All posts tagged Alberta Conservatives

National Post poll bad news for Alberta Tories … in the unlikely event it’s right

by David Climenhaga on December 20, 2011 in Uncategorized with 1 Comment
A word of advice, boys: don’t bet all your kibbles on the results of a one-day demon-dialer poll! Alberta political analysts or the chances they take may not be exactly as illustrated.

Toronto’s National Post – or, as I prefer to think of it, the National Pest – states in its meta tags that it’s “Canada’s trusted source for national news, financial news, world news, blogging, twitter, tweets, opinion, vodcast, podcast, commentary, entertainment and sports.” Really, it does!

Nothing in there about polls, though, so we’re not going to get to report them to the Better Business Bureau, tonight anyway.

But for some reason the Toronto newspaper took it upon itself to publish details of a poll about Alberta politics. Who knows why? Their new managing editor lived in Calgary until recently, so maybe he got nostalgic for the warm tickle of a Chinook on his ears. (For you Easterners who aren’t in the know, a Chinook is a nasty warm wind that makes people act crazy when it blows. They get them a lot in Calgary and almost never in Edmonton, which may account for why we elect more New Democrats up here.)

Whatever the reason, the Post was happy to oblige with a story when a Toronto polling company called Forum Research, which has little or no track record in Alberta, took it upon itself to get the skinny on what we Albertans are really thinking, politics-wise. To do this, Forum used robotic demon-dialing technology to call 1,072 Albertans over the course of one day at the worst time of year to get people at home. Forum knows its respondents were all over 18, by the way, because they all pressed a button their phone saying they were.

By doing all this, Forum came up with results that would be extremely bad news for the Alberta Progressive Conservatives under Premier Alison Redford if they were true.

Based on this information, the Post’s reporter wrote a story that treated the poll credulously and concluded its results were good news for the Redford Conservatives. As previously noted, the local papers – which surely have journalists on what’s left of their staffs who know better – reprinted this yarn whole cloth.

The Forum poll’s key conclusion was that, on Dec. 14, anyway, the intentions of decided Alberta voters broke down like this:

Progressive Conservatives: 38 per cent
Wildrose Party: 23 per cent
New Democratic Party: 13 per cent
Alberta Liberal Party: 12 per cent
Alberta Party: 6 per cent
Other Parties: 9 per cent

The Post’s report reversed the numbers for the NDP and Liberals, and didn’t mention the “Other Parties” column, leaving some readers with the impression Forum’s numbers didn’t add up to 100. (They still don’t actually, but since they’re only off by one, we’re going to chalk that up to rounding.)

Now, if the Redford Tories are really at 38 per cent three or so months from a general election, they are in deep doo-doo. This would mean they are a full 15 per cent behind where they were at the time of the 2008 general election. It would put them close to their lowest level of popularity since first being elected more than 40 years ago.

So, if there were anything to this poll – and the mood around here sure doesn’t feel like it – it would not place the Redford Tories with “a strong lead heading in to next spring’s vote,” as the Post’s scribbler concluded.

In fact, since former premier Ed Stelmach announced he was stepping down last January, most credible polls have put the Conservatives in a much stronger position. For example:

Environics (Nov. 4-8) – 51 per cent
Citizen Society Research Lab (Oct. 1-2) – 48 per cent
Environics (July 15-24) – 54 per cent

Those results by pollsters who used credible methodology suggest the Forum poll is an outlier at best.

Some of the Forum poll’s other results strain credulity too. The Wildrose numbers seem unlikely, but are within the realm of possibility. The Alberta Party numbers, it is said here, stray across the line into fantasy. As for 9 per cent committed to other parties, we can only ask, what other parties? I know, the Communists and Social Credit run a few candidates now and then, but, uh … 9 per cent? I don’t think so, people.

The poll also concludes that Premier Redford’s personal approval ratings are low, Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith’s are high and Liberal Leader Raj Sherman’s are disastrous. There’s no mention of NDP Leader Brian Mason, despite the fact the New Democrats have outpolled the Liberals in several polls, including this one, and outpolled the Wildrose Party in one.

There’s plenty to like about Forum’s poll – but only if you’re a Wildrose supporter who hasn’t been paying attention. Naturally, the comments section of the Post was full of input from such citizens, concluding that “Wildrose should get 40 to 50 seats,” “Redford is a red tory and will destroy this province,” we need to “get rid of this socialist,” yadda-yadda.

My only advice to these nice folks: Don’t bet the bungalow or even the moose antlers in the den on the results of a single poll! They need to remember that this is the same company that back in June predicted that Ontario Conservative Leader Tim Hudak was well-positioned to form a majority government in October.

As for the Post, I guess, they really need to get polling onto that list of meta-tags.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Listen up, people! Hear the entire mystery push-poll for yourself

by David Climenhaga on November 1, 2011 in Uncategorized with 5 Comments
Your Voice Alberta pollsters somewhere in Alberta get ready to call you with the latest information about Alison Redford. Alberta push-pollers, of course, may not be exactly as illustrated. Click below and hear the push poll for yourself:

Push-Poll Questions by djclimenhaga

Well, we may not exactly be running the NSA, CHHQ or even the Communications Security Establishment Canada here, folks, but thanks to the Baker Street Digital Irregulars, we’re making a little progress toward discovering who’s behind that controversial push poll that’s been robo-calling Albertans the past few days.

Push polls, as previously discussed, are a slimy political campaigning technique imported from our Great Neighbour to the South, the goal of which is to plant doubts about their victims while pretending to be a humble data surveyor asking (not so) innocent questions.

The push poll caller – nowadays usually a robo-caller – purports to be doing a survey, but is really only pretending to conduct a poll. For this reason, it’s the opinion of your humble blogger that this is an unethical technique and that any organization that uses such a technique is unethical too.

Which is why, of course, it’s so interesting to speculate who is behind this poll.

The Alberta push-poll, first reported in this space on Saturday, attacks Conservative Premier Alison Redford by tying her to a federal Liberal policy the “pollsters” assume will be unpopular with Alberta voters, and in a rather harshly worded segment to the financial problems of a now-defunct company owned by her chief of staff.

The poll also identifies that senior staffer, Stephen Carter, as holding “the top civil service position in the province,” which is either a mistake or a misrepresentation.

Anyway, the point of all this rehashing is to remind you what we’re talking about when we tell you the real news – that we now have a name (although not really the name we want), a phone number (which doesn’t tell us anything much, yet, anyway) and an actual recording of the push poll, which I’m readers are burning to hear.

The name is “Your Voice Alberta.” (That would be, as in “Their Voice Alberta,” I guess, but who they are we don’t know yet. That is, we can’t prove who is paying YVA – although, as readers of this blog know, we have our suspicions.)

The number is 780-809-3687. If you call it, you’ll get a recording in the sort of sophomoric male voice your blogger associates with members of the Campus Republican Club at a third-rate university in a Midwestern state, but maybe that’s just me projecting. You can read some rather dull geek conversation about this number here.

And then there’s the recording of the actual push-poll robo-call, which you really should listen to if you want an education in how this sort of thing is done – right down to the reassuring baby-doll voice of the robo-questioner. (Happy Birthday, Mr. President…) To listen, click on the SoundCloud file at the top of the page, or here.

Just to make one thing perfectly clear, I didn’t make this recording myself. Rather, it was made available to me by one of the Digital Irregulars cited above.

As an alert reader will hear, from the moment of the beeps that signify an electronic push-poll vote being cast, that my electronic benefactor and I do not share precisely the same politics. Nevertheless, we obviously share the conviction that this is a sleazy and inappropriate technique, and we are sorry to see it has come to Alberta.

As was said in this space the last time this topic was discussed, it is the opinion of this blogger that Suspect No. 1 is the well-funded Wildrose Party led by Danielle Smith.

Since the mainstream media, which has deep pockets and more resources, now seems to be working seriously on this story, we may know in a little time if that is in fact true.

Certainly, it is interesting to note that since a post on this topic was last published in this space, there has been no denial or indeed any comment whatsoever from the Wildrose Party. But, of course, I am prepared to stand corrected, and to say so right here!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Wildrose leader nails the problem – but not the solution – with Calgary’s shortage of health professionals

by David Climenhaga on October 28, 2011 in Uncategorized with 5 Comments
The “Calgary South Health Campus” rises from a field in Calgary’s southeast corner. Below: Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith, Tory Health Minister Fred Horne, radio host Dave Rutherford.

I just hate to agree with Danielle Smith.

Regular readers of this blog will understand why I’m uncomfortable finding myself on the same side of any issue as the leader of the Wildrose Party, who is a right-wing fundamentalist whose policy notions would do untold harm to our province if she ever had an opportunity to implement them.

But on the issue of staffing the giant new hospital being built in Calgary’s southeast corner, a topic on which she extemporized at a $325-per-plate Wildrose Party fund-raiser last week, Ms. Smith’s analysis was bang on.

The topic came up during a question-and-answer period after lacklustre speech, in which she is said to have been assisted a little by the studiously neutral QR77 radio host Dave Rutherford lobbing softball questions at her. Ms. Smith suggested poor planning about staffing at the so-called South Health Campus will cause wards to be closed at other Calgary hospitals in the near future when the facility opens.

“I think we are in big trouble with the South Calgary hospital,” Ms. Smith said, according to the Calgary Sun’s account of the event. “I think what’s going to happen with the South Calgary hospital, they are going to be closing down wings and operating rooms of existing hospitals to be able to move staff around.”

She added: “I think Calgarians had reason to expect there was going to be an increase in capacity, an increase in beds, an increase in operating rooms … and ultimately a reduction in waiting lists and I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

Sad to say, it’s likely all too true.

Thanks to the catastrophic health-care policies of the Ralph Klein Government, which drove health care professionals out of the province and reduced available space in training programs for new ones, there’s still a shortage of all kinds of health professionals in this province that even wholesale raiding of South Africa can’t fix.

No doubt when the hospital starts to open next spring it will be officially named the Ralph Klein General Hospital in the great Alberta tradition of naming enormously expensive public health facilities after people who tried to privatize our public health care system. (Example: Edmonton’s Mazankowski Heart Institute, named for Conservative-Reform-Alliance Party stalwart Don Mazankowski, the author of a pro-privatization, pro-delisting report commissioned by Mr. Klein.)

Also thanks in part to the bumbling, confusion and wild changes of course under former Progressive Conservative premier Ed Stelmach’s government, this serious problem persists – although at least Mr. Stelmach seemed to come to his senses when he moved the eager privatizer Ron Liepert out of the health ministry in response to a general public rebellion.

Now, given the mixed signals being sent by PC Premier Alison Redford – on one hand, a promise to preserve public health care, on the other the restoration of Mr. Liepert to arguably the most important post in cabinet and the appointment of another friend of privatization, Fred Horne, to the health portfolio – it is far from clear what if anything the government intends to do.

There ends any agreement with Ms. Smith and her remaining hard-right Wildrose loyalists, of course.

After all, her policy prescription for solving the health professional shortage will be essentially the same as Mr. Klein’s, Mr. Mazankowski’s, Mr. Liepert’s, Mr. Horne’s and all the rest of them – more privatization, more market fundamentalism, two tiers, three tiers, and more tiers. And more tears, too, for those of us who can’t afford treatment in the Wildrose Party’s Americanized dream economy.

Notwithstanding the Wildrose Party’s care not to appear to advocate private health care, Ms. Smith hinted at this in her Q&A, in the words of the Sun’s reporter: “To deal with an acute shortage of nurses and doctors, she said the Wildrose Party believes in going back to a market-based approach to graduating enough of them to meet the needs of the population and ensuring they stay in the province.”

If you think about it, it would take state intervention, not the market, to solve both those problems. But with the very real shortage of health professionals, identified by Smith, there’s not much doubt that she’s right about what will happen when the $3-billion-plus south Calgary hospital goes on stream, whatever it’s called.

But “market-based solutions” are not what is needed to fix it.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Never mind the media narrative… the real fight’s between the NDP and the Wildrose!

by David Climenhaga on October 12, 2011 in Uncategorized with 1 Comment
NDP supporters in the streets of Edmonton. Caution, Alberta crowds may not be exactly as illustrated, and neither may Alberta polls. Below: Brian Mason; Queen Victoria and Prime Minister William Gladstone – cabinet making was always tough.

A poll by conducted during the weekend that the Tories were selecting Alison Redford as their leader illustrates why Alberta voters should be extremely cautious with the inevitable media claims the next provincial election will be a titanic battle between two articulate and powerful women leaders.

The telephone survey of 1,237 Albertans conducted Oct. 1 and 2 by the Citizen Society Research Lab at Lethbridge College, which shows the governing Progressive Conservative Party with an overwhelming lead in public support, tends to reinforce the conclusion of an Environics Research Group poll in July that showed the Conservatives with an even more commanding lead.

But if these two polls are in fact an accurate reflection of voter sentiments at the time they were taken, as seems likely given their methodology, then they strongly suggest that the real fight is not between the Tories under Alison Redford and the Wildrose Alliance led by Danielle Smith, which is almost certain to be the mainstream media narrative regardless of the facts.

If the Tories can hold onto their dominant position, the interesting battle will in fact be between the Wildrose Party on the right and the New Democratic Party under stolid old (and uninterestingly male) Brian Mason on the left to see who forms the Opposition.

According to both polls, the NDP and the Wildrose enjoy statistically identical levels of support province-wide. Both also have strong regional stomping grounds – the Wildrosers in Calgary and the NDP in Edmonton – an advantage in our first-past-the-post electoral system.

Indeed, forget such concepts as statistically identical and margins of error for a hopeful moment – the more recent CSRL poll shows the NDP running ahead of the Wildrose Party in overall support throughout Alberta.

Furthermore, again basing our conclusions on just these two methodologically sound polls, the NDP would appear to be the only party in Alberta right now whose support is growing.

So if present trends continue it is entirely possible that the NDP, and not the Wildrose Party, could emerge as the Official Opposition after the next election.

But don’t expect to hear this interpretation of the numbers from the mainstream media, which is deeply committed to the Titanic Battle Theory. Moreover, as we saw during the lead up to the last federal election, the media will do almost anything to downplay any talk about an Orange Wave, here in Alberta or anywhere else except Holland or the Ukraine. You have to forgive them, though, for they are so deeply set in their ways that they just can’t help themselves.

I can almost hear the squeaks and Tweets of protest from supporters of the Alberta Liberals, but, really, none of these polls shows anything like a promising trend for that party.

CSRL first: this poll places support among decided voters as follows:

Progressive Conservatives – 47.7 per cent
New Democratic Party – 16.3 per cent
Wildrose Party – 16.1 per cent
Alberta Liberals – 13.4 per cent
Alberta Party – 3.4 per cent

Environics second, back in July this telephone survey of 900 Albertans placed support among decided voters as follows:

Progressive Conservatives – 54.2 per cent
Wildrose Party – 16.4 per cent
New Democratic Party – 13.6 per cent
Alberta Liberals – 13.6 per cent
Alberta Party – 4 per cent

Now, as in all discussions of polling of this type, there are plenty of caveats about any conclusions based on this data or anyone else’s.

First, to muddy the waters, there are two other polls by a company called ThinkHQ Public Affairs. The ThinkHQ surveys – one back in July and the second of 1,000 Albertans between Sept. 19 and 24, use someone’s self-selecting online panel (Angus Reid’s, perhaps?) and consistently yield higher results for the Wildrose Party. Naturally, these are the results that are touted by Wildrose supporters.

The latest ThinkHQ poll put the Tories at 40 per cent support among decided voters, the Wildrose at 24 per cent, the NDP at 16 per cent, the Liberals at 14 per cent and the Alberta Party at 3 per cent.

As readers know, it’s the view here that online polls should be treated with a healthy dose of skepticism, especially when we don’t know important facts such as who actually did the polling. So it’s interesting that this polling company seems to consistently different results among right-wing parties but produce results in line with other pollsters for the centrist parties.

Second, all four of these polls are too early. Conservative support is bound to fall now that the governing party has a leader – and it wouldn’t have mattered who the leader was for this to happen. Premier Redford will have her fans and her detractors within Tory ranks, and some of the detractors will go somewhere else.

It remains to be seen if they move toward the Wildrose Party on the right or the NDP a little to the left, but it will take some time and then more polls to show us what is happening.

To a degree, this is likely to depend on Ms. Redford’s performance in office – and today, when she unveils her new cabinet, will have a lot to do with what happens next.

If she tilts to the right or appears to be underperforming sufficiently to disappoint the progressive non-traditional Tory voters who flocked to her side during her campaign, the NDP may benefit.

If she appears too much like a squishy lefty to the party’s market-fundamentalist and social conservative hard core, the Wildrose Party will probably benefit.

One thing is certain, cabinet building is the hardest job that must be faced by any premier. Ms. Redford must balance regional interests, the rural-urban divide, questions of diversity, points within the political spectrum under the big Tory tent, and personalities, almost all of them ambitious and some determined not to be thwarted. What’s more, she must do it without either alienating too many voters or causing a riot within her caucus.

If her choices today seem sound to you, even if you don’t particularly like some of the people involved, she has probably done her job right.

But if they seem flaky, they probably are!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Alison Redford’s premiership wrong-footed on Day 2 by brutal Calgary Sun story

by David Climenhaga on October 9, 2011 in Uncategorized with 10 Comments
The Calgary Sun’s front page Saturday morning. Below: Sun columnist Rick Bell; Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi; a technician demonstrates the proper procedure for handling a typical Sun story.

Has former Alberta premier Ed Stelmach’s bad luck rubbed off on newly installed Premier Alison Redford?

She’s been premier for, what? … two days now, and the Calgary Sun reports that a company owned by her new chief of staff, the political operator credited with her come-from-behind Progressive Conservative leadership victory over Gary Mar, “owes more than $600,000, most of it to the University of Calgary, and hasn’t coughed up a cent in court-ordered judgments.”

The daily tabloid ran the story under a brutal headline: “Chief of Stiff!” It was accompanied by a smiling studio portrait of Stephen Carter and a story by columnist Rick Bell about the financial woes of Mr. Carter’s defunct company, Carter McRae Events.

The Sun went to town with the story and the effect was ugly. Interestingly, the Calgary Herald – recipient of that 22,000-name PC Party membership list back in September that helped the Redford campaign – is so far ignoring it.

Now, the cast of characters involved in this brouhaha may provide some insight into what is still a developing situation.

The Sun is a tabloid newspaper that in recent years, apparently on the orders of its parent company in Quebec, has taken a hard turn to the right. During the last federal election campaign, it would be fair to say that the Sun moved from the mild rightward bias typical of all Canadian mainstream media to the use of its news columns to campaign openly for Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s federal Conservatives.

The Sun is now clearly lining itself up with the far-right Wildrose Party led by former Fraser Institute apparatchik Danielle Smith, and it would be reasonable to expect the same heavy bias in its news stories about the upcoming Alberta provincial election, expected next spring. While absurd, it’s likely the Sun will try to label Ms. Redford as a left-winger, or at least a “progressive.”

It would be fair to say that any Sun story on a Canadian political topic needs to be handled with a long set of tongs, lest it emit radioactive isotopes.

At the same time, Mr. Bell is a columnist with a history of breaking good stories and getting his facts right. He writes and speaks in a highly colourful fashion with a strong point of view, which it would be fair to say is not dissimilar from that of his employer. But he dots his i’s and crosses his t’s and, as we used to say in the newspaper business, “he knows how to spell cat.” So the chances are good that, whatever you may think of their interpretation, in this case the Sun’s facts are right.

If Mr. Bell likes to be called “The Dinger,” well, Alberta Diary has nothing to say about that.

Mr. Carter, meanwhile, has a reputation as a political gun for hire. Not only did he work for Ms. Redford, he is credited with the unexpected mayoral victory of Naheed Nenshi in Calgary last October. The cerebral, personable and small-l liberal Mr. Nenshi, Canada’s first big-city Muslim mayor, is now said to be polling better than any major-city mayor in Canada – at 86 per cent – and is therefore likely to remain the Chief Magistrate of Cowtown for a long time.

But, more importantly to this story, Mr. Carter also worked for a spell for Ms. Smith and the Wildrose Party, where the financial troubles of his company were known.

Mr. Carter told the Sun Ms. Smith knew about his money troubles. Ms. Smith also indicated to the paper she was aware of them. With its support withering in the polls, the Wildrose Party is clearly prepared to play hard and dirty to win, as the creepy U.S.-style video ads it released last Thursday and its cynical on-line advertising illustrate.

Only Mr. Bell, of course, can say who told him about this story, and when. And even he may not know his source’s motivations.

All this said, any attempt to blow this off as insignificant or to stall is not going to wash.

According to another Sun report, published on the paper’s website this evening, a spokesperson for the new premier’s office said Mr. Carter had made an appointment with Alberta’s Ethics Commissioner to discuss the situation before the story broke. The premier’s office will wait on the commissioner’s report before it decides what to do, said Jay O’Neill.

Alas, the author of this story is an excellent reporter trained by the very best in the field – that is to say, he was once one of my own journalism students at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology in Calgary. So I have to tell you, I trust this story too.

If there’s an axiom about political staff, it’s that they must never embarrass the politician they work for.

Unfortunately for Mr. Carter, as unfair as this all may turn out to be, if he doesn’t resign, his presence will continue to be a festering political problem for his boss.

Wasn’t everything supposed to change when Alberta’s unlucky 13th premier left office and No. 14 took over?

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Alison Redford sworn in as premier and … uh … that’s all for now

by David Climenhaga on October 8, 2011 in Uncategorized with 4 Comments
Alison Redford, the 14th premier of Alberta, raises her right hand and promises to be different from the last Conservative premier. Below, she greets well-wishers as she leaves the Legislature with her family.

Now that Alison Redford has been safely sworn in as Alberta’s first woman premier, the fun can really begin.

The gloves can come off – if they were ever on – and the Wildrose Party can plumb the depths of neo-Con/neo-Lib attack advertising.

The rest of us will get to see if Premier Redford can sustain the toughness and focus, not to mention hang onto the good luck, that marked her leadership campaign.

Beyond that, what more can be said about a swearing-in ceremony yesterday that was essentially a news-free photo opportunity?

Ms. Redford’s swearing in was cheerful, upbeat and mercifully warm – taking place, as it did, in the crowded confines of the Legislative rotunda. Security was tight, but not overwhelming. The speeches contained enough references to the Almighty to sound suspiciously like an American political event, although only one (in your blogger’s head) thanked Him (or Her) for the speedy pace at which the affair was concluded.

Someone sang O Canada, pleasantly if a little off key and pitched too low for even determined public singers to yodel along. There was a bagpiper. Everyone who was there seemed to have a fine time, even quite a few of Ms. Redford’s political opponents, a genus that may include several members of her caucus. There were chocolate-chip cookies, which were really quite good by Legislative standards.

So if there are auguries to be read in such things, they seemed reasonably promising for the new premier’s prospects. At any rate, they made for interesting contrast with the omens that accompanied Mr. Stelmach’s swearing in on a bitterly cold December day not quite four years ago.

That occasion was misty, occasionally snowy, gloomy and weirdly Russian. The cold itself may not have been a sign, but surely the decision to hold such a ceremony outdoors on Dec. 15 in a place that tends to be colder than Siberia was a harbinger of the steady stream of misjudgments that were to follow.

At any rate, while the crowd froze their feet to the to the unyielding pavement, men in long beards sang incomprehensible Slavic dirges to mark the beginning of Mr. Stelmach’s unlucky 13th Alberta premiership, which has bumped along as haltingly as the former premier’s peculiar diction ever since. Security was nonexistent – but who needed security when it was that cold? Later, indoors, there were canapés, hors d’oeuvres, trifles or something, whispered to have been prepared by one of the head of government’s many Ukrainian cousins.

If one really wanted to look now for portents of what’s to come, it was necessary to peer between the lines, if you’ll pardon a mixed metaphor, looking for dogs that didn’t bark.

Thus one local newspaper was reduced to tallying up who wasn’t there, and speculating on what it might all mean. Come to think of it, under the circumstances, that wasn’t a bad idea and I wish I’d thought of it.

Oh well, too late now. One big dawg that didn’t make it was Ron Liepert, who back in the day was Mr. Stelmach’s minister of health and privatization and more recently, having taken the cure, his minister of energy. Mr. Liepert has been doing whatever he can to prevent there ever being a judicial inquiry into the sorry state of health care in this province – reasonably enough, seeing as it’s likely he’ll end up wearing a significant percentage of whatever fault such an inquiry might find.

Mr. Liepert had Mr. Stelmach on side, and he apparently had the former front-runner, Gary Mar, in the same place. Alas for him, the horse he was betting on faltered in the home stretch and Ms. Redford – who defied her party and promised there bloody well would be a health care inquiry – triumphed.

Mr. Liepert has been pouting ever since, so his non-appearance – along with that of such former Stelmach ministers as Lloyd Snelgrove and Iris Evans – can hardly be marked down as a shocker. (Ted Morton was MIA yesterday too, but he was said by the paper to be dealing with a personal matter. Negotiating a return to the pensionable public sector, perhaps, at some unnamed “School” of voodoo economics?)

Still, writing up that kind of stuff was a better option for the sluggos of the daily media than some of the political alternatives – say, filing stories about the British Columbia premier’s neckline, which is reported to be plunging like the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

We can all give thanks, appropriately enough, that Premier Redford will be telephoning cabinet candidates over the Thanksgiving weekend, and possibly cooking up some actual policies soon after that, so the media and the blogosphere should have something more substantial to Twitter about very soon.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Will Gary Mar reinvent the Alberta Tories? Fat chance!

by David Climenhaga on September 27, 2011 in Uncategorized with 1 Comment
Gary Mar at the wheel of the new, improved, “reinvented” Alberta Conservative Party. Alberta politicians and the parties they lead may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: Mr. Mar, Ralph Klein and a Tory electoral strategist speaking with an Alberta voter about reinvention.

One of the Alberta Progressive Conservatives’ key talking points is that every few years since the sainted Peter Lougheed retired in 1985, the party “reinvents” itself through the selection of a new leader certain to be beloved by the public.

This tale has been repeated enough times that it seems to have been accepted by everyone in Alberta, and certainly in the Alberta media, as gospel.

It is, of course, mostly baloney.

Leastways, if the Alberta PCs really want to reinvent themselves in order to get a new lease on life with Alberta voters, they have two good choices left in the leadership contest now running through its final days: Alison Redford and Doug Horner.

Ms. Redford is brainy and tough. Tough enough that when she deals with underperforming staff, it’s said, to almost make it worth living the short life of a fly to perch on the wall of the cabinet room after she became premier. The international human rights lawyer and former justice minister has certainly been bold about talking back to the premier when he’s made foolish statements about teachers. She was also prepared to defend policies like the restorative justice program when the government was about to make dumb cuts. Her commitment to public health care seems genuine. And her “high risk” campaign has been paying dividends.

Mr. Horner is smart and visionary. He has the best narrative among the three candidates of how to position an oil rich Alberta for a successful future in an era of both high technology and petrochemical shortages. He’s a sincere believer in the value and power of education. The former deputy premier may not be an academic overachiever like Ms. Redford, but politics runs in his blood and he seems like a more sure-footed version of the thoroughly decent Premier Ed Stelmach. This should be a compliment, but in the topsy-turvy world of Alberta politics will probably doom him.

Either one would be an excellent choice. Either would truly represent a genuine reinvention of the Conservative Party.

Then there’s Gary Mar. Mr. Mar is smart and …

Well, who knows what else Gary is? He’s said precious little during this leadership campaign that indicates what he really thinks, or what really motivates him. There was that vague salute toward the so-called Third Way attack on public health care. And there is ritual obeisance to the power of the Old Boys Club that ran the government of premier Ralph Klein, under whom he served as minister of health, education and several other portfolios.

The Third Way, of course, was Mr. Klein’s failed attempt to bring U.S. style private health care to Alberta – foiled by the overwhelmingly hostile reaction of the public. One of Mr. Mar’s chief backers in the current contest, Ron Liepert, tried much the same thing when he was Mr. Stelmach’s health minister and nearly got run out of town before the premier moved him to a portfolio where he could do less harm. (Mr. Liepert also almost started an open war with Alberta’s teachers in a previous incarnation as education minister, but never mind that just now.)

It seems likely that Mr. Mar will try something similar again – renamed, of course, but hardly reinvented. He’ll probably call it Healthcare 3.5 or something suitably leading edge and digital.

Even Mr. Mar’s general election platform released yesterday – billed an intensive plan for his first 120 days – is long on promises and short on explanations. It promises fiscal discipline and restored education funding, plus “steps” to make health care and education stronger. The plan suggests, at least, that Mr. Mar won’t call a fall election – offering new hope to the opposition parties.

Mr. Mar is also backed by a long list of more than 30 Conservative MLAs, including the ultra-conservatives skidded from the leadership race on Sept. 17. Whatever else he is, after all, he is the anointed candidate of the Tory Old Boys, and that means MLAs with cabinet aspirations now figure they’d better scramble on board. Who can know what motivated ex-candidate Rick Orman, who is old, rich already and not an MLA.

Mr. Mar is also – as has been repeatedly noted as if this were a point in his favour – the preferred candidate of the catastrophic Mr. Klein. This has likely been the case for more than a decade, but only now after a comfortable spell as Alberta’s well-paid “envoy” in Washington have the planets come into alignment for Mr. Klein and Mr. Mar to see this dream become reality.

Given all this, in addition to Healthcare 3.5 and Mr. Liepert’s dream of high-cost private seniors’ care, which we already know about, we have to wonder what else Mr. Mar might find if he roots around long enough in his mentor’s bag of tricks, which alert readers will recall contained such treats as:

  • Delisting additional health services
  • Exploding public hospitals, or selling them for a song to friends of the government
  • Driving health care professionals to other provinces and countries, leaving lingering shortages of epic proportions
  • “Deregulating” monopoly utility companies
  • Cutting education funding and imposing kindergarten fees
  • Introducing regional planning chaos
  • Encouraging streets full of dusty robbery-magnet private liquor stores mostly run by Tory insiders
  • Opening the door to biker-run privatized registries
  • Rolling back the pay of public employees
  • Introducing a Republican flat tax that lets the middle-class pay the freight
  • And slapping user fees on everything to make Alberta, despite the propaganda, a high-tax jurisdiction

Did I miss anything else from the Klein years? Oh, probably.

Well, maybe this is all wrong. Mr. Mar could represent something new. But based on what little information we have, or are likely to get, that seems unlikely.

So, are the Alberta Progressive Conservatives about to reinvent themselves?

Fat chance!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Where will Gary run? A good question to ask on the campaign trail…

by David Climenhaga on September 24, 2011 in Uncategorized with 3 Comments
Conservative front-runner Gary Mar may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: Mr. Mar announcing his plans to run for Tory leader on March 17 in Edmonton; Ron Liepert, looking very much as if he didn’t want to be photographed, at Mr. Mar’s announcement.

Now that his leadership of the Alberta Conservative Party is all but assured, where will Gary Mar run for the Alberta Legislature? He can’t be premier without a seat in the House, after all.

Well, how about Calgary-West?

But wait, you must be thinking, that’s Ron Liepert’s riding! You know, Ron Liepert, who was made special ambassador to the Oil Boys Club by Premier Ed Stelmach after he flopped so disastrously as minister of health that Alberta seniors spontaneously booed him when he appeared in a crowd!

No worries about that, of course, as long as Mr. Mar has a special job for Mr. Liepert – say, chief of staff in the premier’s office!

OK, that’s just a rumour that’s doing the rounds hereabouts, but the fact that serious people are nowadays whispering an unconfirmed yarn like this nevertheless illustrates why Gary Mar could very well end up being a huge liability to the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta.

There’s just something about Gary, as a politician, that a heck of a lot of Albertans don’t like. There’s no particular news in that – the Wildrose Party’s been saying much the same thing for the better part of a year, ever since Candidate Mar hove into sight. But the Wildrosers say it’s because Mr. Mar is “too left wing,” when in fact the problem for the Tories may be the opposite, or close to it.

The real problem with Mr. Mar – which a lot of ordinary Albertans are starting to pick up on and discuss in their coffee shops and workplaces – is that he represents the Old Boys Club (which, of course, is closely tied to the Oil Boys Club) in the Tory caucus and party structure.

These are the people who since Ralph Klein was premier have run Alberta as if it were their private playhouse, and as if the massive tax dollars this province generates are theirs to do with as they please – say, paying $400,000 to a consulting company run by a personal friend to provide verbal “advice,” no record of which exists.

Indeed, Mr. Klein – the avatar of this arrogant and incompetent approach to running Alberta – has publicly endorsed Mr. Mar as leader, a recommendation, presumably, that carries enormous weight among the Tory Old Boys.

But Mr. Liepert as chief of staff? It would indeed be troubling to have a man whose ministrations left Alberta’s health care system on the critical list in such an influential position in the office of a premier who repeatedly refused to rule out privatization of health care during his leadership campaign.

It would be fair to say that Mr. Mar’s views about health care are well known and worrisome and that Mr. Liepert’s are very troubling indeed, especially when it comes to the model of high-cost privatized seniors’ care he promoted as health minister.

At the very least, the question of Mr. Mar’s relationship with Mr. Liepert needs to be asked during the few remaining days of this leadership race – which as far as the Tory insiders are concerned is supposed to end with Mr. Mar’s coronation on Oct. 1.

As premier, Mr. Stelmach was hobbled by the legitimate criticism early in his premiership that he had “no plan.”

This first appeared in the form a controversial television advertisement paid for by some labour groups, and led directly to several unconstitutional Conservative efforts to attack the right of Albertans to free expression during election campaigns and the right of unions to engage in political action on behalf of their members.

Notwithstanding that impact, the charge stuck – to a substantial degree because it was so obviously true – and resonated in the minds of the public.

At the same time, there was always something about Mr. Stelmach that a lot of Albertans instinctively liked – the sense he was at base an honest person, and that he was an outsider who had somehow fluked into power, someone a little removed from the most deeply cynical and self-interested instincts of the Alberta Conservatives. He even tried to raise oil royalties, for heaven’s sake, before the Old Boys slapped him down!

The association of Mr. Mar with the Tory Old Boys Club and its promise of a government of insiders, by insiders and for insiders, combined with the complete lack of enthusiasm or engagement he brings forth from ordinary Albertans, could very well turn into a legacy the Alberta Conservatives live to regret.

Alas, that is unlikely to happen in the general election campaign that is certain to follow the selection of Mr. Mar very quickly, while the party still enjoys a bump in public esteem.

But Mr. Mar is certainly no “reinvention” of the party, and if that is what Conservatives are hoping for from this leadership contest, they’d better get cracking about changing course in the few days they have left to do something about it.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

The ‘Freddy Lee’ Loser Factor: Albertans plain didn’t like a sneak

by David Climenhaga on September 18, 2011 in Uncategorized with 6 Comments
Finalists Gary Mar, Alison Redford and Doug Horner. The remaining Alberta Progressive Conservative candidates are, well, pretty much exactly as illustrated! Below: Dr. Freddy Lee Morton.

Never mind the winner. Yeah, Calgary lawyer Gary Mar got way more votes than anyone else – enough to clinch it decisively had Alberta’s Conservative leadership ballot count last night been in a normal first-past-the-post election.

But for the moment, there is no official winner, just three contestants still standing in the race to become Alberta’s Next Top Premier ™ and two more weeks in which they need to Keep Calm and Carry On.

The real story today is the loser. Say what you will about Albertans and their one-party ways, they’re true to their principles, and principled Albertans don’t like a sneak.

And let’s face it, by almost any reasonable yardstick of behaviour, that’s exactly what Ted Morton showed himself to be.

This is a guy who in January as minister of finance sandbagged his own premier for personal political advantage. Readers will recall how the American-born far-right ideologue in effect told Premier Ed Stelmach to let him bring down the Shock Doctrine budget he wanted or he’d quit and so would his supporters in caucus.

With the Wildrose Alliance appearing to breathe down the Tories’ necks at the time, such a maneuver would have left the premier with a political crisis he might not have been able to unravel. Disinclined to destroy the province’s economy and drive away his party’s moderate core to satisfy Dr. Morton’s notions of ideological purity, Mr. Stelmach astounded everyone except perhaps his wife Marie and pulled the plug on politics.

The self-described “every liberal’s nightmare, a right-winger with a PhD,” was also the candidate who most radically changed his story about what he believed in. In the 2006 leadership race that Mr. Stelmach won, Dr. Morton did pretty well by acting like the hard-right market fundamentalist he is.

Back then, he advocated a U.S.-style model for health care that would look like the way Albertans get veterinary care for their pets and livestock. This time, all of a sudden he was Medicare’s Greatest Friend. When the Calgary Herald started describing him as public health care’s great defender, many of us thought Alberta Conservatives would be fooled. Evidently not!

But the knife in his political heart was just a little thing: that Freddy Lee government email address he used that was uncovered mid-campaign by CBC investigative journalist Charles Rusnell.

Dr. Morton and his supporters tried to blow it off as something everybody does, and with his legal name to boot. But Albertans saw it for what it was: an intentionally deceptive tactic. And those who voted in the Tory election gave its dismissive and contemptuous defence the hearing it deserved.

Dr. Morton did a lot of work getting ready for this run. He had his supporters lined up and his political ducks in a row. It’s said here that Rick Orman, another candidate who staked out essentially the same economic position, did far better last night than he would have had Dr. Morton not been caught doing business behind a couple of names most Albertans didn’t know were his.

Dr. Morton would have done far better last night if he’d forthrightly owned up to using an email address he shouldn’t have, and apologized for his behaviour. He also would have done better if he’d just admitted he is what he is – a committed free-market foe of public health care. On health care, that’s exactly what he did in 2006, and he made it to the finals.

At this point, Danielle Smith and her far-right Wildrose Party will try to elevate Dr. Morton to sainthood to make their case no “true conservative” can be elected to lead the Conservatives. They’ll also try to use the relatively low turnout yesterday – 35,000 fewer voters than in 2006 – to argue their support is still stronger than polling shows it to be.

Well, good luck to them. A split right wing is never a bad thing. But don’t bet on the right-wing vote being all that spit, or the Wildrose being anything but obliterated, whether Mr. Mar, second-ranked Alison Redford or third-place Doug Horner wins the final battle in two weeks. Both Ms. Redford and Mr. Horner are former ministers in Mr. Stelmach’s cabinet.

And don’t assume that Mr. Mar will emerge the winner just because he has over 4,400 more votes than his two remaining challengers combined – everyone has two more weeks to cook up deals, sell memberships, and book the buses needed to bring their supporters to the polling stations.

But it’s probably safe to conclude that Dr. Frederick Lee Morton, also known as Ted, is finished in Alberta politics. Just guessing, but here’s a prediction he’ll soon retire south of the 49th Parallel, work for a right-wing “think tank,” and live very well indeed, thanks to the public service pension he doesn’t think anyone else should have. Or maybe he’ll go back to the University of Calgary, which is pretty much the same thing.

Meanwhile, one imagines Premier Stelmach, an honourable guy who had a harder time as premier than he really deserved, is pretty pleased with the outcome of last night’s vote.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

The Strange Case of Dr. Morton and Mr. Lee … not to mention that of Mr. Sparrow

by David Climenhaga on September 13, 2011 in Uncategorized with No comments
Dr. Morton and Mr. Lee. Note that Alberta political aspirants may not be exactly as illustrated. Below: Ryan Sparrow with some guy on a plane; the real Freddy Lee.

Having been accused of getting up to something with a real government of Alberta email account and a not-quite-so-real name, Progressive Conservative leadership candidate Freddy Lee “Ted” Morton has offered a sort of “rolled-up plea” before the court of public opinion.

First of all, plead the American-born neo-Con ideologue and his key supporters, sure he did it, but everybody does.

Second, even though he did do it, and even though everybody else does it too, he didn’t really do it, because he used his real name.

So, as Dr. Morton’s spokesperson, a fellow named Ryan Sparrow recently told my community’s newspaper, the St. Albert Gazette, “the leadership candidate does not believe he did anything wrong … ‘Absolutely not. The minister’s office followed all the rules and guidelines.’”

Indeed, according to the Gazette, Mr. Sparrow said that “having one email for public consumption and another for internal communication is not uncommon, and Morton’s secret account was a government one with his name. ‘The premier has said he does the same practice and the deputy premier, who is also a leadership candidate.’” (Emphasis added.)

The idea behind this line of reasoning being, presumably, that if the first part doesn’t succeed, then … the prosecution can just drop dead!

Never mind that everybody doesn’t do it. In fact, I’ll make a gentleman’s wager right now that while Premier Ed Stelmach, just to pluck one political name out of the air, may have a private email account, it’s not in the name of Edward.Michael@ … wherever.

And never mind that using his real name doesn’t get Dr. Morton off the hook, because almost nobody knew it was his real name, and Dr. Morton knew that.

In other words, Mr. Stelmach, who used to be called “Honest Ed” for a reason, would get it that anyone looking at such an address would assume it belonged to someone named Mr. Michael, and that that would be deceptive. (And by the way, people, just in case there’s a real Edward Michael working for the government of Alberta, please don’t go sending the poor guy emails today to find out if he’s really the premier. That’s called collateral damage, and it’s not nice when it happens to you or someone you care about.)

Of course, it’s not at all clear whether this little email imbroglio will hurt Dr. Morton. The prevailing opinion among both his neo-Con supporters, who obviously have a dog in the hunt, and cynical lefties who have seen how things operate in Alberta for far too long, is that it won’t make any difference.

Me, I’m not so sure. I think a lot of small-c conservative Albertans are honourable people – even if they hold some ideas about economics that I think are wrongheaded – and it’ll trouble them that their favourite candidate is a sneak. It may not trouble them enough to go back to the Wildrose Party, but it might bother them enough to vote for another right-wing candidate like Rick Orman or Doug Griffiths.

We’ll see on Saturday, I guess. But if I were Dr. Morton, I’d be thinking that I needed to change some opinions if I wanted to get my chance at last to take the Progressive out of Conservative in Alberta.

And what do you do when you need to change opinions? Why, “you hire opinion changers,” of course.

Anyway, that’s what the people at a little Ontario-based firm called Crestview Opinion Changes said last June when they welcomed none other than Ryan Sparrow to their team as a vice-president with responsibility for the company’s activities in Western Canada.

Mr. Sparrow’s “decade of experience in media relations, strategic communications and public policy will serve Crestview clients well in the areas of public affairs campaigns, provincial government relations and communications,” they said in an announcement that also noted their new VP’s tenure as an advisor to Prime Minister Harper.

And a couple of weeks ago, not long before Dr. Morton’s problems managing his email accounts became public thanks to the CBC, Mr. Sparrow’s name began turning up at the bottom of press releases published by Freddy Lee.

In fact, Mr. Sparrow can probably give some excellent advice to Dr. Morton about what to do, and what not to do, with his public email accounts, having had some interesting experiences in that area himself.

Alert readers will recall that back in the 2008 federal election campaign, Mr. Sparrow got in a spot of trouble himself for sending an email. Indeed, he was suspended from his role as a senior communications advisor to the prime minister after he sent an email to CTV news suggesting that the father of a Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan in 2006, who had criticized the PM’s Afghan policy, was a supporter of a Liberal candidate named Michael Ignatieff, who later was that party’s leader for a spell.

The Globe and Mail reported at the time: “‘Note that this guy is an Iggy supporter,’ the e-mail read, followed by a link to a page on Mr. Ignatieff’s website offering condolences on (the father’s) loss.”

This was apparently too much even for some of Mr. Harper’s stronger-constitutioned supporters. And who knows, that email may have been one of the reasons why Mr. Harper had to wait until 2011 to form a majority government?

Regardless, the Alberta neo-Con candidate and his experienced advisor now have until next Saturday to work on changing enough opinions to ensure that Tory voters remember Dr. Morton and forget Mr. Lee.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

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