All posts in Danielle Smith

One Province, Two Guvnors … Wildrose and Progressive Conservatives eye reuniting right

by David Climenhaga on April 1, 2013 in Alberta Politics, Alison Redford, April Fools, Danielle Smith, Progressive Conservatives, Wildrose Party with 8 Comments

Pleased to meet you… not! Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, left, shakes hands with Alberta Premier Alison Redford. Below: Alberta Premier Joan Crockatt.

The Alberta Progressive Conservative Party under Premier Alison Redford and the Wildrose Party under Opposition Leader Danielle Smith plan to schedule an initial meeting on “reuniting the right” sometime this summer.

The parties are said to have agreed the time to reunite Alberta’s right is now, before Alberta faces the prospect of an NDP takeover like those anticipated later this year in British Columbia and Ontario.

“We are all neoconservatives with an austerity agenda designed to benefit the super rich, after all,” said a senior party strategist whose identity must remain known only to your blogger for the moment.

“Plus, the Americans are getting really antsy about having to deal with Danielle or Alison every time one of them pops up in Washington lobbying for the Keystone XL Pipeline,” said the strategist, who is the sole anonymous source for this story. “They can’t tell which one is the governor.”

“Anyway, you don’t want to leave this sort of thing too long or you could end up with Rachel Notley as premier and Raj Sherman as minister of health, and we’d be cooked in canola oil forever if it turned out Raj really could fix health care in 18 months like he says he can,” said the senior neocon strategist, who is close to the leadership of both parties but who can’t be named because he wasn’t authorized to speak on behalf of either leader or either party, at least for the time being, if you take my meaning.

“Look,” said the strategist, “everybody knows I had a little problem there for a while and everybody knows it’s over now because they can’t afford to live without me and the Globe and Mail likes to quote me. There are just a few details to be straightened out before I’m running the campaign again. Anyway, I told them I didn’t say anything wrong and I promised them I wouldn’t say it again.”

Once the details of the planned reunion are ironed out, the formal merger is expected to take place in 2014 before the next provincial election is scheduled to occur in 2015.

“We need a slogan, something that starts with an R and means ‘reunion’ but doesn’t have the word ‘union’ in it,” said the anonymous strategist. “If anyone thinks of anything, drop me an email. I’m in the campus directory.”

One potential hurdle standing in the way of a reunion is who will lead the party, since Ms. Redford and Ms. Smith are well known to be unable to be in the same room as the other one at the same time for more than a few seconds.

Officials of the two parties are said to be seriously considering drafting Joan Crockatt, who is currently the Member of Parliament for the federal Wildrose Party for Calgary-Centre, to lead the new amalgamated party.

Ms. Crockatt is thought to combine Ms. Redford’s diplomacy and human touch dealing with subordinates with Ms. Smith’s deep intellectual rigour and strong commitment to public services. Moreover, it’s thought to be unlikely Ms. Crockatt can be re-elected to Parliament in her riding because of all the Liberal voters there who have finally figured out the difference between red and green.

Both Wildrose and PC officials are also thought to be in agreement that whatever happens, it is essential Rob Anderson never gets to be leader of anything bigger than his Mormon Stake’s scout troop in Airdrie.

Since the talks have not yet begun, discussion has only turned informally to what to call the reunited party. Ideas are said to include the Conservative Wildrose Alliance Party (CWAP) and the Wild Rosehip Alberta Tea Party (WRATP, which is likely to be pronounced “rat pee”).

Alright, everybody, settle down! It’s April 1. This is a gag. Perfesser Dave just made it all up, including the quotes, and forced me to put it in my blog. The Alberta Conservatives and Wildrosers won’t actually be talking reunion for at least three more years. This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Advice to Alison Redford: Own fair and reasonable, and leave the comedy riffs about Danielle Smith to us bloggers

by David Climenhaga on October 15, 2012 in Alberta Politics, Alison Redford, Danielle Smith with 5 Comments

Yuck! Alberta Opposition Leader Danielle Smith learns about veterinary medicine at the source. Or was this the lesson on Wisconsin’s “grassroots democracy”? Whatever. After that, she had cheese in Wisconsin. Below: Alberta Premier Alison Redford.

I recall hearing somewhere the image experts have come to the conclusion that “if you own fair and reasonable, you win.”

So I wonder if Alberta Premier Redford picked the best strategy last Thursday when she decided to poke fun at Opposition Leader Danielle Smith for her American-paid tour of the United States, courtesy the U.S. State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program.

The IVLP, of course, is the American government program with the apparently remarkable history of picking future foreign leaders – who oddly enough frequently turn out to be foreign leaders sympathetic to American interests – and giving them a nice, most-expenses-paid (except for the odd muffin or vanilla latte) three-week tour of the United States. Ms. Smith wrapped up her American Tour on Oct. 6.

But Premier Redford’s mocking welcome home to Ms. Smith during a Progressive Conservative party fundraiser in Red Deer is not going to sound particularly fair and reasonable to a lot of Alberta voters who think things like university degrees in anything but petroleum engineering, the desire to eat squishy uncooked foods and trips abroad (a Target mall in the Good Ole U.S.A. and Mexican holiday resorts excepted, of course) are signs of eccentricity at best and un-Albertan airs more likely.

After all, this is the province that elected and kept re-electing Ralph Klein, the notorious high-school dropout and recreational drinker, as premier. Readers will recall that Ms. Redford had to put up with a certain amount of disdain during the recent provincial election campaign from supporters of Ms. Smith’s faux-populist Wildrose Party for letting it be known she’d been an international human rights lawyer.

We all heard these Wildrose supporters ask why, if Ms. Redford loved Alberta so much, did her curriculum vitae show that she went and lived the easy life in such well-known leisure spots as Mozambique, Vietnam, the Balkans and Afghanistan? Quelle horreur!

Who knows, maybe the premier was griped because the U.S. government didn’t identify her as a future foreign leader, back in the day. (They hardly need to now, do they?) Or maybe Ms. Smith got up her nose with the ridiculous comparisons she keeps making between the Opposition leader’s modest travel expenses (mostly paid for by U.S. taxpayers) and the premier’s (necessarily subsidized by Alberta taxpayers).

Whether or not the State Department gets a good deal on Holiday Inn rooms in Montana and Wisconsin, low hotel bills alone are not proof of frugality on Ms. Smith’s part, unless she can produce a note from the U.S. State Department promising to pay her expenses if she becomes premier. (Heaven knows, this kind of thing does happen, but it’s frowned upon for the Americans to actually admit it.)

At any rate, the premier tried to yuk it up by suggesting that Ms. Smith ought not to be criticizing Alberta’s activities abroad when she tacitly admits needing to be schooled by the U.S. State Department on the American system of government.

In fairness to Ms. Smith, that is kind of a cheap shot, since the U.S. system of government is what she’s been advocating non-stop for Alberta and Canada ever since she signed on with the Fraser Institute, whose mission is to get Canada to adopt all of the worst ideas of America’s barely functional democracy without any of the good ones.

That was not as cheap, though, as yesterday’s shot from the Edmonton Journal, which complained in effect that Ms. Smith hasn’t been sending out enough press releases since Ms. Redford got elected. Well, whatever.

Getting back to Ms. Redford’s ridicule, “if you want to stand up in front of the people of Alberta two years ago or six months ago and say you are ready to be the premier of the province and you understand Alberta’s role in North America, then you better be pretty confident about that,” the premier told her sympathetic Red Deer audience. (Leastways I assume they were sympathetic. Down there in Red Deer, I don’t think you, or the premier for that matter, can ever be all that confident of that.) “…I’d suggest that a seat on a tour bus is markedly different than the premier’s chair.”

Ms. Smith, naturally, reverted to form with her response: “She been gallivanting around the world staying in $900 hotel rooms and ordering oysters and not paying enough attention to matters at home.”

There’s that Wildrose thing about weird squishy food again – no Real Albertan would eat oysters, not even the men since the invention of Viagra. As for Ms. Smith’s hotel rooms in Wisconsin and Montana, they may not cost the same as Ms. Redford’s did in London (and who knows, the U.S. government may get a discount deal on little-used Holiday Inn rooms along the High Line, what with the occasional witness protection program participant and Canadian politician passing through), but I’d be surprised if her Uncle Sam ever put anyone in Ms. Smith’s shoes up at the YWCA in Bozeman.

If this keeps up, the next thing you know they’ll both be invoking the memory of Peter Lougheed, Alberta’s sainted first Conservative premier, to slam the other one. Oh, wait, they already are.

Meanwhile, from selected venues along her bus tour – leastways, whenever the bus passed through a Montana town with Wi-Fi – Ms. Smith filed plenty of breathless material for comedians to make fun of in their routines.

Oh, wow, I’m in Wisconsin! … “one of the centres of North American grassroots democracy in the last two years.” (That’s code for “I’d really like to crush unions in Alberta too.”) And, “Yes, my hand really is in the stomach of that cow.” (Emphasis added, comment not necessary.) “But I did get a Romney-Ryan lawn sign from the Republicans.” (Ditto.)

By the way, from her online travel diary, we are pleased to report that Ms. Smith did not eat any oysters while in the Badger State, or so she said: “First meal in Wisconsin was – you guessed it – cheese. Cheese plate, deep fried cheese curds, and macaroni and cheese.” (This sounds pretty grim, but it’s not all bad. The Official State Drink, as is well known, is beer.)

So the point here is obviously not that there’s any lack of stuff here with which to make fun of Ms. Smith.

It’s merely that if she wants to own “fair and reasonable,” Premier Redford should stick to the substantive material and leave the boffo yocks to us bloggers. If she doesn’t, we may get shirty about it and start invoking the name of Peter Lougheed ourselves.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

The trouble with A-Bombs: if the blast doesn’t get you, the fallout just might

by David Climenhaga on June 21, 2012 in Alison Redford, Danielle Smith, Fred Horne, Jason Kenney, Mike Harris, Preston Manning, Rob Anderson, Stephen Harper, Thomas Lukaszuk with No comments
A typical Canadian reads the news from the Ottawa Press Gallery while Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney sends another email in the background. Below: Wildrose Party House Leader Rob Anderson; former federal PC leaders Joe Clark and Peter MacKay discuss the interesting pod marked “Return to Preston Manning” they found outside a party meeting in 2002.

Dodging political fallout from his much publicized “A-Bomb” attack on Alberta’s deputy premier, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney was trying to persuade his credulous compatriots yesterday the relationship between Alberta’s many Conservative MPs and its similarly numerous Progressive Conservative MLAs is “phenomenally positive.”

Good one!

This just ain’t so, as everyone understands who is in the loop – a group that is quite large, although apparently not so big it includes the crème de la crème of the national media in Ottawa.

For this reason, we shouldn’t be astonished by scuttlebutt that several of the grandees of the Parliamentary Press Gallery for several days sat on Mr. Kenney’s A-Bomb email expressing his frank opinion of Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszuk while they debated whether or not he had actually intended to click “reply-all.”

Our national media doesn’t do a very good job of explaining the various parts of this country to one another, and from the perspective of some members of the Ottawa press gallery, this may not have seemed like such a big deal. Others, of course, are in on the conspiracy.

But – trust me, people – the deep and growing gulf between Premier Alison Redford’s PCs and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party is a big deal – big enough, at any rate, to have some implications for the rest of the country.

Airdrie-Chestermere MLA Rob Anderson, House leader of the rightward-tilting Wildrose Party, summed up reality most succinctly yesterday: “It’s clear that there aren’t great relations between Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s team and Premier Redford’s team,” he told the Edmonton Journal.

From Mr. Anderson’s perspective, this is knock on the Redford PCs. After all, from the Wildrose point of view, Mr. Harper’s grim ideological puritans have it right, and Ms. Redford’s idea that you can put a human face on capitalism is a shocking heresy.

But whether or not we accept the Wildrose viewpoint, Mr. Anderson called it bang on when he advised the Journal: “There are very, very few federal MPs that are supportive of the provincial Tories. … The vast majority are supportive of the Wildrose.”

Indeed, he accurately stated, “the provincial wing of the federal Conservative Party is the Wildrose, there is no doubt.”

Maybe it wasn’t wise of him to admit that the Wildrose Party is nothing more than a branch office of the federal Conservatives – increasingly dominated, as the federal branch is, by Mike Harris loyalists and other dead-enders from Ontario. After all, aren’t Albertans supposed to have a maverick streak of Western independent-mindedness?

But it is reality. Indeed, as was said in this space during the recent Alberta provincial election campaign, the Harper Government’s open support for the Wildrose Party was the elephant in the room. “A case can be made that at the strategic and technical levels, the federal and provincial neo-Con parties are virtually interchangeable,” I wrote on March 21. “This is a big change from the not-so-distant past when it was Alberta Conservatives at the provincial and federal levels who were essentially the same people.”

Mr. Harper’s party lent seasoned campaign staff and expertise to Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith and contributed candidates and workers from the ranks of federal Tory MPs’ staffs. Tory MPs endorsed individual Wildrose candidates and, in the closing days of the campaign when a Wildrose victory really seemed possible, Mr. Harper let loose his Alberta caucus to campaign openly on behalf of Ms. Smith’s party.

It is said here that this means we will increasingly see divergent approaches on many issues taken by the Redford Tories and the Harper Neo-Cons.

For example, beholden as they are to the Lake of Fire set, I doubt you ever would have seen the A typical Canadian reads the news from the Ottawa Press Gallery while Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney sends another email in the background. Below: Wildrose Party Deputy Leader Rob Anderson; former federal PC leaders Joe Clark and Peter MacKay discuss the interesting pod marked “Return to Preston Manning” they found outside a party meeting in 2002.Wildrose Party or their Harper Tory head office admitting, as Ms. Redford’s health minister did this week, that it was “derogatory and insulting” for Alberta Health to classify homosexuality as a mental illness in the province’s health care billing code. The code was changed at the end of last month, Fred Horne told the Whitecourt Star.

You can expect increasingly divergent positions on a variety of other funding and policy questions where in the past the Alberta Tories would have played ball – to the prime minister’s great distress. Indeed, they may even no longer be singing from the same hymnbook on pipeline development!

The upcoming nomination fight in the federal riding of Calgary Centre may also become the scene of a rumble between Redford and Harper Conservatives.

During the Alberta election campaign, Mr. Harper’s strategists clearly hoped to engineer a reverse takeover of the big-tent Alberta Tories, just as the far-right Reform Party under Preston Manning used the mechanism of the Canadian Alliance to colonize and destroy the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada during the Invasion of the Party Snatchers in 2003.

That they failed means Ms. Redford is likely to be premier until well after the next federal election, and with Mr. Kenney’s help the elephant in the room has undeniably materialized – large, betusked, red eyes glaring with hostility and quite possibly of a mind to stand by while a few more federal non-Conservatives are elected in Alberta.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Alberta Silly Season starts with fallout from Jason Kenney’s A-Bomb blast

by David Climenhaga on June 20, 2012 in Alison Redford, Blaine Calkins, Candice Malcolm, Danielle Smith, Ezra Levant, Graham Thomson, Jason Kenney, Peggy Anderson, Stephen Harper, Thomas Lukaszuk, Thomas Mulcair with 7 Comments
Federal Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, centre, with Public Safety Minister Victor Toews, left, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper, right, get ready to assure members of their party’s Alberta caucus they’ll be protected from a*****e visitors from their home province. Actual federal Tory ministers may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: The real Mr. Kenney, sort of, Thomas Lukaszuk and MP Blaine Calkins.

Here in Alberta, summer Silly Season arrived a few hours early with the revelation moments past midnight yesterday that federal Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney had dropped the A-Bomb on Thomas Lukaszuk, the province’s deputy premier.

“The A-Bomb,” of course, is a prissy euphemism for a seven-letter word beginning with A and ending with E that aptly describes the attitude of those federal Conservatives like Mr. Kenney who are working hard to bring the level of political discourse in Canada to historic new lows.

So “A-Bomb” is just the sort of squeamish circumlocution you’d expect from a fastidious old-timer who would try to “censor” Sun News Network commentator Ezra Levant’s foul-mouthed on-air eruptions or take exception to Mr. Kenney’s charmlessly frank assessment of Mr. Lukaszuk.

But there you go. Your blogger will now try to be up-to-date and in tune with the new neo-Conned Canada of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and tell readers exactly what was said by Mr. Kenney, who in addition to fulfilling the dual roles of Canada’s Chief Censor and Commissar of Ideological Purity is at 44 the country’s only known self-proclaimed 40-Year-Old Virgin.

To wit, apparently misunderstanding the purpose of the “reply all” button on his computer’s email application, Mr. Kenney sent to all the world the information that he thinks Mr. Lukaszuk is “a complete and utter asshole.”

According to Edmonton Journal political columnist Graham Thomson, who owns the scoop, Mr. Kenney was explaining in the email to the office of Wetaskawin MP Blaine Calkins, chairperson of the federal Conservatives’ Alberta caucus, why the distinguished federal minister wasn’t about to break bread with Mr. Lukaszuk when he visited Ottawa as part of Alberta Premier Alison Redford’s ongoing charm offensive.

This is a pity, because Mr. Lukaszuk had a short meeting with Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair during the New Democrat’s recent bitumen sands tour, after which he claimed after not to have been impressed with the NDP leader’s observations. Lunch with Mr. Kenney could have given him some Conservative intellectual firepower to compare and contrast with Mr. Mulcair’s. Plus, unlike his visit with Mr. Mulcair, they could have guiltlessly gone Dutch.

But Mr. Kenney’s response, sent to everyone in the Tories’ leaky federal caucus and all of their assistants, read: “I say a definite ‘no’ to Lukaszyk. (sic) I don’t think it makes sense to create a precedent to do a special caucus meeting for every visiting minister from the provincial government. Plus he is a complete and utter asshole.”

Now, I have met and interviewed both Mr. Lukaszuk and Mr. Kenney over the years and I can assure readers that Mr. Lukaszuk is not what Mr. Kenney described him to be. Indeed, the deputy premier’s measured and diplomatic response to the revelation illustrates this.

On a more serious level, though, Mr. Kenney’s unexpectedly public ejaculation and his perfunctory apology late yesterday illustrates just how deep and broad the rift has become between Prime Minister Harper’s Tea Party of Canada and Ms. Redford’s Alberta Progressive Conservatives.

Indeed, Mr. Kenney’s tepid apology came only after a full day of unexpected political fallout from his outburst, and, by the sound of it, a talking-to from the prime minister.

Not to put too fine a point on it, the Harperites despise Ms. Redford and her supporters – all the more so because of their embarrassing failure to push the neo-Con Wildrose Party under former Fraser Institute apparatchik Danielle Smith into power in the April 23 Alberta election.

Blogger Dave Cournoyer reminds us of Mr. Kenney’s connections to the Wildrose campaign. Mr. Kenney’s former spokesperson, Candice Malcolm, returned to Alberta to work for the Wildrose Party during the campaign. In addition, his Regional Affairs Director is Peggy Anderson, who was allied with Ms. Smith on the dysfunctional Calgary Board of Education from 1998 before then learning minister Lyle Oberg dissolved it in 1999.

Clearly, with Mr. Kenney firmly entrenched on the banks of the Rideau thanks to the inattentive voters of Calgary-Southeast, where he is actively working against Ms. Redford, the ambitious Alberta premier will need her Ottawa lobbying office to “advocate Alberta’s perspective on important federal and provincial matters,” as it was put in her government’s Throne Speech on May 24.

The fact a Conservative provincial government feels the need to create and staff an “ambassadorial” office in the Alberta-Tory-packed national capital brightly illuminates just what a bad job this province’s wall-to-wall Conservative MPs do for the Albertans they are elected to represent.

Alberta’s premier will no doubt breathe a private sigh of relief when Mr. Harper no longer heads the government of Canada, although she may leave the lobbying office in place for a spell to ensure better relations with whatever party replaces Mr. Harper’s potty-mouthed ideological puritans.

Indeed, Ms. Redford may then even give some thought to going to Ottawa herself – though not necessarily as the head of a mere lobbying group. Remember where you heard that first.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Wedge politics, not religious freedom, behind Danielle Smith’s refusal to apologize

by David Climenhaga on June 14, 2012 in Alan Hunsperger, Alison Redford, Danielle Smith, Edmonton Pride Festival, Mitt Romney, Rob Anderson, Wedge Politics, Wildrose Party with 4 Comments
Police officers walk in Saturday’s Pride Parade. Below: Danielle Smith, Alan Hunsperger.

Since she won’t apologize for remarks made by one of her candidates during the recent election campaign that many Albertans thought were offensive and anti-gay, Wildrose Party Leader Danielle Smith found herself trapped this week between a rock and a hard place.

The leader of Alberta’s Opposition party desperately wants to leave behind the brouhaha created by unsuccessful Edmonton-South West candidate Alan Hunsperger, who imprudently left a blog post lying around the Internet before last April’s election that expressed the view all gays are doomed to spend eternity in the Lake of Fire if they don’t repent.

To do so, Ms. Smith tried Tuesday to “mend fences,” in the words of a local newspaper, with Alberta’s gay community by attending the Edmonton Pride Festival Police Chief’s Reception, a low-key event that involved the kind of imagery the Wildrose Party is comfortable with – squad cars and people in uniform.

But members of the gay community, including some of the police officers at the reception, continue to make it clear they expect her to apologize for the remarks made by Pastor Hunsperger, who is a minister in a conservative Protestant congregation that holds homosexuality to be a violation of God’s law and apparently spends lot of time agonizing about it.

Ms. Smith refuses to say she’s sorry, insisting that to do so would amount to an attack on Pastor Hunsperger’s freedom of speech and religion.

As a result, the issue won’t go away, creaking like a rusty hinge every time Ms. Smith opens the gate in that fence she’s trying to mend – to the absolute delight of the Progressive Conservative Party of Premier Alison Redford, who used the original controversy to derail the Wildrose campaign days before the April 23 election.

So on Tuesday, Ms. Smith tried to sidestep the question of an apology by telling reporters that if anyone wants atonement for Pastor Hunsperger’s remarks, they’ll have to go to Pastor Hunsperger. “I think it’s important for us to have the conversation about religious freedom, freedom of speech and equality rights, because I think that’s really what this comes down to,” she extemporized, according to the Edmonton Journal.

As is often the case when the political right starts letting off steam about our fundamental freedoms, though, this issue isn’t really about freedom of speech or religion at all.

Virtually all Albertans agree with Ms. Smith that Pastor Hunsperger has a fundamental right to believe anything he chooses is sinful. As we know, there enough sins in the Old Testament of the Bible to consign us all to the lake of fire – apparently including wearing a wool suit with a linen collar! (Leviticus 19:19.)

The question is really whether holding those views and talking publicly about them in a casual and hurtful way made Pastor Hunsperger an appropriate candidate for the party, and whether his doing so indicated the party holds homophobic views – which, obviously, is precisely what a lot of Albertans concluded.

Imagine if the bee in Pastor Hunsperger’s theological bonnet had been that members of some other branch of Christianity – say, Catholics, or Baptists – were sinners bound for Hell. Would Ms. Smith be prepared then to apologize to the Catholics, or the Baptists, to save her electoral skin? Of course she would!

As a matter of fact, quite a lot of Christians hold exactly such views. Consider the controversy in the United States among evangelical Christians about the Mormon beliefs of Republican candidate Mitt Romney, which are presumably the same as those held by Wildrose House Leader Rob Anderson. And it’s certainly consistent with Christian theology to believe non-Christians are bound for an unhappy eternal destination.

But you can count on it that supporters of a right-wing party like the Wildrose would never have gotten their knickers in a twist about that they way they have about homosexuality. It’s reasonable of us to ask why.

What’s more, almost all the Christians associated with parties of the right like Ms. Smith’s seem completely disengaged from many of the teachings of the nominal head of their church. For example, “And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:24.) If that’s not a clarion call for fair progressive taxation as a social good, in this world and the next, I don’t know what is!

Verily, verily, I say unto thee, the real reason for Ms. Smith’s predicament – and for her reluctance to say she’s sorry – is her party’s practice of wedge politics, not freedom of religion.

The Wildrose Party embarked on a strategy of wedge politics designed to separate groups of voters traditionally associated with Ms. Redford’s PC Party and drive them toward Wildrose candidates. For a time, at least until the discovery of Pastor Hunsperger’s Epistle to the Albertans, it seemed to be working spectacularly.

One of the groups they tried to appeal to was religious fundamentalists with strongly hostile views about sexual minorities.

The problem now faced by Ms. Smith, who I am sure is not personally homophobic, is that she can’t say sorry to the gay community without infuriating a significant portion of her party’s most loyal base, religious fundamentalists so carefully and discreetly cultivated before and during the election campaign.

It is said here Wildrose opposition to public payments for gender reassignment surgery, another sore point with the same community, is mud from the same muddy spring.

That’s the thing about wedge politics. It’s a two-edged sword, and sometimes it cuts on the side its wielder didn’t intend it to!

This must be very frustrating to a market fundamentalist like Ms. Smith who really, one strongly suspects, doesn’t care a fig about fundamental religious issues.

But it’s pretty hard to feel much sympathy for her predicament. She got herself there. Now she’s going to have to get herself out.

It seems like Pastor Hunsperger won’t be much help in that endeavour.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Alison Redford opens Edmonton Pride Festival – but goes AWOL from parade

by David Climenhaga on June 10, 2012 in Alison Redford, Danielle Smith, David Eggen, Deron Bilous, Edmonton Pride Festival, Laurie Blakeman, Rachel Notley, Raj Sherman, Thomas Lukaszuk with 8 Comments
Your blogger, with Alberta Liberal Leader Raj Sherman. Where were the PCs? Below: Some of the throng in Churchill Square, NDP MLAs David Eggen, Rachel Notley and Deron Bilous, Liberal MLA Laurie Blakeman.

Edmonton’s Pride Parade yesterday can only be described as a massive success, proof of the assertion real Albertans don’t care a fig about a person’s sexuality, gender identity or even how they dress.

Surely there were 20,000 people in the streets for the parade, including, God bless them, Albertans in hijabs and Hutterite bonnets. Rain was promised by the weatherperson but the warm sun beamed down, approval from on high of which the Wildrose Party’s fierce believers in divine revelation might want to take note.

As was said in this space last June, “in Canada the prevailing attitude – even among large numbers people who only a few years ago would have been steeped in homophobia – seems more and more to be, ‘Aw, who cares?’” On Saturday, the high-spirited and supportive crowd in Edmonton proved it, and indeed added a chorus of good for you!

Something was missing from the parade, though: Alison Redford.

Maybe it’s churlish to mention this. After all, Ms. Redford did make history by making the event, in the carefully parsed passive phrase of the Edmonton Journal, “the first to be attended by an Alberta premier.”

Accompanied by her polka-dot-clad deputy premier, Thomas Lukaszuk, Progressive Conservative Premier Redford briefly addressed the official opening of the Edmonton Pride Festival after the parade had ended, telling the huge throng in Churchill Square, “Let’s just celebrate who we are, what we do, and where we live.” The friendly crowd responded by chanting her name.

Moreover, organizers of the Pride Festival were gracious, praising the premier’s participation as “record-breaking news” – as indeed it was.

Still, just a couple of days ago, the media was awash in promises the premier would be in the parade and, as the participants made their way along the route, there was nary a sign of Ms. Redford – or of any elected Progressive Conservative for that matter.

Maybe this is a mere wrinkle in the great scheme of things – but it’s irritating on a couple of counts. For one thing, a few swift words of welcome is not quite the same thing as a symbolic appearance all along the parade route – which was lined with thousands of Albertans primed to cheer the premier for turning up.

Is it breaking a promise when you’ve gotten barrels of ink for saying the day before you’d be in the parade? Readers can decide for themselves.

For another, the behaviour of the media itself, which decided to cover the story by ignoring the change in plans – which surely a lot of readers and viewers must have wondered about.

The Edmonton Journal’s report stating the premier would be in the parade disappeared down the Memory Hole, replaced with some conveniently revised history. However, as of last night, some of the previous stories still lingered, presumably awaiting the Journal’s editorial cleanup crew in Hamilton.

Oh well, likely they just didn’t want to spoil the history-making scoop of the Premier’s brief words of welcome. But one can’t shake the feeling the premier’s political advisors vetoed her actual participation in the parade at the last minute, not for security reasons as some have suggested, but for fear of the unintended photo opportunities that might result.

Not surprisingly, Danielle Smith – leader of the far-right Wildrose Party which after the last provincial election campaign will be forever known as the Lake of Fire Party – was nowhere to be found. To “mend fences,” as the ever-supportive National Post put it, she’ll “show up at a smaller information session on Tuesday.”

That way, presumably, the Opposition leader can tell her more virulent supporters one thing and the rest of us another.

As for Alberta’s other parties, the Alberta Liberals, New Democrats and the Alberta Party all had representatives in the parade, along with Edmonton public school trustees and Edmonton city councillors. (As well as the Beagle Paws Rescue Organization, it must be noted.)

Alberta Liberal Leader Raj Sherman was there, riding in the back of his pickup truck and wearing a red and blue feather boa. So was Edmonton-Centre Liberal MLA Laurie Blakeman and three of the NDP’s four MLAs, Rachel Notley, David Eggen and Deron Bilous.

The Alberta Party has no MLAs, but had plenty of representatives in the parade.

On the other hand, Ms. Redford’s PCs have plenty of MLAs, but apparently none who could find the time for the parade.

However, Ms. Redford’s role in the opening was a start.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Pride Festival’s political participants a positive sign of the times

by David Climenhaga on June 7, 2012 in Alison Redford, Danielle Smith, Doug Elniski, Edmonton Pride Festival, Margaret Mead, Ralph Klein, social conservatives, Stephen Harper, Stephen Woodworth with 6 Comments
Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith is imagined being welcomed to Saturday’s Edmonton Pride Festival as Premier Alison Redford and Deputy Premier Tom Lukaszuk, at left, look on. In the event, Alberta political leaders may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: former politician Doug Elniski, cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead and so-con MP Stephen Woodworth.

It’s a positive sign of the times that must drive so-called social conservatives nuts: right-wing politicians are increasingly open in paying, at the very least, lip service to liberal social policy positions.

A striking example of this in recent days has been Alberta Premier Alison Redford’s decision to take part in Edmonton’s Pride Parade on Saturday.

But it may not be the most striking example. Consider, for example, the fact that Wildrose Party Leader Danielle Smith, who just weeks ago was defending one of her candidates’ consignment of gays to an eternal lake of fire, has promised to show up at the Pride Festival too, if not the parade. Whatever will her supporters say? (Or passersby in the crowd, for that matter.)

This issue and the response to it by conservative politicians has caused significant buzz in the mainstream media, and conservatives have obviously taken note of the fact folks calling in to radio talk shows are almost entirely supportive of the premier’s decision.

Even Stephen Harper, Canada’s avowedly socially conservative and evangelical prime minister, was successfully scrambling yesterday to ensure one of his more virulently so-con MPs would not manage to set off a politically dangerous legislative review of when human life legally begins.

Not surprisingly, the PM was successful. Stephen Woodworth, the Conservative MP for Kitchener Centre who had been pushing the obvious anti-abortion gambit dropped it like the proverbial scalding spud yesterday, claiming it was because of his elderly mother’s illness.

As if more evidence were needed, just this week I had a call from a would-be politician with a very conservative cut to her jib who wanted to ensure I understood that she’s pro-choice and has many friends who are gay. “I’m socially moderate, pro-gay, pro-choice,” she assured.

All this suggests that conservative politicians like these, taking part in this event, will have developed the wit to eschew sending offensive Tweets to their friends – and a billion or so other people who happen to be paying attention – as did former Edmonton Tory and nascent blogger MLA Doug Elniski at the Pride Parade in June 2009.

Genuinely socially progressive Canadians can take some comfort from this. The war may not be over on these key social issues, and it never will be, but at least for the moment the tide is flowing in the right direction.

This has been the result of a prolonged effort to change the our small Canadian world by what American cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead so famously characterized as “a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens.” Over time, this group has grown to the point, it is reasonable to argue, it now encompasses the vast majority of the citizenry.

So the likes of Mr. Harper and Ms. Smith, and perhaps on some topics even Ms. Redford too, may wish to turn back the clock on this raised state of consciousness, but they recognize that they can only do so through discreet stratagems, not through a direct appeal to the basest sectors of their conservative base.

Indeed, that point was made very forcefully to Ms. Smith during the campaign leading up to Alberta’s April 23 general election. The public reaction to comments about the eternal destination of Alberta’s gay and lesbian citizens by one of her candidates seems to have been the catalyst that prompted, to stick with the Judeo-Christian metaphor for the moment, her Road to Damascus experience on how she deals with this particular issue.

There’s a good reason for this: these conservatives now understand that while their crazy economic nostrums still enjoy some currency with the public thanks to constant repetition, Canadians will unhesitatingly kick their keesters out of office if they openly call for bullying gays or try to eliminate the right of women to reproductive choice.

This is a big change from when Ralph Klein was Alberta premier in the mid-1990s, when bitter socially conservative callers to his office shook his staff with the vehemence and anger of their views. No doubt they still get such calls in the premier’s office, but obviously they are balanced with sufficient numbers of alternative views to empower politicians like Ms. Redford to do the right thing.

But while committed progressive citizens congratulate themselves for the success of their long evolutionary effort to change the world for the better, we need to remember that so-called social conservative issues are mainly convenient dog-whistles for use by the people who finance and run Canada’s right-wing political parties.

Their real agenda remains an economic one – and the quasi-theological market-fundamentalist economic worldview they espouse is as harmful and dangerous as the convenient bigotry they have tried to use as a wedge to advance and finance their true objectives.

In this regard, the paranoia of the social-conservative right in this province is justified. Their political leaders, and one suspects this includes the purportedly pious Mr. Harper, mostly privately disdain their social and religious views and snicker behind their hands at the holders of these opinions as uncultured hicks and bumpkins.

Now that even the leadership of the Wildrose Party is embracing liberal social views – however reluctantly and hypocritically – there’s really nothing for this province’s most determined social conservatives to do but to establish another splinter political movement. Is there, guys?

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Edmonton Mayor Stephen Mandel channels Henny Youngman: ‘Take my Opposition leader … Please!’

by admin on May 16, 2012 in Alison Redford, Brian Mason, Danielle Smith, Ed Stelmach, Edmonton Civic Airport, Edmonton Oilers, Gary Dickson, Naheed Nenshi, Royal Alberta Museum, Stephen Harper, Stephen Mandel, Tom Flanagan with 1 Comment
Edmonton Mayor Stephen Mandel and your blogger at a much warmer meeting than the one Wildrose Party Leader Danielle Smith had with His Honour yesterday. The guy with the cigarette may be one of the new Wildrose MLAs. Below right: Mayor Mandel after his meeting with Ms. Smith, not exactly as illustrated.

Edmonton is going to have to deal with Wildrose Party Leader Danielle Smith. Got that?

Mayor Stephen Mandel rather dryly cleared that question up yesterday.

The mayor’s actual words after a 30-minute closed-door meeting with Ms. Smith: “It was fine. … She’s the leader of the Opposition.”

Got that? OK, now we can … ummm … get down to business.

For her part, Ms. Smith tried to play the mayor’s chilly reaction after their brief tête-à-tête by sounding upbeat, as is her wont these days: “He has a few key things he is hoping to get action on,” she chirped to reporters. “… We can be helpful in raising some of those issues in the Legislature and elsewhere.”

Yeah, right. I’ll bet the phone lines will just be burning up between those two! (Notice to the literal minded: That was sarcasm.)

Mr. Mandel has always struck me as a pretty serious guy, the few times I’ve met him – which is apparently a few more than Ms. Smith, notwithstanding the fact she’s been running for the province’s top job for months and he’s been the mayor the capital city for all of that time. According to the media, yesterday’s chat was the first time she’s met the man face to face!

Now, none of this is to say that Mayor Mandel doesn’t have a sense of humour. It’s there somewhere. But, you know, it’s mordant.

It may or may not have been on display yesterday in Mayor Mandel’s icy post-meeting remarks: “She and I don’t see eye-to-eye on certain issues. We cleared the air on certain things and we have moved on from there.” End of story, almost.

No more details were forthcoming but for Mr. Mandel’s response to a reporter who asked if the two had a better relationship now thanks to their momentary meeting: “We had no relationship before the meeting.” (Beat. Beat.) “You would assume the relationship was better after the meeting.”

Stephen Mandel as Henny Youngman!

The local press managed to grind a few more lines out of this, which suggests that nowadays they may have gone back to paying their reporters by the word. Whatever. Here’s the deal, though: There’s no love lost between Mr. Mandel and Ms. Smith. And there’s a good reason for that. No matter how much Ms. Smith would like to put it all behind her, now that it suits her political purposes, it’s going to be pretty hard for the mayor of Edmonton to forget what she did during the recent provincial election campaign.

Ms. Smith and her Wildrose Party campaign brain trust – Tom Flanagan, c’mon down! – hit on a two-thirds strategy.

First, they divided the province into three parts: the countryside, Calgary and Edmonton. Then they concluded that if they could win two out of three, they’d win the province. After that, they beat Edmonton like a redheaded stepchild to win votes in the other two areas.

Ms. Smith stepped into the already settled Edmonton Civic Airport debate and suggested a Wildrose government would take another look at the plan the mayor has championed to replace the historic downtown airfield with a classy residential and business development.

She suggested she’d pull the plug on the new Royal Alberta Museum promised by Ed Stelmach and almost pulled off the table by the federal Conservatives. Ditto the renovation by the province of the long-abandoned Federal Building adjacent to the Legislature, even though the project is more than half completed.

She also told voters days before the election that a Wildrose government would provide no funding for a new downtown arena for the Edmonton Oilers – another of Mayor Mandel’s pet projects.

The strategy was pretty much Wedge Issues 101 – which if it wasn’t a course taught to credulous University of Calgary political science undergraduates by Dr. Flanagan, certainly could have been!

Play on Calgarians’ envy of the capital city to win votes there, be fiscal tough guys on the museum project which the Wildrose Party’s Harperite patrons on the Rideau didn’t like either, and appeal to northern Alberta voters’ concerns that it will take longer to air-ambulance patients to Edmonton hospitals if they can’t fly into downtown Edmonton. The goal in every case: to wedge voters outside the Capital Region away from Alison Redford’s Tories.

Well, it might have seemed like a good idea at the time – indeed, it seemed like a pretty good idea up to about 72 hours before the polls opened! – but it hardly worked out exactly as expected.

In the event on April 23, Calgary voters got cold feet, possibly thanks to several eruptions by some of the Wildrose Party’s bozos. Rural voters north of Alberta’s Mason-Dickson Line (named for NDP Leader Brian Mason and former Calgary Liberal Gary Dickson – joke) weren’t fooled either. Edmonton – mocked by Wildrose supporters as “Redmonton,” and not in the Republican sense they favour – performed to expectations.

The result was another massive majority for Premier Redford and her Progressive Conservatives.

Now Ms. Smith – whom one senses is a politician who loves to be loved, except when she’s in a position to dish out bad-tasting neo-Con medicine, presumably – has been sworn in as leader of the “government in waiting” and is trying to rebuild the bridges she burned to the waterline during the campaign.

That’s going to be difficult – even though, come to think of it, Edmonton could use another bridge across the North Saskatchewan. Indeed, it’s said in the gutter press she had to get Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi to broker her meeting with Mr. Mandel.

Meantime, as the mayor concedes, she’s the leader of the Opposition. Now go away and don’t bother us!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

What kind of message will Alison Redford send Stephen Harper in the next federal election?

by admin on May 15, 2012 in Alana DeLong, Alison Redford, Andrew Constantinidis, Danielle Smith, Ken Hughes, Rob Anders, Ryan Hastman, Ryan Sparrow, Stephen Harper, Thomas Mulcair, Tim Dyck, Vitor Marciano, Warren Kinsella with 5 Comments
Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Calgary West MP Rob Anders plot the destruction of Alberta Premier Alison Redford and her Progressive Conservative Party. Warning: neo-Con Alberta politicians may not have been scheming when this photo was taken. Then again… Below: a very creepy CP picture of Rob and Steve all dressed up with nowhere to go; Andrew Constantinidis; Tim Dyck.

The probability is very high that the next Canadian federal election will happen before the next Alberta provincial vote.

So, will Premier Alison Redford’s Tories just sit on their hands? Or will they get out and actively work against Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s so-called Conservative Party of Canada, whose Alberta MPs so openly betrayed their provincial kin in the election that took place on April 23?

This will become an increasingly important question as the next federal election approaches – especially if the NDP under Thomas Mulcair manage to hang onto or increase their edge in the national polls.

Mr. Harper’s Conservatives did things for both sides, but they misread the polls just as badly as the rest of us (except Warren Kinsella, apparently) and as the campaign progressed they tilted openly toward the Wildrose Party, with which they share a destructive and apparently increasingly unpopular market-fundamentalist theology/ideology.

Mr. Harper’s federal Tea Party lent seasoned campaign staff and expertise to Danielle Smith’s Wildrose version, and contributed Wildrose candidates and workers from the ranks of federal Tory MPs’ staffs. Tory MPs endorsed individual Wildrose candidates and, in the closing days of the campaign when a Wildrose victory really seemed possible, Mr. Harper let loose his Alberta caucus to campaign openly on behalf of Ms. Smith’s neo-Con party.

Indeed, a case could be made during the campaign that at the strategic and technical levels, the federal Conservatives and the Wildrose Party were virtually interchangeable.

Tom Flanagan, the overconfident Wildrose campaign manager, once played a similar role for the prime minister – until he wrote a book that lacked the prime ministerial imprimatur and which seemed to some readers to take credit for many of Mr. Harper’s accomplishments. Perhaps his Wildrose volunteer work was part of an effort to restore the prime minister’s affection.

Smaller Tory fry included unsuccessful Wildrose “Senate” candidate Vitor Marciano, who has played numerous important roles for the Harper Conservatives; Ryan Hastman, the unsuccessful former federal Tory candidate in Edmonton-Strathcona; and Ryan Sparrow, the former federal Tory spokesperson suspended from that job for suggesting the father of a soldier killed in Afghanistan was a Liberal because he dared to criticize Mr. Harper.

Calgary-West Member of Parliament Rob Anders, the Harper confidante and national embarrassment that Ms. Redford once had the temerity to challenge for his nomination, was particularly active in the campaign to unseat the Alberta premier and her party.

Mr. Anders may be best known nowadays for calling South African hero Nelson Mandela a “terrorist,” working as a professional heckler for a fairly odious U.S. Republican candidate and falling asleep before the cameras of the House of Commons. Still, he is a formidable campaigner with close ties to the PM’s office, so it is significant that he lent two of his closest associates to the Wildrose campaign.

Andrew Constantinidis, Mr. Anders’ former riding president, was the Wildrose candidate in the provincial Calgary-West riding, where he was defeated by former Alberta Health Services chair Ken Hughes, who in turn is close to Ms. Redford and has now been named to the Energy portfolio. Tim Dyck, another member of Mr. Anders’s constituency brain trust, was the Wildrose candidate in Calgary-Bow, where he was defeated by PC Alana DeLong.

On the other hand, Mr. Harper’s Conservatives loaned Ms. Redford a bus and … um, I think that’s it.

So now that the dust from the provincial election has settled, whatever the Alberta Progressive Conservatives do officially, you can be sure of one thing: There will be no enthusiasm among the leaders of this obviously still powerful provincial party for helping the Harperites.

No one from either Conservative party is going to say this aloud, of course, but you’ve got to know it will be a factor in the federal election that will likely happen in 2015.

This doesn’t mean the federal Conservatives won’t take the majority of Alberta seats. Enough Albertans just aren’t paying attention that it’s unlikely to change deeply entrenched voting habits out here this go-round, or maybe ever.

But a little mindful Redford Tory neglect could just be enough to push the NDP over the top in a couple of additional urban ridings, sending a sotto voce message to Mr. Harper’s boys in Ottawa that their perfidy was noted, and is remembered.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Alberta: Confederation’s biggest kid starts whining at first hint of opposition

by admin on May 10, 2012 in Alison Redford, Cowardly Lion, Dalton McGuinty, Danielle Smith, Ed Stelmach, oilsands, Peter Lougheed, petro-Loonie, Thomas Mulcair with 5 Comments
“Put ’em up, put ’em up! I’ll fight you with one paw tied behind my back,” former Alberta premier Ed Stelmach tells Dalton McGuinty and Thomas Mulcair as Alberta Premier Alison Redford looks on. Alberta politicians may not be exactly as illustrated. Below: The villainous Mr. Mulcair eyes our oil; Mr. Stelmach.

Oh gosh, here we go again! When in doubt, blame those Eastern bastards!

Alberta may be the richest, biggest, loudest kid in Confederation, but at the first sign of opposition to anything we want to do, we turn whiny and defensive, noisily blaming everyone else for all our troubles.

We’ve seen plenty examples of this in the past couple of days – ever since federal NDP Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair dared to connect the dots between the breakneck pace of Alberta’s oilsands development and the deleterious impact the resulting strong petro-Loonie is having on Central Canada’s manufacturing sector.

“Oh My Gawd!” squeaked the Western Canadian media and politicians throughout the region in virtual unison, he’s going to use our out-of-control development and our lousy environmental record as a wedge issue! Why, he’s stooping to … old-style politics!

This is a laugh and a half coming from western Conservatives of various stripes and Sun Media in particular, since together they are the absolute masters of the use and misuse of wedge issues.

Also, never mind that there’s more than a little truth to what Mr. Mulcair had to say – or that the Alberta Tory dynasty’s founder Peter Lougheed, who just days before we were hailing as the best premier of the last 40 years, says much the same thing about the pace of development out here.

The most interesting example of this kind of defensive sniveling came from former premier Ed Stelmach, free at last of the need to play nice with his fellow Progressive Conservatives or anyone else, who waxed poetic yesterday about how those rotten Easterners are all set to screw our poor Prairie hides to the wall and tan them.

This was kind of a pity, because it got all the attention and Mr. Stelmach actually had a number of things to say that made sense in his first post-political interview.

What are those Eastern politicians going to do to get votes, Mr. Stelmach asked reporters after turning up for a show of premiers’ portraits at the Legislature, why, “You beat up on Alberta! It’s going to happen!”

You’d think as the biggest kid on the petro-block, with one of ours as the prime minister and the government majority packed with other Albertans all busy tearing up the country’s environmental regulations and demanding pipelines in every direction, those Easterners wouldn’t pose much of a threat. But here we are, crying already before they’ve even taken a half-hearted swat at us. Oh, boo-hoo-hoo!

“We have to stand together,” Mr. Stelmach warned. “Anyone who wants to grab on to our resources and not put anything in terms of investment, but just want the gravy coming out of the sale of our resources, better be careful!”

Mr. Stelmach is much too nice a man to say “let the Eastern bastards freeze in the dark,” as one of his predecessors is reputed to have commented, but there was a bit of that in his remarks all mixed up with the cry of the Cowardly Lion, Alberta style: “Put ’em up, put ’em up! Which one of you first? I’ll fight you both together if you want. I’ll fight you with one paw tied behind my back. I’ll fight you standing on one foot. I’ll fight you with my eyes closed…”

Just in case you were wondering, that last quote came from the Wizard of Oz. The rest are from the Edmonton Journal.

“All I’m saying is watch the East,” Mr. Stelmach went on. “The Maritimes are OK with us. Watch Ontario and Quebec. They’ve already got two leaders that are pointing fingers.” (The other finger-pointer was Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, a Liberal, which rounds out the Alberta Enemies List nicely.)

Yeah, well, it’s true, and if we keep on acting like we have been, there may be more – and some in B.C. too. But it wouldn’t be the Alberta Way to recognize that obvious fact and try to moderate our behaviour a little.

As noted, much of the rest of what Mr. Stelmach had to say was pretty sensible. Among his points, summarized here by Yours Truly:

  • What really killed Wildrose Party Leader Danielle Smith was her own nutty denial of climate change, not some of her candidates’ bozo eruptions.
  • A province ought not to balance its budget by killing infrastructure development when it’s the fastest-growing jurisdiction on the continent.
  • So far, Premier Alison Redford’s Canadian energy strategy sounds pretty half-baked.

But why think about stuff like that when there are Easterners to blame for everything?

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.