and many other publications for free at the Legislative Assembly Library.