All posts tagged Glenn Taylor

Glen Taylor quits as leader – Alberta Party ponders the Big Goodbye

by David Climenhaga on July 31, 2012 in Alberta Party, Alberta Politics with 4 Comments

Your blogger in happier times with departing Alberta Party Leader Glenn Taylor. Below: Party luminaries Michael Walters and Sue Huff.

Get ready for the Big Re-Think. Or the Long Goodbye. Or something…

Alberta Party Leader Glenn Taylor has resigned, the world learned yesterday. He’ll step from the provincial political stage on Sept. 22, when the party holds its annual general meeting.

Not that the former mayor of Hinton had much choice, having failed to gain the toehold of even a single seat in the Legislature for the bold experiment in doing politics differently in Alberta.

Always a party inclined to break the mould – even if breaking it didn’t work particularly well – the Alberta Party started with a series of kitchen meetings across the province it called the Big Listen. Party adherents saw their party as a bold experiment in centrist policy making, conceived in hope and steeped in coffee, and careful to take its time to listen to everyone.

Unfortunately – and I mean that, because the party had good ideas and good people supporting it – it turned out that Albertans weren’t really paying attention. On election day, facing the prospect of choosing between a victory by the far-right Wildrose Party or the seemingly moderate Progressive Conservatives of Premier Alison Redford, voters gave the Alberta Party the Big Cold Shoulder. Its tally in the Legislature was a Big Zero.

Now party officials say it’s not even a sure thing they’ll have a leadership race to replace Mr. Taylor at the AGM. First thing, anyway, they’ll appoint an interim leader to decide what to do next – Sue Huff again, maybe?

But even before party members decide whether or not to choose another leader to permanently replace Mr. Taylor, who was elected back in May 2011, they say they’re going to think about such options as just shutting down, becoming a think tank or merging with the Alberta Liberals.

Joining the Liberals is the option favoured by Michael Walters, who was the party’s unsuccessful candidate in Edmonton Rutherford. “I personally think the Alberta Party and the Liberal Party should merge and elect a new leader that has the ability to run a truly authentic centrist party that can provide some competition to the Progressive Conservatives,” he told the Edmonton Journal yesterday.

I’d be prepared to bet you, though, that having hung onto his own seat and a presence in the Legislature by the skin of his political teeth, Liberal Leader Raj Sherman wouldn’t share that sentiment. You know, the party’s name is good – but it’s not that good!

Mr. Walters is said to be considering a city council run in Edmonton.

The party did have an MLA in the last session of the Legislature for a spell in the person of former Alberta Liberal leadership candidate Dave Taylor (no relation to Glenn Taylor), who quit the Liberals in a scrap with their leader and sat as an Independent for a while first. But that Mr. Taylor, who always possessed the ability to do the math despite his occasional impetuosity, chose not to run in the last election. Presumably, he read the handwriting on the wall.

From Day 1 of his leadership, Glenn Taylor seemed strangely disengaged. The former New Democratic Party candidate and union official didn’t even give up his day job as Hinton Mayor until January 2012. When the election finally came in April, he couldn’t carry the huge but sparsely populated riding in which Hinton is the principal town.

Before that, in October 2010, the party also lost its most promising and engaging potential leaders when Naheed Nenshi was elected mayor of Calgary. In addition to Mr. Nenshi himself, identified as an early supporter of the party, it cost the party Calgary lawyer Chima Nkemdirim, who instead of running for leader as many had hoped, left to become Mr. Nenshi’s chief of staff.

Ms. Huff, who was the party’s previous interim leader before the choice of Mr. Taylor, told the Journal yesterday she’s kind of OK with the think tank idea.

Perhaps it’s not such a bad thought. The Alberta Party always staked its claim on the notion it could do politics differently. Turned out voters expected to do them the same old way. The think-tank option might enable the party to turn the Big Goodbye into the Long Goodbye, and do some good for Alberta yet.

Mr. Taylor has a job in Hinton. What do you want to bet he runs for mayor again?

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NOTE: Since yesterday’s post about the lead-up to the Calgary Centre by-election went online, Conservative nomination candidate Jon Lord has responded to a query sent earlier about the role of Craig Chandler in his campaign. “Craig is one of many people working on the campaign, all of whom have many diverse opinions on all sides of the issues,” Mr. Lord said in part. “I take great pride in my ability to work with people of all backgrounds and opinions towards a common good – indeed, that is the hallmark of my political career.” Read the entire response here. Mr. Lord’s slyly entertaining suggestion that I am helping out with Ms. Crockatt’s campaign is, of course, incorrect.

One additional candidate remains in the Conservative nomination race, Richard Billington, a Calgary lawyer and member of the Conservative Party’s National Policy Commission. My apologies to Mr. Billington for missing him yesterday, although his interest was noted in my original post on the by-election. He is a serious candidate, but his campaign seems low key and directed at party insiders.

Tomorrow, unless news breaks out again, I’ll return to the Calgary Centre by-election.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Latest Alberta poll shows Redford Conservatives with commanding lead

by David Climenhaga on January 26, 2012 in Uncategorized with 5 Comments
Say it ain’t so! Giant Redford Tory electoral machine crushes everything in its path! Even the ship of state! (Stephen Carter’s electoral schemes may not be exactly as illustrated.) Below: Alison Redford, Tom “Firewall” Flanagan.

As predicted more than once in this space, a methodologically trustworthy public opinion poll has now been published that shows the Progressive Conservatives under Premier Alison Redford with the support of more than 50 per cent of the province’s committed voters.

As argued here, even before the poll by Leger Marketing was reported in the Alberta media this morning, numbers like this indicate the Redford Tories are on their way to another significant majority, as long as present trends continue.

A strong case can be made that the results of the Leger poll are much more likely to be a true reflection of current voter intentions in Alberta than a group of polls touted by Wildrose Party strategists and supporters that show the Conservatives near historic lows for support and Wildrose support brushing 30 per cent.

The Leger poll of 900 Albertans selected by random digit dialing, conducted by telephone between Jan. 13 and Jan. 18, yielded the following results for decided voters:

Progressive Conservatives – 53 per cent
Wildrose Party – 16 per cent
New Democratic Party – 13 per cent
Alberta Liberal Party – 11 per cent
Alberta Party – 2 per cent

Leger says the poll has a margin of error of 3.2 per cent, 19 times out of 20. The poll also indicates that 11 per cent of all voters were undecided.

Leger’s question – “if a provincial election were held today, for which political party would you be most likely to vote?” – associated the party leader’s name with each party in the list the questioner read. For example, “Glenn Taylor’s Alberta Party” or “Danielle Smith’s Wildrose Party.”

These results reinforce a number of conclusions that have been argued before in Alberta Diary:

  • That the Alberta PCs have returned to historic levels of popularity since they selected Ms. Redford as their leader and premier
  • That Wildrose support has not improved significantly since long-time Tory supporters began returning to the Conservatives after former premier Ed Stelmach announced his intention to resign a year ago
  • That Alberta Liberal Party support continues to sag under the leadership of former Conservative Raj Sherman
  • That the Alberta Party has never managed to get on Albertans’ political radar screens, and that what little support they had is evaporating as an election grows closer

The big question, as Leger Alberta Vice-President Ian Large was quoted asking by the Calgary Herald, “is who is going to be No. 2? Who is going to be the Opposition?”

It has been argued here that despite the Wildrose Party’s No. 2 position in popular support, the NDP is more likely to form the official Opposition because splits in voter support in the Edmonton area where it is strong are more likely to favour it than the splits in the Calgary area where Wildrose support is strong by Tory support is overwhelming.

I would not be so bold as to suggest these Leger results support that argument – at least not yet, until Leger provides a complete breakdown of its regional results. However, nor do they rule it out – so that’s my position, and I’m stickin’ to it until persuasive evidence shows otherwise.

We now see the very interesting phenomenon of recent polls of Alberta voters’ intentions sorting themselves into two groups, one that says the Tories have the support of about half of all voters and one that puts Tory support at 40 per cent or lower and indicates a corresponding boost in Wildrose support.

Which to believe?

Well, the three most recent polls that show strong Tory support – Citizen Society Research Lab, Environics and Leger – all used methodology considered to be sound by professional pollsters, telephoned questions over several days.

The three most recent polls that showed the Conservatives weaker and the Wildrose stronger – two by Forum Research and one by ThinkHQ Public Affairs – used methodology not considered to be as reliable, automated demon-dialers over a single evening in the case of Forum and a self-selecting on-line panel in the case of ThinkHQ.

This is not a guarantee that the polls in the first group got it right, or the polls in the second group didn’t, but it leads a fair observer to such a conclusion. Certainly, back in 2008, online polls did not have a particularly good record for reliably predicting Alberta provincial election results.

Other conclusions from the Leger poll:

  • Satisfaction with the performance of Ms. Redford’s government is very strong, at about 70 per cent
  • Ms. Redford leads dramatically among the number of Albertan who thought she “would make the best premier for Alberta” – 32 per cent, versus 14 per cent for Ms. Smith, 7 per cent for NDP Leader Brian Mason and 6 per cent for Liberal Leader Raj Sherman.
  • Two thirds of Alberta voters indicated their voting choice will not be affected by recent allegations of illegal donations made to the PC Party.

The mainstream media, of course, may soon forget the results of this poll because it does not favour the “horserace on the right scenario.”

Some journalists, like Calgary Herald political columnist Don Braid are sticking manfully to the journalistic dream of a right-wing slugfest. Things “will change the minute a campaign starts,” Mr. Braid promised today. “With Tom Flanagan running the show, the Wildrose campaign will likely be focused, smart and extremely tough.”

True enough, with “Firewall” Flanagan at the helm, the Wildrose campaign is indeed likely to be tough – spelled D-I-R-T-Y, as we have already seen – but I don’t doubt the Redford Conservatives have a few dirty tricks of their own up their sleeves.

Anything can happen in politics, of course, so don’t bet the house and the Hawaiian holiday on any outcome until election day is a little closer!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Liberal Conservative appoints conservative Liberals to battle progressive conservatives, true conservatives

by David Climenhaga on January 20, 2012 in Uncategorized with 8 Comments
I’m with him… Conservative Alberta Liberal Leader Raj Sherman with his new chief of staff, Jonathan Huckabay. Below: Jeff Melland, from his Facebook page.

Earlier today, Alberta Liberal Leader Raj Sherman emailed out a press release announcing big changes to his staff.

Key among these were the additions of Jeff Melland, a former spokesthingy for the British Columbia Liberal caucus, and Ryan Pineo, a former Legislative Assistant with the same West Coast Liberals.

Mr. Melland will be moving to Edmonton and taking up his duties on Feb. 1, said Dr. Sherman’s release. Mr. Pineo, by the sound of the statement, has already started work as Dr. Sherman’s executive assistant. Dr. Sherman, according to his news release, is “very excited about my new team.” (Emphasis added; explanation to follow.)

Makes sense, you say? Liberals helping Liberals, right?

Nothing is that simple. Given the permutations and transmogrifications among the various parties of the right in Western Canada – not to mention their occasional name changes, both formal and informal – it’s very hard to keep track of what’s going on without a program and a GPS unit.

This is where it starts to get complicated. I’ll try to explain.

First of all, we need to remember that Dr. Sherman is a former Progressive Conservative, who was fired by former Conservative premier Ed Stelmach for criticizing his former conservative party when he was still a member of it. Last September, Dr. Sherman was elected as the leader of the Alberta Liberals, who were still Liberals in the normal Canadian sense of that word, when the party threw its leadership vote wide open to non-Liberals as well as members of the party.

That situation seems to have left the current eight-member Alberta Liberal caucus divided into two groups: Seven traditional Liberals, and Dr. Sherman, who with some of his unelected candidates is known as “The Sherman Team.” Of the seven Liberal Liberals, three have announced they don’t intend to run again in the next Alberta election.

Until a few days a go, the Liberal caucus had nine members, but Bridget Pastoor, an MLA from Lethbridge, crossed the floor to join the Conservatives. So now she’s a traditional Liberal who has become a Conservative, under a Conservative Party led by Premier Alison Redford, who some Albertans accuse of being too liberal. But let’s not worry about that right now.

The B.C. Liberals, by the way, really are Conservatives, and have been for years.

That would be why, over in British Columbia, Liberal Premier Christy Clark has just hired a well-known Conservative to be her chief of staff. Now, that particular Conservative, the one hired by Ms. Clark, is a fellow named Ken Boessenkool, who is a former adviser to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the Calgary MP who nobody is going to call a Liberal. Back in the day, Mr. Harper, Mr. Boessenkool and a couple of well-known dual-citizens signed the famously Alberta separatist Firewall Manifesto. But never mind that just now either.

Getting back to Dr. Sherman, the Conservative who leads the Alberta Liberals, who are still Liberals, he apparently hired the B.C. Conservatives who are called Liberals to help him do well enough in the election to turn the Liberal Liberals into either Conservative Conservatives or Conservative Liberals. Capische?

By the way, some of the old Alberta Liberals who are still Liberals and still MLAs, including the leader before last, Kevin Taft, turned up at an event last night sponsored by the Alberta Federation of Labour to publicize a book by Dr. Taft and a movie about it that describes how Conservatives like Dr. Sherman have been mismanaging the Alberta economy.

Since Dr. Taft is one of the Liberals who won’t be running again, there’s a school of thought he’s “gone rogue” and is openly clashing with Dr. Sherman over the more conservative direction he is trying to steer the Alberta Liberals.

Regardless, somewhere along the line, you may have noted that there is also a British Columbia Conservative Party, which calls itself “B.C.’s only true conservative party.” But they are not really conservatives exactly. They are really Wildrosers, except from British Columbia, although the Wildrosers, who are from Alberta, say they are really conservatives.

The Wildrose Party used to be called the Wildrose Alliance. It is running to replace the Progressive Conservatives under Ms. Redford, who replaced Mr. Stelmach. Neither of them, according to Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith, are true conservatives either. Mr. Harper, for whom Mr. Boessenkool used to work, is widely thought to back the Wildrose Party in Alberta because it’s more conservative than the Conservatives.

So, the Alberta Liberals are being turned into Conservatives, the Alberta Progressive Conservatives are Conservatives, the Wildrose Party are conservatives, the B.C. Liberals are conservatives, and the B.C. Conservatives are conservatives and they all want you to believe they are the only true conservatives. If this sounds like Protestant churches to you, you may have a point.

After Conservative party members elected her Alberta premier in October, Alison Redford appointed as her chief of staff a fellow named Stephen Carter, Up to then, Mr. Carter was best known for running the successful campaign of Calgary Mayor Naheed Nensihi, who is seen as a liberal and who as associated with the Alberta Party, a party that is considered to be pretty much the same as the old pre-Conservative Alberta Liberals.

(I’m waiting for someone to write and tell me that Glenn Taylor, the leader of the Alberta Party is a former New Democrat. Well, you can’t have everything. If he still has his NDP card, we’ll send someone around to pick it up!)

Dr. Sherman, meanwhile, appointed his former Conservative legislative aide Jonathan Huckabay as his chief of staff. Mr. Huckabay also stayed with Dr. Sherman during the spell he was an Independent. He also once taught political science for a year at the Instituto Technologico y Estudios Superiores de Monterrey.

So, to sum up the chief of staff changes, Ms. Clark is a Liberal with a Conservative chief of staff, Ms. Redford is a Conservative with a liberal chief of staff, and Dr. Sherman is a Conservative Liberal with a former political science teacher from a Mexican college as chief of staff.

Dr. Sherman also appointed Earl J. Woods, a former CBC broadcaster, as his senior communications advisor. Mr. Woods will have his work cut out for him. And he thanked Rick Miller, his former chief of staff, who is stepping down to run as a Liberal Alberta Liberal and Communications Director Brian Leadbetter, who sensibly took a job doing public relations for a school board.

I hope that cleared things up!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Glenn Taylor quits his day job – now he has a few weeks to save the Alberta Party

by David Climenhaga on January 5, 2012 in Uncategorized with 3 Comments
Your blogger with Alberta Party Leader Glenn Taylor just after his election last May. Mr. Taylor’s election, that is. All your blogger’s ever been elected as is a “local legend.” Below: Robin Campbell, Barry Madsen.

With an election looming, it’s nice to see that Alberta Party Leader Glenn Taylor has finally cleared the decks for action and is about to start campaigning seriously for the job of MLA in the West Yellowhead riding.

Mr. Taylor announced yesterday that he was at last giving up his day job as mayor of Hinton, the principal town if not the best known community in the huge riding that runs along the B.C. border far to the west of Edmonton, and which includes the famous mountain resort of Jasper.

It’s tempting to dismiss Mr. Taylor’s candidacy as a day late and a dollar short – and it probably is. Still, the man is a natural-born schmoozer – which is the key talent required by any good retail politician – and he has enjoyed solid support at the municipal level in his home community.

It’s also very easy to be critical of the former New Democrat candidate and Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union local vice-president for having done very little outside his home community since he was elected leader of the Alberta Party – the centrist creation of a group of disaffected Red Tories and Blue Liberals that seems to have lost its edge since Mr. Taylor was chosen as its first leader last May.

But in Mr. Taylor’s defence, his hesitant performance to date illustrates the problem serious politicians in any centrist party have in this province keeping bread on the table while competing with the well-financed parties of the right. It’s no slur on Mr. Taylor to say he’s a working person who needed to feed his family while he tried to build a completely new political party.

With a relatively high percentage of union members among its populace, West Yellowhead should have more potential than most Alberta ridings for progressive politicians like Mr. Taylor. Presumably that’s why the local Progressive Conservative constituency association chose Robin Campbell, a former official of the United Mine Workers Union, as its standard bearer in 2008.

Mr. Campbell, who was the Tory caucus whip under former premier Ed Stelmach, won with a decisive 54 per cent of the riding’s vote in 2008 and intends to run again, although it’s unclear what kind of a role he might play in Premier Alison Redford’s caucus if he’s re-elected. He’s a Tory, so he’ll have no shortage of money to campaign with.

Nevertheless, a number of factors that could work for Mr. Taylor may now be emerging – if he’s lucky, works hard from here on in, and the wind blows in the right direction.

First, as in most rural Alberta ridings, the Wildrose Party has the potential to split the right-wing vote in West Yellowhead, at least a little and possibly dramatically.

Second, it sure doesn’t hurt Mr. Taylor’s chances that the local NDP candidate has adopted the loony idea – if you’ll pardon the expression – of accepting no donations larger than a dollar.

This has proved to be a great way to generate news stories in the media and commentary in the blogosphere, but it is not at all clear, as blogger Dave Cournoyer pointed out recently, if NDP candidate Barry Madsen fully comprehended the implications for his campaign when he made this silly announcement.

Nor does it hurt Mr. Taylor that the Alberta Liberals, which have split the opposition vote about evenly with the NDP in the last two elections, are in a state of complete disarray under the leadership of former Conservative Raj Sherman.

Finally, another factor potentially in Mr. Taylor’s favour is that voters in West Yellowhead are not monolithic Tory voters – having elected a New Democrat back in 1989 and a Liberal in 1993. More than once, a deep Liberal-NDP split has given the election to the Conservatives, as it did in 1997 when Mr. Taylor ran for the NDP.

So if Mr. Madsen’s dollar-a-donation brainstorm has the effect of persuading West Yellowhead voters he’s not a serious candidate at the same moment as the Alberta Liberals are falling apart and a significant split is emerging between the Tories and the Wildrose Party, a victory for Mr. Taylor would not be outside the realm of possibility.

There are still a lot of ifs in this theorizing. On the downside, every moment Mr. Taylor spends outside his riding building his new party can hurt him in what’s sure to be a tight race. Still, now that he has finally put on his track shoes, maybe he can come from behind in this race and surprise a lot of Albertans.

If he does, he will likely have saved the Alberta Party from a quick and merciless extinction, which is all but certain if it elects no MLAs on whatever unfixed election date between next March and next May Premier Redford decides to call an election.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Prognosis looks bleak for faltering Alberta Party

by David Climenhaga on December 12, 2011 in Uncategorized with 2 Comments
Chima Nkemdirim: his decision to work for Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi was a serious loss for the Alberta Party. Below: Mr. Nenshi, Alberta Premier Alison Redford and Alberta Party Leader Glenn Taylor.

The two worst things that have happened to the Alberta Party are, in this order, Naheed Nenshi and Alison Redford.

This is not to say either the mayor of Calgary or the premier of Alberta is personally responsible for the Alberta Party’s troubles.

On the contrary, a case can be made both support the goals of the political phenomenon that briefly captured the attention of Alberta’s chattering classes – that is, to encourage the rise of a government and economy that might be described, with apologies to Alexander Dubcek, as “capitalism with a human face.”

But Mr. Nenshi’s success in October 2010 stole away the Alberta Party’s most promising and engaging leader before the party could even pique the public’s interest, and Ms. Redford’s success a year later has moved the governing Progressive Conservative Party into precisely the political space the Alberta Party was created to occupy.

As a result, a political movement conceived in hope and steeped in coffee has languished for months and is now teetering on the edge of irrelevance. Ignored not only by the public, but by its own leadership cadre, the prognosis is not good for the survival of the Alberta Party.

For those of you who may not have noticed – and that would be a lot of Albertans – the Alberta Party was essentially an attempt to cobble together a coalition of Red Tories and Blue Liberals to create a new centrist political force in Alberta. The name had been around for a while, used by a variety of groups on the far right and the green fringe, but in 2009 ended up traded like a commodity into the hands of the group that now runs it.

In 2009 and 2010, the party streaked across the Alberta firmament, briefly attracting the attention of anyone who happened to be looking up at the time. Its movers and shakers launched an effort called “the Big Listen” at which they attempted to draft policy based on what they heard at dozens of kaffeeklatsches in the homes of supporters throughout the province.

It was a peculiar time, when Alberta’s naturally governing Tory party appeared to have lost its way under the shaky leadership of then-premier Ed Stelmach, and the Opposition Liberals appeared equally lost with the unsteady hand of leader David Swann on the tiller. A new centrist party with an appealingly generic new name seemed like the answer.

Blogger and long-time Alberta Party supporter Dave Cournoyer has correctly identified the first setback that struck the party in an insightful deconstruction of its decline that reflects the analysis of the party’s former stalwarts. Mr. Nenshi’s election, he argues, “created an unexpected energy drain on the Alberta Party.” Specifically, it cost the party Calgary lawyer Chima Nkemdirim, who instead of running for leader as many had hoped, left to become Mr. Nenshi’s chief of staff.

“A young, dynamic, well-spoken, and thoughtful individual, Mr. Nkemdirim embodies the future of politics in Alberta. The Alberta Party would have benefited greatly if he had run for the leadership and won, as I suspect he would have,” Mr. Cournoyer wrote. “Mr. Nkemdirim’s choice not to run, and the decision by other leading Alberta Party organizers to sit out the contest, contributed to a vacuum of talent in the leadership contest held in early 2011.”

The party’s sole MLA, Dave Taylor, was a former Liberal leadership candidate who left that party in disgust in April 2010 to sit as an independent, then joined the Alberta Party last January. His performance is best described as fatigued and he will not run again in the next general election. The leader chosen last May, Glenn Taylor (no relation), has also been less than stellar – virtually disappearing from the public eye, presumably to carry on his duties as the mayor of Hinton.

Glenn Taylor continues to promise big things soon, but with an election growing ever closer, success seems likely to elude him. At the moment, the party has only eight candidates nominated.

The other factor, unnoted by the Alberta Party faithful, is the rise of Ms. Redford – the perfect Alberta Party Premier.

As long as Gary Mar, the former Ralph Klein era minister and Alberta’s chief lobbyist in Washington, was the frontrunner in the race to replace Mr. Stelmach – as he was through the long spring and summer of 2011 – the Alberta Party could hold out some hope of survival. While only 49, Mr. Mar was the scion of the party’s old boy network, the people who supported Mr. Stelmach and resisted the leadership of a new generation.

But when Ms. Redford deftly outmaneuvered Mr. Mar to win the premier’s job, the handwriting was on the wall for more than the Tory Party relics who are now drifting toward the exits. The poorly led Alberta Party, philosophically committed to exactly the kind of Alberta Ms. Redford more energetically articulated, was finished.

Really, how could they succeed when Ms. Redford has stolen the ground right out from under them?

The party’s few remaining supporters, naturally, will dispute this, and point to minor differences in their proposals. But just read the party’s statement of principles. In addition to the customary anodyne affirmations of democracy and quality of life, it calls for private enterprise and entrepreneurship, fiscal responsibility, social responsibility and sustainability. This sounds precisely like the territory Ms. Redford has successfully staked out.

Indeed, with the pre-election changes now under way within the PC Party, it could be argued that the Conservative Class of 2011 proposes to bring the province its first Alberta Party government.

The Alberta Liberals have troubles of their own, which stem from terminal disappointment among their party’s core supporters, the loss of a generation of leaders with few prospects to replace them and the election of an unsuitable party leader this year in former Conservative Raj Sherman. But that will have to be the topic for another day.

It is said here that at the moment only three parties remain viable on the Alberta political scene: the Progressive Conservatives, the New Democrats to their left, and the Wildrose Party to their right.

Alberta will likely elect its Alberta Party government. It’s just that it will be led by Alison Redford and be called by a different name.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

The Alberta Party’s ‘democratic renewal’ policy: a disappointment with the potential for disaster!

by David Climenhaga on July 29, 2011 in Uncategorized with 17 Comments
The Ministry must enjoy the confidence of the House. Notwithstanding this, Alberta’s Legislature may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: Alberta Party Leader Glenn Taylor, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the former Governor General – plotting to thwart the will of the Commons?

Nobody wants to be an Alberta Party pooper, but the province’s self-described “new centrist political party” continues to disappoint.

The latest example is the Alberta Party’s policy on democratic renewal, which demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of how our system of government works and identifies the party as an advocate of the same dangerous U.S.-style legislative bromides as the Wildrose Alliance.

In the case of the Wildrose crowd, this is no surprise. They are, after all, a shrinking rump of perpetually disaffected people who advocate the Americanization of everything from health care to gun ownership to the rules of the Legislature. Indeed, about the only American ideas the Wildrosers don’t like are the good ones – like that country’s profound commitment to free speech and its constitutionally entrenched separation of church and state.

But coming from the Alberta Party, which has tried pretty hard to brand itself as a moderate Canadian voice firmly in the political centre, this is a major disappointment.

When the Alberta Party announced it was releasing a policy on democratic renewal, many Albertans hoped it would emphasize a call for proportional representation, a change that would truly make Alberta more democratic and which could be implemented without upsetting the Parliamentary applecart. For many of us, proportional representation would have made the Alberta Party hard not to support.

Instead, the two most striking recommendations of the party’s democratic renewal brief released a week ago today are term limits for the premier and fixed election dates, which the Alberta Party says would “bring balance and stability back to the Legislature, civil service and all organizations that work with the government.”

Neither will achieve the goals claimed, and both are almost certainly unconstitutional if implemented in any meaningful way. Moreover, it’s hard to imagine how something we have never had will bring stability back to our Legislature!

Sorry about the need for some theory, but our Parliamentary system depends on the Ministry (that is, the cabinet, which must be made up of members of the Legislature) ruling only with the confidence (that is, the approval) of the Legislature. It is essential to the operation of this system that the government must fall when it loses the confidence of the House.

This was the democratic principle on which Prime Minister Stephen Harper trampled in December 2009, when he persuaded the Governor General to prorogue Parliament without a vote when his Ministry had clearly lost the confidence of the House.

It was very troubling that this did not particularly worry Canadian citizens, and it is suggested here that their lack of concern is reflected in the credibility this foolish proposal apparently has among Alberta Party activists. Whether the party’s supporters recognize it or not, this idea is designed to subvert the ability of Canadian governments to act on the programs voters want and instead to pave the way for a sclerotic and entrenched separation of powers system like that of the United States, where even popular reforms are essentially impossible.

Meaningful fixed election dates would clearly limit and possibly eliminate the power of the House to dismiss the ministry, a democratic setback.

Anyway, the Constitution Act 1982, for which we must thank Pierre Elliott Trudeau, includes a hybrid approach to the idea of fixed election dates that should be good enough for anyone who thinks this is a good idea – to wit, a five-year outside limit on the term of Parliament or any Legislature.

Beyond that, since the Constitution Act 1867 decrees that Canada will have “a Constitution similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom,” and since the U.K.’s constitution is unwritten, the kind of proposal made by the Alberta Party would require Canada’s written constitution to be amended to reflect the departure from fundamental British practice. This means it is almost certainly doomed to be nothing more than a gesture, constitutionally meaningless and able to be ignored by any government on a whim.

So why push a bad idea that would make our government less democratic, and which has minimal chance of being implemented anyway? Only the Alberta Party can answer that question.

As for the notion of term limits for the premier or any politician, this idea is profoundly undemocratic and originates decades ago with the desire of right-wingers to force out of office effective centrist politicians whose popular polices they despised.

Really, who is the Alberta Party to tell you, the sovereign voter, whom you are able to vote for?

If you think a politician has been in power too long, there’s a mechanism for dealing with that. You can vote against him. If you think a politician is doing a great job, why should you not be able to continue to support her?

Imposing a term limit on a premier or any other office holder is an assault on democracy that has currency in Alberta only because of the continued hue and cry and bogus arguments of a right-wing minority determined to use anything they can think of to force good people out of power when the voters won’t.

All Alberta Party Leader Glenn Taylor had to say on the party’s website to explain this position was: “We also heard that people are tired of the politics surrounding elections, therefore we believe there should be fixed election dates and term limits on the Premier.” Say what? Most political parties that talk like this drop this notion faster than you can say “Stephen Harper” once their own guy is in power.

Finally, the Alberta Party’s two other key policies for democratic reform are:

One, the replacement of the Alberta government’s Public Affairs Bureau, the world’s largest incompetent public relations agency, with a “citizens affairs centre” with which, I guess, we can all smoke banana peels and sing koombyah. It’s not so much that this is a bad idea as it’s hopelessly naïve. It’s unlikely to be implemented by any government, including one led by the Alberta Party. That said, trying it would probably do little harm.

And, two, developing budgets “through an open community-based process which asks for input from Albertans before budgets are finalized.”

Well, good luck with this if it’s anything more than a bogus “consultation” of the sort preferred by our current Conservative government before it goes ahead and does whatever it pleases. If the community had meaningful input, the process would be seized by the opposition, which would soon make mincemeat of the government.

There are a couple of better ideas in this document, so I suppose we oughtn’t to throw the baby out with the bathwater. To wit:

  • A longer legislated cooling off period before former MLAs and officials can become professional lobbyists.
  • Meaningful election funding legislation.

The Alberta Party also calls for increased flexibility in how the Legislature operates, including the use of new technology, so I guess they’d like to let MLAs use their BlackBerries, which would be no big deal.

But they also want to experiment with “electronic voting” – a truly terrible idea that opens the door to outright election theft by hackers, as may already have happened in several formerly democratic jurisdictions.

The Alberta Party’s policy on democratic renewal is a flop that, implemented, would do more harm than good, making Alberta a less democratic place than it is now.

It is a big disappointment that does nothing for the credibility of the Alberta Party, which, at less than 2 per cent in the polls, obviously has work to do in this area!

This post also appears on rabble.ca.

Alberta Liberals’ open nomination scheme will not fix the party’s existential crisis

by David Climenhaga on May 30, 2011 in Uncategorized with 8 Comments
Alberta Liberals follow party leader Dr. David Swann down a street in Calgary. Alberta political party supporters may not be exactly as illustrated. (Photo grabbed from sveinnbirkir.tumblr.com/.) Below: the real Dr. Swann, Dr. Raj Sherman.


Are they nuts?

In an effort to end their party’s continuing implosion, Alberta Liberals voted at their convention in Calgary yesterday to open their leadership and riding nomination contests to all voters, including those who are not members of their party.

It doesn’t take a PhD in political science to see what’s wrong with this scheme. Talk about handing potential hijackers the keys to the jetliner!

At the riding level, the only thing that will save the fast-fading party from that particular kind of disaster is that outside of a few electoral districts it is now so irrelevant no scheming Tory, perfidious New Democrat or mischievous Wildroser would bother to waste the time needed to derail a Liberal candidate. In other words, why bother to hijack a mode of transportation that’s going nowhere?

Do you doubt that the Alberta Liberals are going nowhere? Consider the words of leadership candidate and Edmonton-Centre MLA Laurie Blakeman, partly recounted to us by the Calgary Herald, which unfortunately didn’t quote her in full detail. “Blakeman, however, believes opening the nomination and leadership votes to members and registered supporters alike is ‘a huge advantage’ for her because she has lots of backers who’ve left the Liberal party,” the Cowtown quotidian reported. (Emphasis added.)

On a similar theme in the same story, departing Alberta Liberal Leader David Swann, under whose unsteady hand the party has faltered so badly, compared membership in political parties to being part of a religious cult. “There is a reluctance to join a ‘religion,’ there is a reluctance to join a ‘cult,’” he told the Herald, apparently in an effort to explain why Albertans are reluctant to join the Alberta Liberals.

But political parties only start to seem like religious cults when they’re down to their final few true believers, still clinging desperately to the faith, and no one else is interested. Alas for the party led by Dr. Swann, physician and MLA for Calgary-Mountain View, that’s pretty much where the Alberta Liberals find themselves today.

Handing the levers of the party’s nomination processes to anyone who happens to wander in from the street is not going to fix this crisis.

Indeed, given the four candidates in the race to replace Dr. Swann as leader – Ms. Blakeman, Edmonton-Goldbar MLA and stalwart Grit Hugh MacDonald, hitherto unknown Calgarian Bruce Payne, who is both an evangelical preacher and trade unionist, and health care gadfly Raj Sherman, MLA for Edmonton-Meadowlark – this is going to make the Liberals’ existential crisis much worse.

To be blunt, the problem is Dr. Sherman, the former Conservative Parliamentary Assistant for Health and part-time Emergency Room physician who was cashiered by Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach last fall for attacking his own government.

Dr. Sherman is personable, presentable and very popular with a significant number of Albertans. He is also a one-issue politician who is persuaded that only he has the answers to Alberta’s health care crisis. As such, a strong case can be made that he is exactly the wrong person to lead a party that is teetering on the edge of extinction.

It is the special responsibility of party loyalists – the kind of people who join political parties, pay dues and get to vote in internal party elections – to think really seriously about who is right and who is wrong for leadership roles.

There is no pleasure in saying that the Alberta Liberals cannot survive Dr. Sherman as their leader, but Dr. Sherman is exactly what they are likely to get if they open their leadership contest to the general public.

The youthful party brain trust on the Alberta Liberal executive that came up with this foolishness claims it was modelled on the U.S. primary system. But this is a misunderstanding of how most U.S. primary elections work. Those elections are conducted by state governments on behalf of the parties, presumably guaranteeing minimum standards. What’s more, the system assumes there are only two parties, and typically only registered party supporters get to vote.

Yesterday’s Liberal decision, at least, is the best news that could be imagined by the fledgling Alberta Party, which ran a blunder-free leadership convention in Edmonton over the weekend and chose a sensible and experienced politician, Hinton Mayor Glenn Taylor, in a vote by 1,200 party members.

As a party dedicated to the proposition that many former Liberal voters are now looking for a new home, the adoption of this ill-thought-out notion as Liberal policy will surely persuade many of Alberta’s remaining hard-core Liberals to consider switching to the Alberta Party.

This post also appears on rabble.ca.

New Alberta Party leader’s challenge is to turn a New Age blip into lasting political phenomenon

by David Climenhaga on May 29, 2011 in Uncategorized with 3 Comments
Your blogger discusses the state of Alberta (pun intended) with Alberta Party Leader Glenn Taylor. Below: Randy Royer.

In the end, the Alberta Party’s leadership vote yesterday came down to a choice between old-style plebeian NDP politics and old-style patrician Liberal politics.

It wasn’t much of a contest. The New Democratic Party approach won easily in a well-organized slam-dunk, and three-time Hinton Mayor Glenn Taylor became leader of the new political party without the need to resort to a second ballot. It helped that Mr. Taylor appears to have had the backing of the new party’s principal movers and shakers.

Mr. Taylor, who obviously honed his campaign-organization skills when he was an NDP candidate back in 1997 in his mill and mining town home, ran a professional campaign and mopped the floor with his three rivals. He won better than 55 per cent of the 1,200 ballots cast over the Internet, by telephone and in person at the two-day conference attended by more than 250 Alberta Party supporters in Edmonton’s Shaw Conference Centre. In all, the party has about 2,000 members.

Mr. Taylor’s closest challenger, Calgary businessman Randy Royer, who was once a rare federal Liberal supporter from Alberta’s conservative deep south, didn’t even come close despite a polished and professional campaign. He captured only 287 ballots, or 24 per cent of the vote.

Mr. Taylor’s election is, quite literally, a defining moment in the history of the fledgling party that has up to now defined itself as the one that “does politics differently” than all those others.

The Alberta Party now has a leader with an identifiable style that may not appeal to everyone, and a practical political need to develop policies that could turn off many current adherents. In other words, the Alberta Party’s days as a New Age political experiment are over, whether its leaders and adherents like it or not.

Until yesterday, the party was more of a social movement among Alberta’s chattering classes than a real political phenomenon. It has one member in the Alberta Legislature – Calgary-Currie MLA Dave Taylor (no relation) – but more by happenstance than design. The disaffected former Alberta Liberal switched to the Alberta Party in January after quitting the Liberals and sitting for nine months as an Independent.

The party as we now know it (the name’s been around for a while in various ideological guises) was pulled together in 2010 by a group of disaffected Red Tories, Blue Liberals and small-c conservative Greens. For the better part of 2010 and early 2011, its supporters have met in kitchens and living rooms talking (and talking) about their vision for Alberta politics, an exercise they dubbed The Big Listen.

The question, of course, is whether anyone not at these coffee parties was listening – and the consensus is that they were not. At least, recent public opinion polls show the Alberta Party has barely registered with rank and file Alberta voters.

Its most enthusiastic supporters nowadays seem to define their mission as listening to everyone, or, as one member put it during a discussion Friday night, being “a party that is over the full spectrum of the political spectrum.” The problem with this, pretty obviously, is that by trying to be everything to everyone, the party has ended up not really representing very much of anything to anyone.

So, after all this talk and warm feeling, the practical step that confronted the party was choosing a leader who could turn it into a real political force without turning off the many enthusiasts who liked the fact their party dreamed of practicing politics as they have not been practiced before.

The big question confronting Glenn Taylor is whether he can be that politician.

It’s not at all clear he can persuade the party’s current membership to trade their idealistic notions about New Age politics for the old-school, nitty-gritty, NDP techniques he used in his campaign and which pretty obviously work.

It’s equally unclear if a former New Democrat from a working-class town can continue to appeal to a group who are mostly disaffected former Alberta Liberals and disgruntled centrist Tories. For that matter, it’s unclear if such unhappy Liberals and Conservatives will stay unhappy now that Liberal leader David Swann and Premier Ed Stelmach, the joint causes of most of their grief, are on the way out.

If the party only manages to further fragment the centre and centre-left vote in Alberta, it could well end up electing no MLAs in the melee that is sure to be the next Alberta general election. Mr. Taylor himself vows to run in his West Yellowhead riding – now held by former trade unionist turned Tory Robin Campbell, who won overwhelmingly in 2008. With no MLAs, it is said here the Alberta Party will quickly fall apart.

On the other hand, the Alberta Liberals are now in a state of advanced decay, a situation from which the Alberta Party could benefit. Mr. Taylor may be the right leader with the right political skills to exploit this possibility.

But that will depend a lot on whom the Liberals choose as their leader – a decision that won’t be made until fall.

Mr. Taylor’s job now is to turn a New Age blip into a lasting political phenomenon. Good luck!

This post also appears on rabble.ca.

This just in: New Alberta Party leader gives speech; old leader sings Over the Rainbow (really!)

by David Climenhaga on May 29, 2011 in Uncategorized with No comments
Outgoing Acting Alberta Party Leader Sue Huff sings Somewhere, Over the Rainbow, I’m not making this up! Below: First ballot leadership vote victor Glenn Taylor.

I went to the Alberta Party convention this weekend. I ate the cookie (chocolate chip) and the sandwich (egg salad), but I didn’t drink the Kool-Aid. Not yet, anyway.

Mostly, I’m afraid, the two-day leadership convention of the party that defines itself as being in the middle and pretty well everywhere else in the Alberta political spectrum reminded me a lot of going to church – which, as mentioned in a recent post at this location, is an important role in society that the NDP suddenly seems disinclined to provide.

Pleasant, well-dressed, earnest people gave me a media pass and led me to a comfortable seat at the front of the congregation, which numbered about 250 this morning, which is pretty impressive, all things considered. Much better, at any rate, than the 150 or so who registered for the Alberta Liberal Party Convention in Calgary this weekend, of whom about 125 bothered to show up today. In fairness, the Liberal convention didn’t offer the end of a leadership race, which is always good for a little excitement.

Anyway, nobody yelled at me for the skeptical things I’ve said about the Alberta Party in the past, and several politely noted that while they respectfully disagreed, they understood my caution.

Like church, people talked about such concepts as “servant leadership,” leaving your correspondent thinking, uh-oh! Unlike church, no one asked me to stand up and introduce myself or to leave an offering, which was a mercy.

There was what could have been an excruciating moment when the party’s outgoing acting leader, Sue Huff, marched up to the podium at Edmonton’s Shaw Conference Centre, slung a guitar around her neck and sang Over the Rainbow. Really! But, damn, she was pretty good, which kinda saved the moment!

At any rate, it sure as heck beat hearing our mean-tempered prime minister pounding out unauthorized covers of old Beatles hits on an out-of-tune piano. Indeed, one sort of feels this should become a new tradition for departing political leaders, although it’s not clear what song Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach would pick. (Cryin’ Time? Ring of Fire?)

And of course there was the traditional political convention moment when one of the four candidates, three-term Hinton Mayor Glenn Taylor, won the Internet, phone and in-person leadership vote in a first-ballot slam-dunk with better than 55 per cent of the 1,200 votes cast.

Mr. Taylor seems like a fairly normal political type with a reasonably solid grasp of reality. He’s a former New Democrat as a matter of fact. We’ll just have to see if he manages to turn the Alberta Party into more of a political party, which is what will be required if it’s going to win any seats in the Legislature, than the rather ill-defined group promising to do politics in different ways than the art of the possible is practiced in this province today.

Mr. Taylor had 665 votes. His nearest competitor, Calgary businessman Randy Royer, received 287, or 24 per cent. Lee Easton, an English professor at Calgary’s Mount Royal University, had 144, 12 per cent of the total, and Tammy Maloney, who was described as a social entrepreneur, had 8.6 per cent.

That’s the news. The analysis tomorrow.

This post also appears on rabble.ca.

Sorry to be so late with this … was busy with the federal election … Alberta Party candidates announced!

by David Climenhaga on April 22, 2011 in Uncategorized with 4 Comments
These bloodhounds had no luck searching for signs of Alberta Party leadership candidates. There were just too many false federal trails. Below: Glenn Taylor, Tammy Maloney, Lee Easton and Randy Royer.

Uh, the Alberta Party leadership race… there are no big names … not even Dave Taylor’s.

Whatever you thought was going to happen, whoever you thought might be about to run, the fledgling Alberta Party has now announced its official list of leadership candidates and there are no big names. Nada.

If there is any news other than the obvious associated with this development, it is only that one of the previously declared candidates has dropped out – energy sector consultant Chris Tesarski announced in a blog post that he was gonzo because of a policy disagreement with the party’s establishment, such as it is. However, he noted, his struggle to lose 50 pounds will continue.

In addition, there’s no sign on the list of official candidates, for which nominations closed at noon on Monday, of the party’s sole MLA in the Legislature, former Liberal and Independent Dave Taylor. Presumably that’s news of a negative sort too.

There’s also no sign of Chima Nkemdirim, the Calgary lawyer who once enjoyed a relatively high profile as Alberta Party president and spokesman. He is now working in the office of Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi. One wonders if this suggests the party’s previous prime movers are losing interest.

Acting Leader Sue Huff is prevented by the party’s constitution from running.

The four candidates who remain in the race are:

  • Hinton Mayor Glenn Taylor, an ambitious former New Democrat who is the closest thing the party has to a high-profile candidate.
  • Tammy Maloney, who has worked for a number of charitable organizations in various parts of the world.
  • Lee Easton, a Mount Royal College English instructor and faculty association activist who identifies himself as a “passionate comic book geek.”
  • Randy Royer, a service industry executive with an interest in ending religious strife.

All of these are fine, sincere people. Only Mr. Taylor, however, seems at first glance like the kind of politician who actually might have the chops to make a go of it in the rough and tumble world of the Legislature. None of them, including Mr. Taylor, have much profile with Albertans.

Now, if the middle of a hotly contested and news intensive federal election campaign seems to you like an odd moment to make this announcement, well, it does to most observers.

The party’s leadership convention will take place in Edmonton on May 28 – less than a month after the federal election when the media will either still be full of scuttlebutt on new cabinet ministers or, even more exciting, a historic Parliamentary bun-fight over who will form the next government of Canada.

Such timing certainly does the Alberta Party no good in terms of generating publicity – which would seem to be a necessity for a political entity that is flying below the radar as far as most rank-and-file Alberta voters are concerned, although it has a relatively high profile in the blogosphere and among the Twittering classes.

Then again, in its most recent incarnation, the Alberta Party has rarely done things by the political book – as more than a year of trying to define its likely policy direction through a series of kitchen kaffeeklatches termed “the Big Listen” clearly illustrates.

Moreover, in defence of the new party, its timetable is driven to some extent by the timing of the Alberta provincial Progressive Conservative leadership race, which is already well under way with plenty of very high-profile candidates.

At least this is true if they really intend to run a full slate of candidates in the next provincial general election – which is likely to happen swiftly once the governing Conservatives have chosen a leader.

All this said, Albertans are still awaiting some sign that the Alberta Party intends to do something that will show it is prepared to do the nitty-gritty political work that no party can succeed without doing. There’s precious little evidence of it in this announcement.

The party’s ill-timed announcement of its official candidates suggests that the next really important date in its development will be the leadership vote – that is, the one planned by the Alberta Liberals after the Legislative session ends.

If the Liberal Party picks an effective leader, it is said here, that will be the end of the Alberta Party. If it does not, the Alberta Party and its new leader may get an unexpected lease on life as disillusioned Alberta Liberals look for a place to park their votes until they decide what to do next.

This post also appears on rabble.ca.

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