daveberta.ca - Alberta Politics and Elections

I just got back from a wonderful weekend in Red Deer and Calgary. I would just like to give a big shout out to my family who made it to my cousin’s wedding on Saturday – it was great to see you all!

Everytime I head off to Calgary, I’m blown away at how fast that city is growing. It’s crazy.

Other than the suburbs, it seems that Calgary may be growing “up” as well. EnCana has announced that they will be building the Bow Tower, which is not only massive, but will block out most of the Calgary Tower… (here are the before and after shots…). Following this announcement, it seems like we have a “my johnson is bigger than your johnson” competition going on between EnCana and Imperial Oil, who also want to build a big town in Calgary…

And to end the post on a relative theme, I leave you with this…

Nihilist: We believe in nothing, Lebowski. Nothing. And tomorrow we come back and we cut off your chonson.
The Dude: Excuse me?
Nihilist: I said
[shouting]
Nihilist: “We’ll cut off your johnson”!
Nihilist: Just you think about that, Lebowski.
Nihilist: Yeah, your wiggly penis, Lebowski.
Nihilist: Yeah and maybe we stomp on it and squoosh it, Lebowski.

Though it’s really not fair to compare The Dude to EnCana or Imperial Oil, I can’t help but remember the pictures of all those tarped-up half-built office towers in downtown Calgary following the last oil bust and economic recession in Alberta the 1980’s.

I guess the economy is a nihilist.

Yesterday morning at 7:30am, I attended the 21st Annual Person’s Day Breakfast put on by the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF). It was a really well attended event with what I would guess as over 200 guests.

The Guest Speaker was former Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan and the topic was “why aren’t more women running for elected office.” It was a really interesting talk about the societal, cultural, and structural reasons why women can’t seem to break the 20%-25% involvement in electoral politics in Canada, along with some solutions on how to change this.

Other notable folks in attendance include blogging-types Sam, Nicole Martel, Ken Chapman, and many political types including Liberal MLA’s Laurie Blakeman (Edmonton Centre), Dan Backs (Edmonton Manning), Bill Bonko (Edmonton Decore), Tory MLA Dave Hancock (Edmonton Whitemud), and NDP MLA want-to-be Rachel Notley (candidate in Edmonton Strathcona). City Councillors Jane Batty, Michael Phair, Karen Leibovici, and Linda Sloan were also in attendance.

…is from a different party. Alberta Alliance leader and MLA Paul Hinman (Cardston-Taber-Warner) is endorsing Ted Morton (Foothills-Rockyview) in the Alberta PC leadership race…

Alliance brass back Morton – Morton, Alliance share aim to unite the right in Alberta

UPDATE…

And almost as fast as Ted Morton gains an MLA endorsement, Alberta PC leadership candidate Alana DeLong (Calgary Bow) drops out of the race and endorses front-runner Jim Dinning…

That gives Jim Dinning 34 Alberta PC MLA endorsements… see the full endorsement list here.

Though it is clear that Yukon electoral politics are more personality than party based, it is interesting to see the seeming decline of support for the NDP in the Yukon. Though this immediately be tied to the unfortunate situation with NDP leader Todd Hardy undergoing cancer treatment in Vancouver (hence, his inability to campaign full-time during this election period). The shift from NDP Governments (1985-1992 & 1996-2000) to Pat Duncan‘s Liberals (2000-2002) and then Dennis Fentie‘s Yukon Party Government (2002-present) is interesting. The Yukon NDP’s decline from government to Official Opposition to Third Party status may signify something deeper than a mere decline in seat count.

*Archie Lang’s twin brother, Kent Lang, was MLA for Porter Creek East from 1978-1992.

Busy busy busy… so much going on lately… so much to comment on…

I’ll save the rest for now, but most importantly, the Yukon Territorial Election is today!

My prediction…

Yukon Party – 8
Yukon Liberal – 7
Yukon NDP – 3

Premier Dennis Fentie reigns?

I was right on my predictions for the New Brunswick Provincial Election, so let’s see how good my political radar is for the great white Yukon…

RESULTS at 10:20pm…

YUKON PARTY RE-ELECTED…

Yukon Party – 10 (40%)
Yukon Liberal – 5 (34%)
Yukon NDP – 3 (23%)

YUKON PARTY MAJORITY.

With Lyle Oberg in his new role as the now reborn Defender of the Workers, it looks like more Tory MLA’s are flocking to frontrunner and Tory dauphin Mr. James Dinning.

Jim Dinning now has the support of 33 Alberta PC MLA’s – Ministers Greg Melchin (Calgary North West), George VanderBurg (Whitecourt-Ste. Anne), and Ron Stevens, along with backbench Tory MLA’s Janis Tarchuk (Banff-Cochrane), Doug Griffiths (Battle River-Wainwright), and Wayne Cao (Calgary Fort) are now endorsing Jim Dinning.

As much as some of my Tory friends would like to convince me otherwise, it’s looking more and more like a complete and utter landslide for Jim Dinning in this race.

Here are the current Alberta PC MLA’s endorsements in this race…

Total declared support:
Jim Dinning – 33 MLA’s
Ed Stelmach – 7 MLA’s
Mark Norris – 2 MLA’s
Bob Cantwell – No Declared MLA Support
Alana DeLong – No Declared MLA Support
Victor Doerksen – No Declared MLA Support
Dave Hancock – No Declared MLA Support
Ted Morton – No Declared MLA Support
Lyle Oberg – No Declared MLA Support
Undeclared – 20 MLA’s

Click here for the complete Alberta PC MLA endorsement listing…

This irked me… and it should probably irk the over 48,000 union members who are part of the Council.

The Alberta Building Trades Council has announced that it will be buying and selling 10,000 Alberta PC memberships for Dr. Lyle Oberg.

Assuming that by buying these memberships through a leadership camp, these organizations are only paying $5 per membership (some Alberta PC leadership camps are charging $10 per membership in order to buy a “special card” – translation: %50 donation to the leadership campaign) this money will eventually make it’s way in to the coffers of the Alberta PC campaign war chest… why doesn’t this bump into some sort of political contribution law?

Here are two examples:

Alberta Building Trades Council – buying 10,000 Alberta PC membership.
10,000 memberships x $5 = $50,000 political donation
10,000 memberships x $10 = $100,000 political donation (50% to the Oberg leadership campaign)

International Union of Painters and Allied Trades – plans to “give away” 2,000 Alberta PC memberships.
2,000 memberships x $5 = $10,000 political donation
2,000 memberships x $10 = $20,000 political donation (50% to a leadership campaign)

There are no laws or any sort of rules regarding what internal-partisan leadership campaigns can raise, but this must bump up in to regular Elections Alberta political contribution limits (which I believe are $15,000 annually outside election periods and $30,000 in election periods).
If not, isn’t this simply a backdoor for political fundraising?

Regardless of whether this is happening in the Alberta PC’s, the Alberta Liberals, the Alberta Alliance, or the Alberta NDP – Alberta needs stronger laws regarding how political parties and leadership candidates raise money.

Don’t Albertans deserve accountability and transparency?

Don’t Albertans deserve to know who is lining political pockets and coffers in their province?

I’m not going to say too much about this, but the difference between 30% of the vote and 9% of the vote is a pretty wide margin…

“We need to give voters in Alberta the faith that their vote can bring about a change,” she says, disagreeing that the Liberals have a better chance of defeating the Tories than her party does.

Yeah, so… the Yukon is having a territorial election on October 18…

It looks like an interesting show…

– Premier Dennis Fentie of the Yukon Party was elected as an Yukon NDP MLA in 1996 and 2000 before crossing the floor in 2002 to join the right-wing conservative Yukon Party. Only weeks after crossing the floor, Fentie became Leader of the Yukon Party and only months after that did he lead the Yukon Party to electoral victory. And he became Premier… (eat your heart out, Belinda Stronach 😉 ).

– Nearly half of the current Yukon Liberal Caucus crossed from the NDP… in February of 2006, NDP Leader Todd Hardy booted longtime NDP MLA’s Eric Fairclough (also NDP leader from 2000 to 2002) and Gary McRobb out of the then-NDP Official Opposition Caucus.

Soon after, they both joined Arthur Mitchell‘s Yukon Liberals, making the Yukon Liberals the Official Opposition… only four years after the Liberals were destroyed in the 2002 election – going from 8 seats to 1 – they were now the Official Opposition.

– Former Yukon Party MLA and Justice Minister John Edzerza left the Yukon Party this year to sit as an Independent MLA. He is now running as a NDP candidate in his riding of McIntyre-Takhini.

Weird… the CBC has a great article about crossing the floor.

Here are the changes since the last election in 2002 and at dissolution…

2002
Yukon Party – 12
Yukon NDP – 5
Yukon Liberal – 1

2006
Yukon Party – 9
Yukon Liberal – 5
Yukon NDP – 3
Independent – 2

Last night, I attended a lecture at the posh Hotel MacDonald. It was the Eighth Annual Western Canadian History Lecture hosted by the Department of History & Classics at the University of Alberta. The two guest speakers included former Saskatchewan Premier Allan Blakeney and Dr. Ray Blake from the Saskatchewan Institute of Public Policy at the University of Regina.

The two topics of discussion were “Reflections on ‘one province:’ Alberta and Saskatchewan 101 years later” and “From Mother’s Allowance to Medicare: Reflections on Canadian Social Welfare Polices From the West.”

It was a very interesting lecture and I have some thoughts…

1. I really wish all lectures (everywhere) were podcast so that I could listen to them again later.

2. Dr. Blake’s observations on the Mackenzie King Liberals implementation of Mother’s Allowance in the 1930’s was a very interesting one.

3. Allan Blakeney spoke quite a bit about the divergence in political direction between Alberta and Saskatchewan over the past 101 years and some of the many reasons for this. Following Premier Blakeney’s speech, someone in the audience brought up a good point that the partisan political divergence between Alberta and Saskatchewan could be seen in the 1921 provincial elections which occurred in both provinces – in Alberta, Henry Wise Wood and the United Farmers of Alberta succeeded in defeating the Liberal Party. In the 1921 Saskatchewan provincial election, an Independent candidates anti-establishment movement sparked which gained over 25% of the popular vote against the incumbent Liberal Party.

One wonders what would have happened to the political culture of the west had the Independent MLA movement achieved victory at the same time an independent mirror movement achieved dominance in its sister province, Alberta.

Ted Morton on the Miracle Channel

“If God was voting — does God vote? well, sort of — God does put these people in power… If God were voting, who would He put in power?”
— the host, introducing our next Premier, Ted Morton.

(Props to DB for the link.)

Other than still being slightly ticked off about my name mysteriously disappearing from the ballot in the Edmonton Strathcona DSM (a topic which I have a letter written that I shall send off tomorrow), I’ve been on and off watching the live results from the Federal Liberal leadership race this afternoon…

It’s like crack. I can’t stop checking it every 10 minutes…

It looks like Michael Ignatieff is solidified his lead with around 30%, with Bob Rae in second at 19%, and Gerard Kennedy and Stephane Dion fighting for third with around 17%. Ken Dryden, Joe Volpe, and Scott Brison are battling it out for fifth place…

DemocraticSPACE has some great coverage of the results…

I went up to the Federal Liberal Leadership Delegate Selection Meeting in Edmonton Strathcona last night only to find out that I wasn’t on the delegate ballot in Edmonton Strathcona.

Not sure what to do, I spoke to the Local Returning Officer at the meeting. He said that I would need to call the central Federal Liberal Office in Edmonton. I called them. They didn’t have my Edmonton Strathcona delegate registration form on file. I had sent in the delegate form before the deadline. It appears that they had no record of me registering to be on the ballot as a Gerard Kennedy delegate in Edmonton Strathcona.

Quite lame.

As someone who paid $5 to be part of this leadership selection process, I am quite displeased.

Though I wasn’t sure if I would have the funds available to attend the leadership convention in Montreal this November, it looks like I won’t have to worry about that now.

After talking with a friend, it appears the same thing also happened to a Stephane Dion delegate in Edmonton Strathcona (who apparently personally handed in his delegate registration form), as well as numerous problems of members not being on the voters list and hence not being able to vote.

As well, the confusing ballot was split in to two pages (one with leadership candidates and one with delegates) was extremely confusing. The explanation on the second page detailed that you could only vote for 4 youth (2 male and 2 female), 2 adult males and 2 adult females, 2 male seniors and 2 female seniors. With 30-40 listed delegates on the ballot, this process is a case study in ridiculousness. I wouldn’t be surprised if I checked the wrong box and accidentally voted for Michael Ignatieff, Bob Rae, or Pat Buchanan. It’s a perfect case for a one-member one-vote system.

Though I understand that a leadership election is a huge endeavor, the importance quality, transparency, and accuracy is paramount. The price for not having one is huge.

It’s legitimacy.

Here are the unofficial leadership votes from my source on the inside at the Edmonton Strathcona and U of A Liberal Club Delegate Selection Meeting last night…

Edmonton Strathcona
Gerard Kennedy – 82 votes (42%)
Stephane Dion – 33 votes (17%)
Michael Ignatieff – 25 votes (13%)
Bob Rae – 19 votes (10%)
Ken Dryden – 11 votes (6%)
Martha Hall Findlay – 9 votes (5%)
Joe Volpe – 3 votes (2%)
Scott Brison – 1 vote (1%)
Undeclared – 4 votes (2%)
Spoiled – 3 votes (2%)

University of Alberta Liberal Club
Gerard Kennedy – 14 votes (49%)
Bob Rae – 8 votes (29%)
Michael Ignatieff – 4 votes (14%)
Stephane Dion – 1 vote (4%)
Ken Dryden – 1 vote (4%)

Is my hobbit name.

What’s yours?

(Props to Nastyboy for the linkage.)