Voting is now open in the first round of “Alberta’s top political moment of the decade.” Thank you to everyone for the numerous nominations that were submitted over the past few weeks. You can vote daily the moments of your choice until Saturday, December 12, 2009. The top 10 moments will move on to the final round of voting next week.
On Saturday October 17, over 180 engaged citizens converged to participate in the first ChangeCamp Edmonton. Here are five items that I found to be the most interesting parts of the day-long event:
5) Diversity: Participants came from many diverse backgrounds and I was pleasantly surprised that there were many people who I didn’t recognize from other political events. The large majority of participants were non-partisan (which was extremely refreshing) and sincerely interested in changing the way citizens interact with their governments (and vice versa). I would like to see future ChangeCamps reach out more actively to new Canadians and underrepresented communities in our city who face very unique challenges to participating in governance. Increased outreach will be important for any sequels to this event, but overall I was very impressed with the range of citizens who gave up their Saturday to participate in re-imaging citizenship.
4) A little help from our friends: Videos from ChangeCamp Ottawa and ChangeCamp Toronto welcomed participants to a growing pan-Canadian ChangeCamp community.
3) Equal participation: The politicians weren’t introduced. I give full credit to the elected officials who attended ChangeCamp Edmonton, but unlike many other events, they weren’t confered a special status through introduction at the beginning of the day. They were equal participants, and I believe set a positive tone for the day. Many elected officials may have had legitimate reasons not be in attendance, but I will full give credit to those who did participate: Public School Trustee Sue Huff, Councillors Don Iveson and Ben Henderson, MLAs Laurie Blakeman and Doug Elniski, former MLAs David King and Don Massey, and past and present candidates for office Brendan Van Alstine, Andrew Knack, Wendy Andrews, and Mary MacDonald.
2) Opinions are easy, ideas are hard: There were some great discussions ranging from open data, the evolution of media and technology, but it felt like much of the debate around revitalizing citizen engagement and the de-polarizing of community discussions was re-hashed from previous discussions. I had the distinct impression that almost all of the participants who were engaged citizens, were simply bringing up ideas that they had heard elsewhere. On this topic, I believe that is past the point of talking. Get your friends and neighbours engaged. It starts on the community level.
1) It was organic: The organic elements are what I found to be the most powerful part of this un-conference. The steering committee that met at the beginning of 2009 was largely connected through Twitter, which helped coalesce a group of people who might not normally find themselves working together to organize a project like this. Word of ChangeCamp was largely spread through the internet (twitter, facebook, blogs, etc). The underlying concept of an unconference – an organic “facilitated, participant-driven conference” – was demonstrated at the opening of ChangeCamp, when anyone had the opportuntity to pitch an idea and add a session idea to the grid.
Related and Recommended:
Alex Abboud: ChangeCamp Edmonton: Evolution, not revolution.
Chris Labossiere: A great day for the Future Democracy
Sirthinks: The empires of the future are the empires of the mind
Alberta Liberal leadership contest (December 2008):
A total of 6,258 ballots were mailed to eligible members, with 4,599 returned to the office before Friday’s deadline.
Wildrose Alliance leadership contest (set for October 17, 2009)
Wildrose Alliance Party Executive Director Jane Morgan says the party now has 11,670 paid memberships, a huge increase over the approximately 1,800 members at the time of the party’s annual general meeting in June of this year.
Early poll-by-poll results from the by-election are showing some interesting results…
With 18 out of 66 polls reporting:
Paul Hinman, Wildrose Alliance: 816 votes
Avalon Roberts, Liberal: 698 votes
Diane Colley-Urquhart, PC: 649 votes
Eric Carpendale, NDP: 43 votes
Len Skowronski, SC: 21 votes
Tony Grochowski, Ind: 20 votes
Update:
With 56/66 polls reporting:
Paul Hinman, Wildrose Alliance: 3,261 votes
Avalon Roberts, Liberal: 2,986 votes
Diane Colley-Urquhart, PC: 2,219 votes
Eric Carpendale, NDP: 121 votes
Len Skowronski, SC: 95 votes
Tony Grochowski, Ind: 59 votes
The daveberta.ca decision desk is calling it a victory for Paul Hinman.
Delegates at this past weekend’s Alberta NDP convention decided in a 120-40 (ish) vote to not adopt a motion put forward by the Edmonton-Rutherford & Edmonton-Whitemud NDP Associations and supported by members of the Democratic Renewal Project (DRP). The motion would have put the NDP in a position to negotiate an electoral cooperation strategy with the Alberta Liberals and Greens to prevent vote-splitting.
As I’ve written before, I don’t necessarily agree with what the DRP is proposing (I don’t believe that the solution is to remove choices on the ballot, but to offer a viable option for voters), but I do respect that they are willing to break from traditional party lines and publicly call for change. It it clear that none of the opposition parties in their current forms are meaningfully connecting with voters and simply increasing the decibel levels with which the parties preach their program likely isn’t going to cut it.
You can follow the debate over the DRP motion at Accidental Deliberations and on twitter at #andp09.
Care of How’d They Vote? (via Pundits’ Guide) are some statistics for Members of Parliament from Alberta during the last session of Parliament. Perhaps Alberta’s MPs don’t need the kind of 500 word prefaces that MPs from Toronto do, but it is a little concerning that out of 308 MPs, 19 of Alberta’s 28 representatives in Ottawa find themselves in the lower half of spoken words.
Words Spoken (42nd Parliament, 2nd Session): Alberta MPs
16th: Ted Menzies (Macleod): 38940 words
17th: Linda Duncan (Edmonton-Strathcona): 37654 words
55th: Brian Jean (Fort McMurray-Athabasca): 21003 words
63rd: Stephen Harper (Calgary-Southwest): 19212 words
83rd: Deepak Obhrai (Calgary-East): 16894 words
107th: Laurie Hawn (Edmonton-Centre): 14156 words
113th: Mike Lake (Edmonton-Mill Woods-Beaumont): 13617 words
141st: James Rajotte (Edmonton-Leduc): 10671 words
142nd: Brent Rathgeber (Edmonton-St. Albert): 10555 words
176th: Blaine Calkins (Wetaskiwin): 7885 words
178th: Jim Prentice (Calgary-North Centre): 7592 words
198th: Chris Warkentin (Peace River): 6107 words
214th: Rob Merrifield (Yellowhead): 5145 words
223rd: Kevin Sorenson (Crowfoot): 4546 words
230th: Jason Kenney (Calgary-Southeast): 4304 words
231st: Blake Richards (Crowfoot): 4272 words
233rd: LaVar Payne (Medicine Hat): 4203 words
237th: Lee Richardson (Calgary-Centre): 3951 words
239th: Tim Uppal (Edmonton-Sherwood Park): 3822 words
243rd: Leon Benoit (Vegreville—Wainwright): 3650 words
245th: Earl Dreeshen (Red Deer): 3610 words
259th: Brian Storseth (Westlock-St. Paul): 2934 words
287th: Rick Casson (Lethrbridge): 1376 words
291st: Diane Ablonczy (Calgary-Nose Hill): 940 words
295th: Devinder Shory (Calgary-Northeast): 769 words
300th: Peter Goldring (Edmonton-East): 506 words
301st: Rob Anders (Calgary-West): 355 words
303rd: Rona Ambrose (Edmonton-Spruce Grove): 202 words
From the Edmonton Journal:
Instead of nearly $300 million, the proposal that will be put forward to the transportation and public works committee next Tuesday will recommend that between 1.5 and 2.5 per cent of the city’s annual capital budget be allocated to the plan, a number that will fluctuate year to year and amount to millions of dollars less.
As I wrote in a response to bicycle conspiracist Kerry Diotte, these types of plans should be geared towards average Edmontonians, who would ride their bikes to work a little more often if they felt they weren’t going to get plowed over by a motorist or sideswiped by a crazy cyclist.
As a long-term growth strategy for Edmonton it’s smart, it’s healthy, and it could even possibly cut down the ridiculous amount of traffic congestion that is increasingly jamming our roads.
Join me by emailing or phoning your City Councillors to urge them not to sacrifice Edmonton’s Bicycle Transportation Plan when it is voted on by the Transportation & Public Works Committee on Tuesday August 25. The Bike Plan is a key component of the Transportation Master Plan that Councillors are set to vote for on September 14.
On voter turnout in Afghanistan’s 2009 election:
Given the fifty per cent turnout rates of 2005, and the much worse security environment and disillusionment in 2009, any turnout rate between forty and forty-five per cent in 2009 would seem to be quite good…
Voter turnout in Alberta’s 2008 Provincial Eleciton: 40.6%
(ht @archiemc for the New Yorker link)
Some people may argue that the centrist-left Liberals shouldn’t be included in the same category as the pseudo-socialist left-wing NDP (and vice-versa), but it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the two parties and the challenges and character flaws that they both face.
Since the 2008 provincial election, the Democratic Renewal Project, a group consisting of both NDP and Liberal members, has been calling for something to change. While I don’t agree with their solution – a temporary electoral coalition between the two parties that would push for proportional representation in our elections – I do respect that they are willing to break from traditional party lines and publicly call for change.
While the DRP holds hope that the two opposition parties can work together for positive change, I strongly believe that certain MLAs and individuals in the establishments of the two parties are too comfortable in the dysfunctionality of the current situation to work towards a real solution. In effect, I am becoming more convinced that as neither party in their past or current existences have proven that they are able to effectively bring political change to Alberta, their destruction is necessary for political change to take place. As long as the two parties are limited by their own partisan blinders to winning a combined total of 9 to 20 of the 83 seats in the Assembly, they will remain a tiny opposition.
I haven’t seen much evidence that the left as a movement has pride in Alberta. From a historical/political myth-building context, it appears that the political left doesn’t fit naturally in the narrative of Alberta’s story. As Mark Lisac wrote in his book ‘Alberta Politics Uncovered: Taking Back our Province‘ there are a large number of mainstream Albertans who self-identify as ‘conservatives.’ The left has allowed itself to be defined by Alberta’s narrative – the mythical land of rodeos, cowboys, red meat, and oil rigs – an image which urban academics, labour unions and environmental activists don’t easily fit into.
There are many reasons why the left continues to electorally and politically spin its wheels in Alberta, including lack of broad organizational capacity, self-interested party “leaders,” and an bizarre defeatist martyr complex, but many Albertans involved in opposition politics simply don’t show pride in their province. If I were a leader of an opposition party in Alberta (yes, I’m gawking too), I would constantly wrap myself in Alberta’s flag. At every opportunity, I would talk about how proud I am to be an Albertan – proud of our history, proud our beautiful province, and proud of what our future holds. I would talk about how strong our province is, the strength of Albertans hard working character, and I would emphasize the reality that Alberta isn’t going to realize its full potential if we allow the same tired politicians to control our Legislative Assembly.
Instead of being defined by its criticism of the governing PCs, Alberta’s opposition parties on the left should prove to Albertans that they stand for something that is more than a reaction to the actions of the governing party (or the other opposition party). By continuing to chase the flavour of the week, both opposition parties are allowing themselves to be marginalized by Alberta’s cultural and political narratives.
Days after the PCs steamrolled over the Liberals and NDP in the March 2008 election, I offered some advice to the two opposition parties:
Party archetypes in both camps really need to put aside their biases and prejudices and take a serious and objective look at why their parties are not connecting with Albertans.
A year later, I am convinced that the party archetypes in both parties are continuing down the same road that has led to their sequestration to the opposition benches. At the moment, it’s difficult to see much hope for Alberta’s Liberals and NDP. I continue to hear from a growing number of disgruntled politically moderate Albertans displeased with the governing PCs and unimpressed with the opposition parties which leads me to believe that Alberta’s political left better start standing for something real or be destroyed. Failing to do either is killing democracy in this province.
If you’re in Edmonton this week, make sure to check out my favorite summer festival – the Edmonton Fringe Theatre Festival – which is happening until August 23.
I saw my first show, ‘Songs from the Ave‘, on Friday night at the BYOV A (the Avenue Theatre). It was well worth the trip to 118th Avenue from the Strathcona Fringe grounds, so check it out if you have the time! (and stop by the Carrot afterward for a coffee). I’ve also written a review of ‘Songs from the Ave’ that will appear in this week’s SEE Magazine annual amazing complete review of every Fringe show.
It’s been a busy week, so expect regularly scheduled blogging to resume at some point after Thursday.
Until then, take a read of Laurence Martin‘s recent Globe & Mail column on which blames young people for his generation of politicians being uninspirational, and Amanda Henry‘s excellent reaction at The First Drop.
My thought: Writing about youth apathy is easy, but in general, at what point in history have younger generations not been apathetic to the politics of their parents’ generation?
UPDATE: David Eaves and Alison Loat have also provided two excellent responses to Martin’s column.
As someone who was deeply involved in partisan politics in the past, but has since abandoned any party membership or involvement mainly due to the negativity and hyper-partisanship that saturates party politics in Canada (negativity and hyper-partisanship that I once embraced), this article by Simon Jackson stuck with me.
I’m standing in Council Chamber at Edmonton City Hall and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it this packed. Over 700 Edmontonians (many whom are supporters of the Greater Edmonton Alliance) have shown up to talk food security at City Council’s Municipal Development Plan public hearings. This is citizenship in action.
Here are the four key amendments being discussed at the public hearing:
– Integrate local food system impact into all decisions about converting farmland.
– Ensure access to local food through a secure land supply and city-wide approaches
– Develop an agricultural areas plan, including inventory of all farmland
– Champion a food security plan by the Capital Region Board.
I’ll have photos up soon.
