All posts tagged Doug Griffiths

Tomorrow’s episode of Alberta’s Next Top Premier will see someone voted off the island!

by David Climenhaga on September 16, 2011 in Uncategorized with 4 Comments
A crowd of Albertans solemnly awaits word of the outcome of the first ballot in the Tory leadership race. Typical Albertans may not always appear as illustrated. Then again, maybe they will… Below: Ted Morton, Doug Horner and Alison Redford. Where’s Gary Mar’s hat?

After the voting ends at 7 p.m. tomorrow, Tory party brass should quickly count the first-round ballots in the Alberta Progressive Conservative leadership race – which may be why things feel around here like a surround-sound version of a TV reality show nowadays.

Only now, instead of America’s Next Top Model or whatever, it’s Alberta’s Next Top Premier, and everybody’s wondering which one of the contestants will have to pack up his (or her) stuff and leave the show forever Sunday morning – presumably after a round of tearful hugs and promises to really, really, really work on that modelling (political) career back in Wichita (Calgary).

Only one, you say! What’s this guy talking about? There’s three of them headed for oblivion!

Not really. Two of the candidates have already reached that destination – they just don’t know it yet. Face it, people, there’s no suspense about the fates of Rick Orman and Doug Griffiths. At best, they were never more than long shots and by the wee hours of Sunday at the latest, that assessment should have been confirmed.

There were always only four serious candidates – in alphabetical order by last name, Doug Horner, Gary Mar, Ted Morton and Alison Redford – and tomorrow one of them is going to be voted off the island. (The possibility of any one of them getting more than 50 per cent of the votes on the first ballot is almost as slim as Mr. Orman or Mr. Griffiths making it to the second.) Those are the rules as set by the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta.

And notwithstanding the continual left-right chatter of the pundits throughout the campaign, not much really separates any of these four – at least if you believe what they’ve been saying these past few weeks.

So, any bets? Not this blogger. Among those four, I call it too close to call.

And don’t even think about using the only available opinion poll of party members as a tipsheet – it turns out the whole thing’s a load of hooey that’s left egg on the faces of the pollster, the media and the Conservative Party nomenklatura.

Well, at least we get to see Postmedia’s true colours. Faced with a scandal of their own making for trying to engineer an advantage for their favourite candidate and a good horserace story at the same time, they have nothing to say “for journalistic reasons.” Good one! The next premier can keep that in mind the next time the pot starts calling the kettle black! It got so bad that even the normally sleazy Calgary Sun called them out on it!

Just hold on another day, they’re no doubt mumbling at the Calgary Herald’s morning news meeting as you read this, and after tomorrow they’ll forget all about where that bloody list came from! About that, unfortunately, they’re probably right.

After the first ballot, of course, there’s only one more week of suspense before Alberta’s Idol is picked and we move swiftly to an election before Alberta’s electorate cottons on to what’s happening.

And after that, in turn, Alberta’s most exciting political season in a generation will be all but over as the winner cruises to an easy and not very engaging 12th straight Tory majority and is swiftly and safely ensconced back in the Legislative Building that overlooks the mighty North Saskatchewan River.

Indeed, at the point, about the only suspense will be which of the two largest Opposition parties – the Alberta Liberals under the erratic Raj Sherman or the Wildrose Party under Fraser Institute apparatchik Danielle Smith – will implode first!

The speed of these two parties’ collapse will depend a little, of course, on whether either of them manages to elect anybody to the Legislature. If they do, they could linger for a little while, before they are absorbed into other parties or simply drop to the ground like the autumn leaves outside.

My money is on the Wildrosers falling first. These right-wing Tories, naturally enough, will swiftly gravitate back to their natural home with the Alberta Conservatives, with or without the provincial Tories’ current “Progressive” moniker.

Alberta conservatives of any stripe will find the Opposition benches uncongenial, and – as the publicly paid right-wing bloviator and estranged prime ministerial pal Tom Flanagan pointed out on the radio just this morning – they’ve already served their purpose by getting rid of Premier Ed Stelmach, who dared to try to raise petroleum royalties.

As for the Liberals, any who remain with seats in the House, one imagines, will swiftly separate themselves from their leader, then tear themselves apart in meaningless internal squabbles. All the while, they will be invoking the name of Laurence Decore and vowing to be back, bigger and better than ever. Those who lose their seats will quietly retire.

Then there are Alberta’s other opposition parties, the Alberta Party and the New Democrats.

According to one recent poll, the former is polling three percentage points above the Communist Party – within the margin of error!

It seems safe to conclude that the Alberta Party will soon officially concede that it is this province’s answer to the Theosophical Society and get back to doing what it does really well – organizing after-church coffee parties.

As for the NDP, well, pardon me, but someone has to be in opposition, even in Alberta!

Notwithstanding the inevitably furious yowls of the enRajed Shermanites that I’m just a Knee-Dipper willing to curtsey to any perfidy to benefit my party – that’s the role the Alberta New Democrats may be doomed to play starting in the 41st year of the Tory dynasty.

Well, as Tommy Douglas is reputed to have said, the first thing we have to do is get rid of the Liberals. After that, as Tommy didn’t say – but would have, had he stuck around long enough to see them – the Wildrosers need to go too.

These are rare sentiments on which good Tories and New Democrats can agree as we sit down to contemplate whether that orange glow in the eastern sky will stick around after the morning mist clears.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Ted Morton says everybody does it? Well, stand up straight Alberta, and listen to your mother!

by David Climenhaga on September 9, 2011 in Uncategorized with 8 Comments
Do what your mama tells you! Below: My Mom, circa 1937; Ted Morton; Charles Rusnell.

It’s been a few hours now since a CBC investigative reporter revealed that front-running Conservative leadership candidate Ted Morton used a fake name on a real government email address to evade Freedom of Information searches and had government documents pertaining to his ministry shredded when he left office.

As a result, we now know the details of Dr. Morton’s brazen defence of his outrageous behaviour: Everybody does it.

Now, I don’t know about your mom, or Dr. Morton’s mom down there in Wyoming, but my mom told me that just because everybody else did something didn’t make it right. More than once she also advised me that just because everyone else was doing something didn’t mean that I was going to get to do it any time soon.

My mom’s no longer with us, but her advice remains pretty sound, I think. Ted Morton should have paid attention. I can tell you that Mom used to vote Conservative, but I’m pretty darned sure she wouldn’t vote for Dr. Morton.

Dr. Morton’s ‘covert email’

OK, let’s rewind for those of you who haven’t been following this story all day long.

Early yesterday morning, CBC investigative reporter Charles Rusnell broke a story that said Dr. Morton, a neo-Con intellectual, sometime “Senator in Waiting” and former minister of finance and of sustainable resource development in Premier Ed Stelmach’s cabinet, “used a covert email for his internal communications while he was a government minister to evade potential public scrutiny.”

As part of his leadership campaign, Dr. Morton makes a big deal of calling for transparency in government.

“Emails leaked to CBC News show Morton used the name Frederick Lee – his actual first and middle names – as an official government email address while he was minister of Sustainable Resource Development (SRD),” Rusnell wrote on the CBC’s Website.

Dr. Morton used his official Freddy Lee email account to discuss the extremely controversial details of his land-use legislation, which has caused a brouhaha in rural Alberta and has been a major rallying point for the far-right Wildrose Alliance, allowing that party’s supporters to portray themselves as defenders of “property rights.”

When Dr. Morton left the cabinet, Mr. Rusnell also quoted a government official saying, “our office staff shredded all our documents when Dr. Morton resigned from cabinet.” The documents shredded included the Freddy Lee emails.

Shredding documents of historical or forensic value is not a government employee’s decision to make – unless, as it turns out, the minister in question is a neo-Con ideologue to whom the rules don’t apply.

Dr. Morton’s everybody-does-it defence

OK, that was the situation by early afternoon, when Dr. Morton was scheduled to show up at an Editorial Board meeting of the Edmonton Journal.

Dr. Morton’s instinct, obviously, was to bob and weave. He snuck in and out of a back door at last Thursday’s leadership forum in Red Deer to avoid the famously dogged Mr. Rusnell, who was waiting outside with a cameraman and a long list of questions (no doubt prepared well in advance and in the right order to aid the preparation of his story).

With no opportunity to gracefully wiggle out of the editorial board meeting, Dr. Morton chose to try to blow his behaviour off as standard operating procedure. “‘I know it’s common practice (federally), not just for cabinet ministers, but for MPs’ to have more than one email account, one public and one internal, and then perhaps an additional internal one,” the Journal live-blogged during the meeting.

This in fact is true. The difference is, of course, that they’re both in the same name. Even Jack Layton had a private email account – in the name of Jack Layton, of course, not “Freddy Lee Layton” or its equivalent

“Anybody’s who’s the head of a public or private corporation follows the same type of practice,” the Journal quoted Dr. Morton as saying. “There’s a public email, and one or two internal ones.”

So there you have it, the first pillar of his defence: Everybody does it.

“If I was trying to avoid FOIPP, I wouldn’t have used my own name,” he told the Journal, conveniently forgetting that he used a version of his own name that he knew no one would know. “Morton says he believes the archived emails would be maintained by a systems operator” – well, you can believe that if you wish, I guess.

In Alberta we shoot, shovel and shut up

The probability seems high that documents and emails were destroyed illegally, but we’ll have to wait for a planned investigation by Alberta’s outgoing Information and Privacy Commissioner, Frank Work, which was reported yesterday evening by the Globe and Mail.

No one seems to know right now what the Alberta government’s rules are for this sort of thing. Here’s a link to the B.C. government’s approach, under which Dr. Morton would not have been allowed to destroy all his mail.

The good news is that Mr. Work can be as dogged and independent as Mr. Rusnell. The bad news is that even fast-tracked, there’s no way the investigation can be completed in time for the Tory leadership first ballot, a week Saturday on Sept. 17.

And while this is not exactly said in Dr. Morton’s defence, Alberta government insiders have known that since Ralph Klein was premier the destruction of public records has in fact become a practice that is not unknown in this government.

As Mr. Klein himself described his philosophy during the Mad Cow Disease crisis in 2003, “any self-respecting rancher would have shot, shovelled and shut up.” This kind of thinking means that when future historians come to study the Klein, Stelmach and – God help us! – the Morton years, there will be huge holes in the story.

The interesting question now is whether this will affect Dr. Morton’s candidacy. It’s simply hard to predict if this will be enough to move right-wing Albertans back to the Wildrose Alliance, or toward support for untainted Tory candidates like Rick Orman and Doug Griffiths who are also on the right side of the political spectrum.

One of Dr. Morton’s strengths – a reason he’s thought to have moved back into the front-runner position in recent weeks – has been his assiduous work over the summer with conservative evangelical Christians. One would think, surely, that people espousing such a doctrine would be troubled by this kind of conduct!

Everybody does it? That excuse just won’t cut it if Albertans are listening to their mamas!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Alberta Tory popularity sure to dip when a leader is chosen; dispatches from the leadership front lines

by David Climenhaga on September 8, 2011 in Uncategorized with 1 Comment
Million-dollar Morty with Dime-less Dave: What trouble awaits the Conservative frontrunner on the morrow? You’ll have to tune in to the CBC to find out. Below: Reporter Charles Rusnell, Raj Sherman, Hugh MacDonald and Rick Orman.

With the Alberta Progressive Conservatives riding high in the opinion of the public right now, it is axiomatic that the party’s popularity with voters will slump the instant it chooses a new leader.

The important question no one knows the answer to, of course, is, by how much?

The Conservatives are enjoying a bump right now because Premier Ed Stelmach was unpopular with a lot of Albertans from all parts of the Tory voting spectrum. The party began to soar back to its traditional high esteem with the province’s voters as soon as Mr. Stelmach announced his intention to step down.

Now that we are in the final 10 days before the first PC leadership vote, the party is probably at or near its high point for support because there are real and substantive differences among the six candidates seeking Mr. Stelmach’s job.

So if the party moves further to the right by electing any of Ted Morton, Rick Orman or Doug Griffiths, centrist voters who nevertheless might vote Conservative will be tempted to abandon the Tories for one of the parties of the centre or the left.

On the other hand, if the party moves back toward the centre, as it will be perceived to be doing if Conservatives choose any of Gary Mar, Doug Horner, Alison Redford, the vocal Conservative right fringe may move back to the Wildrose Alliance.

Either way, the Conservatives are virtually sure to lose some of their current support whichever way they turn because you just can’t please all of the people all of the time.

Who would benefit politically from such shifts? If the Conservatives lurch to the right, it could mean a bump for the Liberals, who are expected to select the popular but mercurial Dr. Raj Sherman as their leader on Saturday.

But by the time an election rolls around, it is said here that trend would more likely benefit the Alberta New Democrats, who are united and experienced, and may still be on the crest of a bit of an Orange Wavelet. The Liberals under Dr. Sherman are not likely to be united for long, and Alberta Liberals will never benefit from a phenomenon like the Orange Wave federal NDP leader Jack Layton generated before his death. Over time, the Liberal-like Alberta Party might benefit too, but they are barely on the radar at the moment.

If the party moves toward the centre, the chief beneficiary will naturally be the far-right Wildrose under former Fraser Institute apparatchik Danielle Smith.

So true party loyalists among the NDP and the Wildrose alike can probably be forgiven for crossing their fingers hoping for the result likely to benefit their party most.

The question, of course, is will such movement by voters be significant enough to prevent an overwhelming victory by the Conservatives under any leader in the election they are likely to call as quickly as they can?

Mentioned in dispatches: and not in a good way!

The Liberal race grows tighter?

With the Alberta Liberal leadership vote now under way on-line and due to be counted Saturday, and the Conservative first ballot a mere 10 days away, both races are starting to heat up, with some interesting developments on the front line.

Former Conservative Raj Sherman, who some reports said has signed 18,000 supporters, has seemed a cinch to win the Liberal race since party officials threw it wide open, U.S. primary style.

Nevertheless, Dr. Sherman was doing everything in his power today to persuade supporters to actually get out and vote. In a series of urgent Tweets, he warned them that “our campaign is in TROUBLE, Our Vote is not coming out.” Shades of Ryan Hastman, the Tory candidate who tried a similar technique in the days before he was beaten in the federal election by Edmonton Strathcona MP Linda Duncan.

Another Tweet suggested 2,000 Sherman backers had failed to get the PIN they needed to vote, and begged them to vote in person on Saturday.

Meanwhile, candidate Hugh MacDonald has been grumpily telling reporters that Dr. Sherman’s victory is not the sure thing the punditocracy has declared it to be, noting that political success follows funds raised more than members signed. And, indeed, he has raised $50,780 compared with Dr. Sherman’s $36,672.

In the last few days, Mr. MacDonald has been busy phoning many of Dr. Sherman’s supporters, presumably to check if any of them answer from the grave or can only say meow.

Good news, bad news for Ted Morton?

The Edmonton Journal last night reported that right-wing Conservative candidate Ted Morton, who released a list of his contributors today, has raised over $1 million in donations.

The timing of the revelation by the Morton camp was interesting, coming the night before the putative release of a negative story about the former finance minister by the CBC.

CBC investigative reporter Charles Rusnell (@charlesrusnell), who was unsuccessfully dogging Dr. Morton’s footsteps at last Thursday’s Conservative leadership forum in Red Deer, Tweeted this last night: “What’s Ted Morton got to hide? Find out on CBC radio YEG @ 7:12 a.m Thurs; YYC @ 8:10; Online @ cbc.ca/edmonton + CBC TV @5/6.”

Mr. Rusnell won’t say what the story’s about. A little bird of the variety that doesn’t Tweet says one word: “Emails.”

A rocket for Danielle Smith

Speaking of emails, a former Wildrose staffer who says she was responsible for handling membership lists has emailed a plea to current Wildrose supporters to back right-wing Conservative candidate Rick Orman instead of her former boss Danielle Smith, whom she accuses of “lusting for power.”

Citing a recent Calgary Herald story about defections from Wildrose back to the Tories, the emailer accuses Ms. Smith and her inner circle of “true contempt for the grassroots of the Wildrose Party,” falling attendance at party events and sinking contributions. “The level of disrespect that has been shown to your hard-earned and generously given contribution dollars by Danielle and company were a significant part of why I chose to leave the Wildrose Party,” the letter states.

Click here to read the entire text of the email.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Red Deer leadership candidates forum helps illustrate why no Tory collapse is in sight

by David Climenhaga on September 6, 2011 in Uncategorized with 7 Comments
Rivals: Conservative leadership candidates Ted Morton, left, and Doug Horner, right, (warily?) chat moments before the leadership forum in Red Deer last Thursday. Below: Horner, Morton, Gary Mar, Alison Redford, Doug Griffiths and Rick Orman.

Sorry, there’s no pleasure in saying this, but the Alberta Progressive Conservatives just aren’t going to collapse in the next provincial election.

On the contrary, they may very well increase their number of seats.

Well, OK, anything could happen. There was a time last year when it looked as if it might happen to the Alberta Conservatives. But then Premier Ed Stelmach up and announced he was going to quit, confounding his enemies and astounding his friends.

It’s also still true that Canadian electorates, even in Alberta, are volatile right now. But all that means is that the Tories will call an election as quickly as they practically can once they’ve chosen a leader – and it’s said here that whoever they choose doesn’t really matter very much to their chances of continued political success.

The most recent poll we’ve seen says that with Premier Stelmach about to go out the door, the Tories are again riding high. And while there’s no additional documentary evidence for this just yet, it’s very hard to shake the feeling that they’re riding even higher now than they were in the Environics poll in July that showed them with more than 50-per-cent support province wide.

Count on it that various political parties and others are conducting their own polls. Do you think for a minute that the Wildrose Alliance, for just one example, wouldn’t be trumpeting the results if they had a poll that showed anything but another Tory electoral juggernaut?

So don’t bet the farm – or even the cost of a case of beer – on anything but another Tory majority in Alberta, and soon.

Last Thursday’s public forum in Red Deer for the six candidates vying for leadership of the Alberta PCs provided a good illustration of how this phenomenon works. It’s pretty simple, actually: After 40 uninterrupted years in power, they have bench strength, and money, that no other party can match.

Each one of the six people on the stage in Red Deer is an extremely talented politician who has gone far beyond merely mastering the essential skills of politics. It was apparent after five minutes of questions that not one of these seasoned players was likely to make a minor fumble, let alone the kind of major mistake that the media prays for before an event of this sort.

Rick Orman and Alison Redford seemed a little tired. Gary Mar’s rollercoaster oratory lends itself to parody. As for “mistakes,” that was about it. Ted Morton sounded like the frontrunner he’s again reputed to be, Doug Horner sounded like a man on a bit of a roll himself, and Doug Griffiths’s performance was far stronger than I expected.

This isn’t a commentary on their policy positions – which range from pretty reasonable to bordering on abhorrent. It’s merely an observation about their political skills: In the skills department, the Tories are the A-Team of Alberta politics.

Yeah, the party has its share of elected goofs and nonentities. With a caucus that big, how could they not? And other Alberta parties have politicians who can play in the big leagues too – consider Rachel Notley of the New Democrats and Danielle Smith of the Wildrose Alliance for two. But it really is a remarkable thing – and a depressing one from the perspective of a supporter of another political philosophy – that the Alberta PCs can field a whole group of leadership candidates this gifted.

It suggests that Premier Stelmach was an aberration – or merely unlucky – not the beginning of a downward trend.

This is possible because after so many years in power, as the Globe and Mail put it in a recent article, the Conservatives “are the New York Yankees of Alberta politics: It’s not a question of whether young political talent will sign on, but when and for what.”

Indeed, so skillfully did the six candidates skate around potential hazards, that your blogger was reduced to grading them on the basis of their performances and Tweeting their marks out to the masses. The marks handed out ranged from a C to an A. But really, people, without the benefits of a little Bell Curvery (just as students always suspect) they all would have gotten A-!

Oh, and they were all civil to one another – obviously having concluded that not being polite would confer no advantage on the candidate who chose to be rude. Compare this to the gong show at one of the recent Alberta Liberal Party candidate forum on any level!

Unless something big happens between now and election day – and here’s betting nothing much does – these Tories are going to walk away with it all again.

The only other party that has any hope of upward movement – and this is not just partisanship speaking – is the New Democrats. Indeed, it’s possible that without increasing the size of their two-person caucus, the NDP could end up as the Official Opposition!

The day will come when the Alberta Progressive Conservatives are swept away on the tide of history. But that day won’t be in 2011 or 2012.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Conservative leadership candidates have high-speed rail line brainwave: All aboard for environmental and financial disaster!

by David Climenhaga on September 2, 2011 in Uncategorized with 9 Comments
Stand back! A high-sped rail car gets ready for the rocket-ride to Calgary. Below, alternatives models, and leadership candidates Doug Horner and Alison Redford.



RED DEER

Uh oh! The idea of a high-speed passenger rail link between Edmonton and Calgary reared its unattractive head at the Conservative leadership all-candidates’ forum in Red Deer last night, maybe because the place is almost exactly halfway between Alberta’s two big cities.

And like the paid reporters, it was the only thing your blogger could think of to write about in a hurry at the strangely bloodless if well-attended event, especially with a 90-minute drive over rainy roads between the candidates and the computer!

There was a CBC TV reporter running around trying manfully to trap an elusive Ted Morton for some kind of scoop – so I guess that’ll be the big headline when he finally corners him. And there were about 700 people there, which has to be good news for the Conservatives and a sign they’re enjoying a strong post-Ed-Stelmach rebound.

There was plenty of troubling and misleading talk about the need for a review of labour legislation to make Alberta more “competitive,” code for backing the government’s most anti-union financers. More about this in a future post.

And there was a buzz among the gathered politerati that the mantle of frontrunner has somehow slipped from the shoulders of Gary Mar onto those of far-right ideologue Ted Morton. But analysis of that will also have to wait for the light of day.

In the meantime, readers, you’re just going to have to settle for the darned train story.

In the past, proponents have pushed this scheme as good for Alberta’s economy. Nowadays, the Conservative leadership candidates are also promoting it as “green” – environmentally friendly, that is – and high-tech.

Last night, five out of six of the candidates were warm to the idea – with Doug Horner and Alison Redford the warmest. Doug Griffiths uttered the most sensible words on the topic, which were to advise listeners to think of all the schools and hospitals you could build with the amount of money it would take to build a high-speed rail link!

And Mr. Mar got a laugh when he noted that he’d told then-premier Ralph Klein that if Alberta ever built the line, he wanted to be the minister responsible. “He asked why, and I said that after 100 years of building railroads in Canada, Chinese people wanted to move from labour to management.”

But the format didn’t allow candidates to get into any detail about how much they’d thought about this idea, which in fact has the potential to be both a financial and environmental disaster.

But a bad idea is never so dangerous as when it allows self-interest to masquerade as high principle. And with their Sept. 17 first ballot bearing down on them like – well, a speeding train – this is precisely the sort of situation the Conservative leadership candidates now find themselves in.

As has been said once before in this space, a high-sped rail link must look like a mega-project that will burnish Alberta’s tarnished environmental image at home and abroad and at the same time promise loadsadough to the government’s private-sector pals. But this just makes it a dangerous idea, as well as a bad one.

The idea fails for three principal reasons:

  1. Providing power to run the trains would be both a financial and environmental burden
  2. The line itself would create grave environmental problems
  3. The project would cost a fortune and likely fail commercially

Modern high-speed passenger trains are not pushed forward on billowing sails. They need electricity, and lots of it, to move. Just how much is subject to vigorous disagreement – they may be more efficient than passenger airplanes, or less efficient than automobiles. It depends on which scientist you’re talking to.

But one thing is certain. In Alberta, the power required to drive fast trains from Edmonton to Calgary would have to come from coal-fired plants. That means greenhouse gas emissions. So while the train itself would be superficially “clean,” its power would not be.

So if we build this line, expect calls for a nuclear power plant – another expensive technology that is superficially “clean” but really isn’t.

High-speed trains are almost unimaginably fast. The old ones run at about 250 kilometres per hour. An experimental train in Japan, where they don’t have to contend with blowing snow, hit speeds in excess of 580 km/h! Can you imagine what happens when a train hits a deer – let alone a pickup truck – at that speed?

So forget about level crossings anywhere between Calgary and Edmonton – and add that to the cost. Expect significant impacts on animal migration, surface roads and existing rail lines. Get ready for lots of bird deaths along the power lines as well. And be prepared for significant upward impact on initial cost estimates.

The cost of the Edmonton-Calgary line has been estimated in the past at between $3 billion and $20 billion. Last night, one of the candidates mentioned $10-billion, a nice round number. In reality, $20 billion is probably too low. An environmental analysis for a similar U.S. proposal put the true cost at $33 billion US!

The most compelling argument against this idea, however, is the gaping flaw in its business model – something not one of the candidates mentioned. It simply cannot succeed without billions of dollars of infrastructure at either end. A big parking lot in Edmonton and Calgary isn’t going to be good enough.

Travellers will not use a high-speed rail connection without efficient public transport at either end. If they can’t get around the other city – and they can’t now – they will drive. The trip takes only three hours. They can even stop for coffee in … Red Deer!

If this sounds to you like the Edmonton International Airport development fiasco, you’d be right.

So another multi-billion-dollar mega-project would be needed just to make the business plan make sense.

This is a political idea, not a practical one, as befits a political leadership forum where candidates would like to stay away from topics that make voters really mad.

If Albertans are looking for an environmental project that makes sense, we should spend our billions on such unsexy but workable ideas as public transit in the big cities and a government-run bus system for rural areas.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

No new candidates join Tory leadership race; Calgary not destroyed by earthquake again today!

by David Climenhaga on July 18, 2011 in Uncategorized with 2 Comments
The Alberta Tory leadership candidates, from left to right: Doug Horner, Gary Mar, Doug Griffiths, Ted Morton and Rick Orman. Alison Redford can be glimpsed crossing the street in the background. Real Conservative candidates may not actually resemble Herman’s Hermits quite so much. Second verse, same as the first… Below: The four leading would-be leaders, Mr. Mar, Mr. Horner, Ms. Redford, Dr. Morton.

Well, the race to replace Ed Stelmach as the Conservative premier of Alberta is officially under way and the only surprise is that there are no surprises.

As even the Edmonton Journal headlined it, notwithstanding the need of the market-driven media to turn this into an exciting horserace: “Shortage of surprises as Tories finalize their leadership bids; familiar faces set to battle for top job as provincial Conservatives prepare for internal vote.”

In other words, at least at this point, Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…..

Oh well, there are still 62 days for something exciting to happen… The first vote is scheduled to take place on Sept. 17. If that fails to produce a clear-cut winner, a runoff ballot between the three top vote getters is scheduled for Oct. 1. Any Albertan who pays five bucks for a Conservative Party “membership” is eligible to vote, as well as to be counted later when the Tories want to boast about how popular they are.

When the nomination deadline passed Friday, the six candidates we discussed here back at the end of May were still the only six candidates in the race: Ted Morton, Doug Horner, Doug Griffiths, Gary Mar, Alison Redford and Rick Orman.

Nomination Day was so dull it’s hard to write this story differently from anyone else’s, so I’ll just quote Graham Thomson from the Journal, who actually gets money to pound out this stuff: “They all paid the $40,000 entry fee and submitted nomination papers signed by at least 500 card-carrying party members.”

Three other candidates had dropped hints they were pondering a run. But in the event, Employment Minister Thomas Lukaszuk called a news conference and said he’d be backing Gary Mar and Culture Minister Lindsay Blackett answered his phone and said he’d be backing no one for the time being, thank you very much. Health Minister Gene Zwozdesky? Well, his putative run ended with a whimper, not a bang. He just didn’t bother to show up.

Back in May, I wrote the candidates all up as if they were horses in a racetrack tipsheet, concluding: Mar to win, Morton to place, Horner to show, and Redford the Wild Card.

Notwithstanding their various caucus endorsements – not a good guide to leadership race success as B.C. Premier Christy Clark proved not so long ago with the support of only one caucus MLA – I don’t know that I’d revise that opinion today. Ms. Redford has run a better campaign than I expected, Mr. Mar’s campaign has been less engaging than anyone could have predicted and both Dr. Morton and Mr. Horner have been so low key you almost can’t see them for the grass. Presumably they’re up to something….

So here’s my revised tipsheet, this time in reverse order of my assessment of their likely success. The results, come to think of it, make me think of Herman’s Hermits: “Second verse, same as the first!” Caucus support numbers are courtesy of Dave Cournoyer’s excellent Daveberta.ca blog.

Doug Griffiths: At 38, the Battle River-Wainwright MLA is the youngest in the race. As a member of the short-lived “Fiscal Four” he’s on clearly on the party’s fiscally conservative side. He’s smart and speaks well, but, really, he’s mainly in the race to make a name for himself. If he fails to do well on the first ballot, he won’t have done himself any favours. Does he have any money? Who knows? He has $40,000 less than he had two weeks ago, anyway – hope he didn’t remortgage his house! He’s supported by only one MLA, another member of the former Fiscal Foursome. (Yet another has decamped to the Wildrose Alliance and the last is backing Dr. Morton.)

Rick Orman: This well-heeled Calgary oilman, youthful-voiced radio political commentator and former cabinet minister is nearly 63, so he saves Dr. Morton the embarrassment of being the oldest candidate in the race. He’s just as far to the right as Dr. Morton, maybe further, clearly trying to encroach on Wildrose Alliance territory. But as a relic of the era of premier Don Getty, he’s so far from politics he is only the longest of long-shots. Caucus supporters: Zero. But he’s said to have pots of money, so at least he can have fun. Despite some very enthusiastic supporters, I haven’t seen anything that persuades me to revise this assessment.

Now it gets hard, the order part, at least, because I still think any of the next four could come out on top.

Alison Redford: Only 46, well known as an international legal authority, a polished performer and as tough as nails, the only woman in the race is the brainiest of this lot by far. The question is, would voters who loved a Grade 9 dropout like former premier Ralph Klein take to someone who is so obviously smart, and who also has a reputation for suffering fools so ungladly that, like Margaret Thatcher, she could probably make a manly cabinet minister cry? The first-term MLA for Calgary-Elbow and former Justice Minister leans to the Red Tory side of the party equation but is hard to categorize. She’s run a smart campaign and is said to have lots of money to run it with. She certainly has high-profile donors. Her political staff have made some clever moves and forced the debate onto her turf. If there’s a wild card who could come from behind to win, Ms. Redford is it. She has the support of only one MLA.

Doug Horner: Former deputy premier, long-time cabinet heavy hitter and part of Mr. Stelmach’s inner-circle, the 50-year-old MLA for Spruce Grove-Sturgeon-St. Albert has experience and a steady hand on his side, but his reputation as “Ed Stelmach Lite” is still working against him. He’s more conservative than the party’s right-wing opponents give him credit for being, but he’s clearly part of the party’s moderate centre. He’s got the support of a dozen MLAs, the largest group, mostly from rural ridings that reflect Premier Stelmach’s power base. One suspects he may have the personal support of the premier as well, although Mr. Stelmach has never said.

Ted Morton: No question that the American-born Dr. Morton, 62, a University of Calgary PhD political scientist known for his hard-line fiscal views, is the darling of the party’s right wing. Unless, of course, it’s Rick Orman that they love. As such, he’s the most likely candidate to woo back defectors to the Wildrose Alliance, but also the most likely to frighten moderate voters away. After a strong finish in the 2006 leadership race, the Foothills-Rocky View MLA is said to have hung onto his supporters’ contact information, so he should have a leg-up on the first ballot. If he doesn’t win on the first ballot – a possibility the similarly elderly Mr. Orman makes less likely – it is said here he’s finished. He has the support of 10 MLAs.

Gary Mar: Relatively youthful at 48, Mr. Mar is smart, and, as holder of several important portfolios under premier Klein, experienced. As Alberta’s “envoy” to Washington, the Calgary lawyer remained in the public eye, but far enough from government to be relatively untainted by Mr. Stelmach’s blunders. He’s also the favourite of the Conservative party establishment, which should be a plus, and is backed by the same crowd of political insiders that backed Calgary businessman and former favourite Jim Dinning back in 2006, which may not be. He’s got a big budget, but his campaign has been weirdly uninspired to date. He has the support of 11 MLAs, including a passel of cabinet ministers. I still think he’s going to win, possibly on the first ballot. But it’s his to lose.

As has been said here before and as any punter knows, in a horserace, even a ploddingly dull one, anything can happen! It just hasn’t happened yet. The first leadership all-candidates’ meeting takes place in Vermilion, 200 kilometres east of Edmonton, on Thursday.

This post also appears on rabble.ca.

The Tory leadership race: Lukaszuk’s out, Horner’s still in, Redford is channeling Nenshi

by David Climenhaga on July 5, 2011 in Uncategorized with 2 Comments
Loneliness of the long-distance runners: Alberta Tory leadership candidates, who may not appear exactly as illustrated, head for the finish line, 11 weeks away. Below: Tom Lukaszuk, Doug Horner, Kevin Taft and Stephen Carter.


Farewell, Tom Lukaszuk, we hardly knew ye!

After months of speculation that Thomas Lukaszuk, staunch loyalist to Premier Ed Stelmach and Alberta’s minister of employment and immigration, was about to throw his hat into the Tory leadership ring, well… he hasn’t.

When Mr. Lukaszuk, or someone, ran the idea up the proverbial flagpole, the point of the exercise presumably was to see who saluted. Apparently nobody did. Or insufficient numbers, at any rate, to raise the $40,000 entry fee Mr. Lukaszuk would have required to become an official candidate by the deadline for nominations on July 15.

Who knows, maybe the kiss of death was when some lefty blogger suggested he was smart enough to make an OK premier … for a Tory, anyway. Or maybe it was a well-placed Gary Mar supporter in cabinet running around the back corridors of the Legislature building telling errant ministers none too gently what their chances of being in any future cabinet will be if they don’t watch their step and endorse the right candidate right now.

Whatever it was, Mr. Lukaszuk has now officially pulled the plug on his candidacy that never was and endorsed Mr. Mar.

Mr. Lukaszuk called a presser in the dying days of June at what the Calgary Herald termed Edmonton’s “prestigious Royal Glenora Club” (generously supported by your federal tax dollars, but never mind that just now) to announce that he’s a Mar-man now.

No one will ever say Mr. Lukaszuk was the best premier Alberta never had – that’s Kevin Taft, and Dr. Taft was a Liberal – but you have to admit he was the potential premier with the coolest haircut.

Regardless, that leaves six candidates in the race and two others who had floated a trial balloon or two of their own still neither in nor out. One never likes to say never, especially this close to a deadline just made to prove a blogger wrong, but it seems increasingly unlikely that either Culture Minister Lindsay Blackett or Health Minister Gene Zwozdesky will do anything more than what Mr. Lukaszuk has done.

Of the two, it’s fair to say that only Mr. Zwozdesky has either the profile or the political skills to be a serious candidate. But with the race increasingly seeming like it’s between Mr. Mar – the choice of the party establishment – and Alison Redford, who at the moment seems to be emerging as the Anybody-But-Gary candidate, it’s hard to imagine that there would be much percentage in a late entry now, even for the famously smooth Minister Zwoz.

Meanwhile, it is astonishing that Ted Morton – a seasoned campaigner with the support of the always-plentiful Conservative hard right – has been so quiet so far in the campaign. It’s almost enough to make one wonder what he’s got up his well-tailored sleeve.

At this point, it would be a surprise to this observer if any of the other three candidates – Doug Horner, who started strong and has since almost disappeared, Doug Griffiths, who probably wishes now he hadn’t started at all, and Rick Orman, who has pots of money and at least appears to be having fun – do much more than force the race to a second ballot.

Mr. Horner tried to remedy his ground-level profile with a news conference yesterday on the steps of the Legislature, allegedly about his education policy and his eccentric notion about how to organize the premier’s office, but really to trot out half a dozen rural MLAs who have endorsed his candidacy.

As blogger Dave Cournoyer, who attended Mr. Horner’s newser, reported, “in reality it was used as an opportunity to remind the media that despite the attention-making campaigns of Alison Redford and Gary Mar, Mr. Horner is still in this race.”

Notwithstanding that, this race increasingly looks like a very public contest between Mr. Mar and Ms. Redford, with Dr. Morton standing in the shadows, Darth Vader like, awaiting his moment to strike.

Ms. Redford’s campaign, interestingly, is reminding observers of the campaign run by Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi, who came from behind last October to triumph in a three-way race by constantly issuing public challenges to frontrunner Rick McIvor and former broadcaster Barb Higgins for one-one-one debates.

Mr. Nenshi’s campaign co-chairman? Stephen Carter, once the chief of staff to Wildrose Alliance Leader Danielle Smith back in her salad days, and now the chief strategist for Ms. Redford.

Mr. Carter is a guy Edmonton Journal columnist Graham Thomson once called “a political weather vane.” Want to know which way the political wind is blowing in Alberta, Mr. Thomson wrote, “just take a peek at the direction Stephen Carter is pointed.”

Well, right now he’s pointed Ms. Redford’s way, and her campaign seems to be picking up steam.

However, as the late British Labour prime minister Harold Wilson famously observed in 1964, “a week is a long time in politics.” There are not quite 11 weeks until the first-ballot vote in the Alberta Conservative leadership contest, so, almost by definition, anything could happen.

Except for Tom Lukaszuk becoming the premier, of course.

This post also appears on rabble.ca.

Former Alberta health CEO’s ‘expedited care’ accusations ignite firestorm that won’t go out

by David Climenhaga on June 9, 2011 in Uncategorized with 6 Comments
Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach and Health Minister Gene Zwozdesky get ready to fight the latest outbreak of political prairie fire. Actual Alberta politicians may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: Stephen Duckett.

The forest fire burning north of Fort McMurray isn’t the only blaze that’s out of control in Alberta right now.

The political conflagration ignited May 5 by former Alberta Health Services CEO Stephen Duckett is completely out of control too, and with Premier Ed Stelmach and Health Minister Gene Zwozdesky in charge of the fire brigade it may burn through a lot of Tory timber before things start to cool down.

Dr. Duckett, fired by the government last November and now working as a health administration professor at the University of Alberta, told a medical conference in Toronto that back in the day Conservative MLAs made it a practice to help their friends and patrons jump the queue for medical treatment. Word of this bombshell, via a video posted on-line by the conference organizers, leaked to the Alberta media a month later.

Since then, all hell’s been breaking loose, and things show no sign of settling down.

Yesterday, Conservative leadership contender and former justice minister Alison Redford joined Opposition calls for an independent judicial inquiry with the power to subpoena witnesses, while New Democrat Leader Brian Mason set up a political version of the Crime Stoppers tip line and literally called the cops.

Candidate Doug Griffiths has also called for an inquiry, revealing a significant fissure in Conservative ranks between Griffiths and Redford on one side and the other leadership candidates on the other.

It’s hard to say what Ms. Redford’s ballsy decision to side with the Opposition does to her prospects of winning the leadership – it certainly didn’t win her any friends in the current cabinet, which for some reason is desperately trying to squelch an inquiry on a whole range of alleged power abuses in the province’s health care system.

A testy Premier Stelmach told reporters yesterday that “you’d have to ask why she took the position,” adding, “some of the leadership candidates are going to try to differentiate themselves and this is one way of doing it.”

The premier crankily compared Ms. Redford to health care gadfly, Emergency Room physician and Independent MLA Raj Sherman, the former Parliamentary Assistant for Health that Mr. Stelmach fired from cabinet and the Tory caucus in Nov. 2010 for speaking publicly about intimidation of doctors by senior health bureaucrats. He also compared her to the NDP leader. Neither comparison is considered a compliment in Alberta Conservative circles.

As for Mr. Mason and the New Democrats, that party was not unique in calling for an inquiry. All the Opposition parties have done that. But seeing as the government was denying anything could happen as outrageous as a Tory MLA lobbying to get someone moved up on a medical waiting list, he had his party set up its own Medical Crime Stoppers line. So far, Mr. Mason told the Edmonton Journal, seven tips have been left, two of which he described “cases of significance.”

Mr. Mason quickly penned a letter to the RCMP’s Northern Alberta division calling for a criminal investigation, arguing that meddling in the health care system by elected officials would be a breach of trust, a criminal offense.

The Edmonton Journal swiftly trotted out a U of A law professor to suggest any investigation into that would be expensive and difficult to prove – always a good reason not to investigate a crime, eh? In reality, one imagines, this case would be relatively easy to crack as criminal investigations go.

Could Dr. Duckett assist with this? He was, after all, in a position to discover where at least some of the bodies were buried during his short tenure at the head of Alberta Health Services before he was fired, technically for gesturing rudely with a cookie but in reality for becoming a political liability to Mr. Stelmach’s government.

He now has a grievance with the Stelmach government and seems determined to stick around and salvage his reputation. As we all may learn, hell has no fury like an Australian health care economist scorned!

Someone – it remains to be determined whom – this week gave the Journal a memorandum that proves Dr. Duckett was worrying about this issue way back in June 2009.

As has been reported frequently, the terms of Dr. Duckett’s departure are not known, beyond the fact that he received a severance payment not unadjacent to $700,000. However, it has been speculated upon that the deal must have included some kind of non-disclosure agreement.

If so, the latest brouhaha must be playing out pretty much as Dr. Duckett imagined when he dropped the bomb in his Toronto speech. As he will no doubt soon be advised, he would not be breaking any non-disclosure agreement if compelled to name names by an inquiry, or even if asked nicely by the police.

As things so often go in such investigations, once one suspect is identified, it won’t take long for other names to be revealed.

Even if no criminal charges resulted, given the mood of the Alberta electorate, any MLAs identified as helping their friends get “expedited care” could expect to kiss their political careers goodbye.

This post also appears on rabble.ca.

Long-shot candidacy by Employment Minister ‘Landslide Lukaszuk’ reappears on Alberta’s radar screen

by David Climenhaga on June 4, 2011 in Uncategorized with 1 Comment
Tougher than you thought: Premier Lukaszuk convenes his first Conservative cabinet meeting. … Alberta politicians may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: Lukaszuk, Greystoke.

Alberta Employment and Immigration Minister Thomas Lukaszuk was in the news enough times last week to fuel renewed speculation he’s about to toss his hat into the ring and announce he’s a candidate for the Progressive Conservative Party leadership.

There was his announcement of the government’s controversial split minimum wage followed immediately by promises of long-overdue reforms of the province’s lackadaisical approach to workplace safety. There was also a rumour emanating from the environs of the Legislature that briefing books had been prepared for a new minister.

What’s more, Mr. Lukaszuk’s constituency association plans a morning fundraiser on June 16, at which breakfasters are offered the opportunity to “reflect on the past few years of Alberta politics and discuss what the future could hold…”

So, cheap shots from the blogosphere notwithstanding, it’s possible that there is in fact something to the persistent rumour Mr. Lukaszuk will soon join the race to replace Premier Ed Stelmach when he steps down in the fall.

Despite Mr. Lukaszuk’s eccentric minimum-wage policy and Lord Greystoke locks, the Polish-born MLA for Edmonton-Castle Downs, 42, is in fact a pretty bright guy and would probably make an OK Alberta premier, all things considered. He’s a moderate in Tory circles and not a creature of the hard right, which would surely be better for the province than some of the alternatives now in the race.

He’s only been in cabinet since January 2010, but he’s been a Member of the Legislature since 2001, so he’s not without experience. It’s hard to say, based on what Albertans have seen of the man, if he’d be tough enough as leader to stand up to a fractious post-Stelmach cabinet. But here’s a wager that he might surprise some of his cabinet colleagues at just how tough he is.

Certainly, Mr. Lukaszuk is a survivor, having squeaked through one election fight with only three votes – and only then after a court challenge. This earned him the moniker “Landslide Lukaszuk.”

Of course, none of this says Mr. Lukaszuk really stands much chance of winning against such well-established heavyweights as Gary Mar, Ted Morton, Doug Horner and Alison Redford. Still, hope springs eternal in the breasts of ambitious politicians, and there’s always the possibility of one ending up as a kingmaker and scoring a high-profile front-bench cabinet portfolio from a grateful new premier.

Like Mr. Lukaszuk, two other members of the premier’s current cabinet have been frequently mentioned in the media as possible additional candidates – Health Minister Gene Zwozdesky, an old crooner almost as smooth as Mel Tormé, and sharp-tongued Culture Minister Lindsay Blackett.

The question is, have these three hurt their chances by waiting so long to declare themselves as candidates – if indeed that is what they intend to do?

After all, it seems unsporting to take advantage of the automatic high profile that goes with a cabinet post while other serious candidates resign their portfolios to run. Mr. Stelmach has certainly made it clear that in his opinion, which he remains in a position to enforce, if you want to be a candidate, you can’t remain in the cabinet. This created an instant sort of parliamentary convention, and most Albertans seemed to agree in theory that it’s a sound policy.

This was obviously good enough for three candidates now in the race who started out from Mr. Stelmach’s cabinet.

Prof. Morton, who was finance minister, stepped down and declared his candidacy back on Jan. 27, as soon as the premier made it public that he would be stepping aside.

Mr. Horner, who had been deputy premier, quit cabinet and announced on Feb. 4. Ms. Redford, who was justice minister, Tweeted her plan to run on Feb. 16, to the delight of the mainstream media, which has recently joined the Twitterati.

None of the other candidates now in the race – Mr. Mar, Doug Griffiths and Rick Orman – have recently held cabinet portfolios.

So, given obvious public sentiment, waiting so long while hanging on to a cabinet post (plus its perks, free publicity and extra pay) should hurt any candidate that does so. But what folks say they think and how they act may be two very different things. So it is said here that staying in cabinet as long as possible and then announcing likely won’t hurt a candidate’s chances, and might even help them.

After all, we live in an age when Parliamentary conventions and traditions are falling faster than autumn leaves, if indeed anyone other than a few political scientists and Parliamentary traditionalists even understands what they are.

If a prime minister can be elected to a majority government by Canadian voters after proroguing Parliament twice to stay in power and being declared to be in contempt of that institution, it’s a safe bet that no voter in Alberta will give a hoot if Mr. Lukaszuk or Mr. Zwozdesky hangs onto a cabinet post while taking their sweet time to announce a run for their party’s leadership.

Ultimately, this boils down to a minor political consideration and nothing more, and it may very well help to remain in cabinet to the last possible second while getting one’s campaign organized – especially for second-tier candidates like Messrs. Lukaszuk, Zwozdesky and Blackett.

That said, this trio may just have been having a little fun running flags up the pole to see if anyone salutes.

One way or the other, though, we’ll know soon enough: candidates will only have until mid-July, tentatively set as the closing of the official nomination period, to make up their minds.

Indeed, according to the party’s leadership contest rules, the declared candidates aren’t really in the race yet. That must wait until the nomination period officially opens and candidates file their papers and submit their $40,000 deposits.

So, given the size of the entry fee, we’re as likely to be surprised by declared candidates dropping out as by new ones materializing out of the woodwork.

One thing is for sure, if these three join the race, and all six who have declared their intention to run stay in, it will almost guarantee the contest goes beyond a first ballot – with all the uncertainty and potential drama that entails.

Indeed, these are the very kind of circumstances in which a long-shot candidate like Mr. Lukaszuk could come up the middle and surprise everyone – just as Mr. Stelmach did back in 2006.

This post also appears on rabble.ca.

PC leadership tipsheet: Mar to win, Morton to place, surprises possible

by David Climenhaga on May 28, 2011 in Uncategorized with No comments
Punters at the track: These guys all know that in a horserace, anything can happen, and, plus, you ought to dress well just in case it does!


This column appeared in yesterday’s edition of the Saint City News.

With the federal election out of the way, the Alberta political spotlight should soon shift to the contest to lead the provincial Progressive Conservative Party – and, inevitably, the general election that will follow the choice this fall.

It’s a great political story by any yardstick. Six candidates are now in the race, every one capable of doing the job at least as well as Premier Ed Stelmach, the man they’re vying to replace. At least three more are reputed to be seriously considering running.

What’s more, there are significant policy differences among these candidates that mean there would be real differences in how each would run the province. This matters, because whoever wins this race will become the premier of Alberta, quite possibly for a long time.

If this were a horserace, and the candidates were horses, your racetrack tipsheet might look like this:

Doug Griffiths: At 38, the Battle River-Wainwright MLA is the youngest in the race. As a member of the short-lived “Fiscal Four” he’s on clearly on the party’s fiscally conservative side. He’s smart and speaks well, but, really, he’s mainly in the race to make a name for himself.

Doug Horner: Former deputy premier, long-time cabinet heavy hitter and part of Stelmach’s inner-circle, the 50-year-old MLA for Spruce Grove-Sturgeon-St. Albert has experience and a steady hand on his side, but a reputation as “Ed Stelmach Lite” working against him. He’s more conservative than the party’s right-wing opponents give him credit for being, but he’s clearly part of the party’s moderate centre.

Gary Mar: Relatively youthful at 48, smart, and, as holder of several important portfolios under premier Ralph Klein, experienced. So it’s no surprise Mr. Mar is the favourite of the Conservative party establishment. As Alberta’s “envoy” to Washington, the Calgary lawyer remained in the public eye, but far enough from government to be untainted by Mr. Stelmach’s blunders. He’s on the party’s more moderate side. He’s the front-runner today, yet somehow his campaign has failed to connect with Albertans.

Ted Morton: No question that the American-born Dr. Morton, a University of Calgary PhD political scientist known for his hard-line fiscal views, is the darling of the party’s right wing. As such, he’s the most likely candidate to woo back defectors to the Wildrose Alliance, but also the most likely to frighten moderate voters. After a strong finish in the 2006 leadership race, the Foothills-Rocky View MLA is said to have hung onto his supporters’ contact information, so he has a leg-up in the first-ballot race. At 62, he looks a little long in the tooth.

Rick Orman: This well-heeled Calgary oilman, youthful-voiced radio political commentator and former cabinet minister is nearly 63, so he saves Morton the embarrassment of being the oldest candidate in the race. He’s just as far to the right as Dr. Morton, clearly trying to encroach on Wildrose Alliance territory. But as a relic of the era of Premier Don Getty, he’s so far from politics he is only the longest of long-shots.

Alison Redford: Only 46, well known as an international legal authority, a polished performer and as tough as nails, the only woman in the race is the brainiest of this lot by far. The question is, will voters who loved a Grade 9 dropout like Mr. Klein take to someone who is so obviously smart, who also has a reputation for not suffering fools gladly? The first-term MLA for Calgary-Elbow and former Justice Minister leans to the Red Tory side of the party equation but is hard to categorize.

At least three others are frequently named as possible candidates: Culture Minister Lindsay Blackett, Employment Minister Thomas Lukaszuk and Health Minister Gene Zwozdesky. All are in the party’s squishy middle. All must declare their candidacy soon or forget about it.

So here’s the race as I see it today:

Win: Mar
Place: Morton
Show: Horner
Wild Card: Redford

But as any punter knows, in a horserace, anything can happen!

This post also appears on rabble.ca.

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