All posts tagged Joan Crockatt

Pack the Senate with cheats, then call for reform, then take off for Peru? Good plan!

by David Climenhaga on May 22, 2013 in Alberta Health Services, Allaudin Merali, Senate Abolition, Senate of Canada, Senator Mike Duffy with 4 Comments

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, not pictured because he’s pretty well disappeared, has heeded the touristic lure South America, illustrated above. Below: Canadian Parliamentarian Joan Crockatt and U.S. Representative Davy Crockett. Note to Globe and Mail: There is a difference! Below them: Allaudin Merali.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper was apparently grinding away at his Conservative caucus yesterday morning about the need for Senate reform.

An interesting strategy, his!

First you pack the place with self-entitled cheats and porkchoppers like Mike “The Puffster” Duffy, then you argue that their misdeeds are proof the institution needs reform!

If nothing else, this suggests Calgary Centre MP Joan Crockatt was sticking right to the party strategy handbook when she suggested in a now-ntorious Tweet that her Conservative Party is more ethical than all those other parties because some of its unethical senators resigned from caucus when they got caught.

Of course, this doesn’t mean very much when they can be expected to go on reliably voting for the same things as they would as caucus members while try to insinuate their way back to insider status, at least until they reach 75.

Ms. Crockatt’s risible suggestion prompted general hilarity among the chattering classes nationwide – and probably would have gone international had it not been for the antics of Toronto Mayor (and future Conservative senator?) Rob Ford, who was already occupying the Canadian Curiosity slot on foreign newscasts.

(By the way, here’s a note for the Globe and Mail’s editors, if such a thing is still employed by our National Paywalled Website: Unlike Davy Crockett, the late U.S. Congressman of a similar name, it’s Joan Crockatt, with an A.)

Let it be said nevertheless that Ms. Crockatt might be well advised to follow the example of former avid Tweeter Pat Martin of the New Democratic Opposition and shut down her Twitter account for the duration, or at least hand it over to a reliable aide.

Speaking of reliable aides, that brings us right back to the prime minister’s current sea of troubles.

I expect Mr. Harper’s suggestion at a studiously public caucus meeting yesterday morning that any of his MPs who are just there for reasons of self interest should “leave this room” was mainly greeted with discreetly rolled eyes.

“I know that like me and my family, you are scrupulous about paying personal expenses,” Mr. Harper is said to have added, presumably with a poker face and to a largely silent room, before quickly jetting off to the much friendlier environs of Peru and Colombia, leaving Question period to underlings.

Mr. Harper’s problem is that, right now thanks to Senator Duffy and others, the public has taken a fairly jaundiced view of his government, and he knows it. And nowadays who can blame them for a little cynicism, when just a few layers of the onion are peeled back yet the PM refuses to acknowledge any responsibility or even knowledge of what was going on among his closest aides right in his own office?

Instead, quite typically, Mr. Harper blamed the NDP and the Liberals for his self-inflicted troubles – and privately, no doubt, the “liberal” media as well. You know, those well-known social democrats like PostMedia’s Andrew Coyne and the editorial Board of the Globe and Mail, for whom l’affaire Puffster has been too much to swallow even with their usual tolerance for bad-tasting Tory potions.

Despite Mr. Harper’s not-entirely-successful attempts to “distance himself” form his stinky Senate appointments, the PM had very little to say before his hasty departure about the one issue that would have benefitted from the disinfectant properties of a little sunlight.

To wit: the unethical and possibly illegal payment of $90,172 by the former chief of the prime minister’s staff, Nigel Wright, to Senator Duffy.

Mr. Wright fell on his sword on Sunday morning to protect his prime minister after his effort failed to bail out the Harper Government by quietly paying off Senator Duffy’s improperly claimed away-from-home living expenses.

Alas for Mr. Harper – who has replaced Mr. Wright with a callow former National Citizens Coalition hack rather like himself who used to walk around wearing a picket sign reading, “Liberal, Tory, Same Old Story” – the issue just won’t fade away.

Indeed, the only way to make it go away forever is to fix the Senate. And unfortunately for the PM’s “reform” talk, the only way to fix the Senate that will actually work is to abolish it.

 

Contracts? Contracts? Who cares about contracts?

Meanwhile, out here in Alberta, Premier Alison Redford has vowed to forestall the inevitable and force former Capital Health and Alberta Health Services CFO Allaudin Merali to go to court if he wants to try to get his half-million or so dollars in severance.

Alert readers will recall how Mr. Merali’s expense account became a cause célèbre and a huge embarrassment to the Redford Government in August 2012 when CBC investigative reporter Charles Rusnell published the results of a Freedom of Information search revealing “how he spent tens of thousands of dollars on lavish meals at high-end restaurants, bottles of wine, even a phone for his Mercedes Benz car.” Mr. Merali left the employ of AHS soon thereafter.

Yesterday, Calgary Sun political columnist Rick “The Dinger” Bell quoted Ms. Redford as saying, “If people think they are entitled to something in a contract and other people don’t think they’re entitled to it I guess they can hire lawyers and take legal routes and go to court.”

In other words, she said: “We are not going to voluntarily do anything with respect to his severance. … We are not going to simply sit back and take a look at what he may or may not feel he’s entitled to without resisting that.”

There are just four problems with this plan:

  1. Alberta Health Services signed a contract with the guy that says he’s owed the money
  2. Outrageous as his expenses may have seemed, all of them appear to have met the lax the rules for executive expenses in effect at the time he was a Capital Health Region employee
  3. He was rehired and then fired by another employer, AHS, and there’s no evidence his expenses at that organization broke any rules
  4. Canada, even the part governed by Ms. Redford’s Progressive Conservative Party, still has an independent and impartial judiciary

In other words, while Ms. Redford’s attitude is pretty typical of Alberta’s Top Tory Dogs – that is, the law is for you, not for us – sooner or later we Alberta taxpayers are going to have to pony the money up to Mr. Merali.

Yes, we can understand that by getting caught by the CBC successfully claiming expenses that offended ordinary voters, Mr. Merali embarrassed the government and incurred the premier’s wrath.

But we can also understand that Alberta taxpayers are not very well served by a legal fight against Mr. Merali’s claim, which as far as can be seen is entirely legitimate and backed up by a long trail of paper.

All Alberta’s premier is doing with this posturing, it is said here, is pouring good money after bad.

Unless, that is, she is slicing the facts extremely finely, since it will be AHS that has to pay up, and not technically “her” – that is, on the principle of l’état c’est moi, the government of Alberta.

On the other hand, if she is proposing to get involved in the affairs of AHS, that is not necessarily a bad thing either.

She could start by telling AHD Board Chair Stephen Lockwood to stop defending bonus pay for the health agency’s remaining executives on the grounds “it would be wrong from many perspectives to not compensate them as per their terms of employment.”

You know, completely unlike Mr. Merali.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why wait? Read 2013’s shocking political headlines right now on Alberta Diary!

by David Climenhaga on January 1, 2013 in Alberta Economy, Alberta Politics, Canadian Politics, International Affairs with 4 Comments

The Dagny Taggarts, a synchronized skating team from Ottawa get ready to do their popular routine, “Where Is John Galt?” Defence Minister Joan Crockatt is in the front row, second from right. Below: Senator Tom Flanagan; U of C economics student Kim Jong-un, in full Calgary drag; Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszuk, ecstatic for his boss; and Nobel Prize winner Raj Sherman with the author. Actual events may not turn out exactly as predicted.

Why wait for 2013’s headlines when you can read them here on Alberta Dairy right now? In a spirit of transparency bordering on clairvoyance, Alberta Diary consulted the Red Top Institute of Political Commentary, headed by Perfesser Dave and made up of a cab driver from each of the communities in Alberta large enough to license insufficient numbers of taxis. Here are the Institute’s predictions of the major Alberta political news stories in each month of the coming year, made by an all-Albertan panel of the favoured sources of professional journalists throughout the world, which Perfesser Dave hopes will result is numerous grants from the bazillionaire American plutocrats who bankroll the Fraser Institute. Warning: Actual events may not turn out exactly as predicted, sort of like similarly scientific Fraser Institute studies in that regard.

January: Allaudin Merali returns to Alberta Health Services

Alberta Health Services CEO Dr. Chris Eagle announces that former Chief Financial Officer Alauddin Merali would be rejoining the province-wide health agency and resuming his duties as CFO. “When we looked at how much Mr. Merali’s lawsuit was going to cost us, seeing as we fired him in a big fat hurry after Fred Horne called us, and we don’t have a legal leg to stand on anyway, we thought we’d just say ‘to heck with it’ and ask him back,” Dr. Eagle said. “We would never have done this if the price of oil wasn’t collapsing,” he added, “but Doug Horner told us we had to.” Dr. Eagle added, “we’re putting him in the basement next to Lynn Redford’s office.” Premier Alison Redford was not available for comment, either about Mr. Merali or her sister, who also works is a senior executive position for AHS.

February: Finance Minister Doug Horner launches leadership bid as oil heads lower

With oil prices heading south of $50 per barrel, Legislative insiders say Finance Minister Doug Horner has established a committee to explore the possibility of another bid for the leadership of the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party in the event Alberta Premier Alison Redford decides to step aside. He’s reported to have observed that his family has been in politics in Alberta longer than almost anyone else, and they might as well stick around and be the last ones in charge before the place shuts down. Petroleum markets have been hit by a glut of oil and gas supplies in the United States and a worldwide economic slowdown that has significantly reduced demand and prices. Ms. Redford was not available for comment, although her spokesperson, Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszuk, said he would be sending out a Tweet later urging Albertans not to move just yet to Saskatchewan and B.C., which he referred to as “mudslide country.”

March: Trio of Liberal MLAs cross floor to join NDP Legislative caucus

Alberta Liberal (Liberalberta) MLAs Laurie Blakeman, David Swann and Kent Hehr all cross the floor to join the Alberta New Democrats, increasing the NDP caucus to seven and making the New Democrats the third party by size in the Legislature. All three are thought likely to contest the NDP leadership, along with NDP MLAs David Eggen and Deron Bilous, when New Democrat Leader Brian Mason retires next year and moves to the United States to take up an important position with the New York City Transit Authority. “I’m finally going to get to run the train,” Mr. Mason said proudly. The remaining NDP MLA, Rachel Notley, continues to refuse to consider a leadership bid.

April: Defence Minister Joan Crockatt censured for misspelled Tweets

Conservative Party strategists ask Canadian Defence Minister Joan Crockatt to give up her Twitter account after a series of embarrassing late-night Tweets in which she spells Opposition leader Thomas Mulcair’s name five different ways and accuses him of willfully transmitting Dutch Disease to Canadians who weren’t told he had the condition. To pass the time previously spent Tweeting, Ms. Crockatt said she had joined the Dagny Taggarts, a synchronized skating team that acts out the stories of author Ayn Rand on the ice. She said she is also considering marketing a line of high-fashion clothing based on old Shriners’ uniforms. Conservative Party insiders said Prime Minister Harper considers Ms. Crockatt’s punishment the end of the matter, although he would think about demoting her to Minister of Winter Sports Clothing and making her move to Helena Guergis’s old office if there are any more Tweeting incidents.

May: Tom Flanagan appointed to Canadian Senate

Prime Minister Harper announces that his former aide and Calgary School professor Tom Flanagan has been appointed to the Canadian Senate. “As an American, Dr. Flanagan knows exactly what I have in mind for the Canadian Senate, which would be the American Senate,” the Prime Minister said. A special provision will suspend the normal requirement that Canadian senators not serve past the age of 75, the prime minister said. “I can’t tell you how delighted I am to be get to move back to Ottawa, where I was born and grew up,” said Dr. Flanagan, at a press conference on Parliament Hill, a remark that confused several members the Ottawa press gallery. “It sure has changed, though, since I was a lad there,” observed Dr. Flanagan, who is 106. “They even seem to have rerouted the Illinois River to the north side of town!” The PM and the professor have patched up their differences over Dr. Flanagan’s book on how he made Mr. Harper the prime minister and won the federal government for the Conservatives. “I explained to Stephen that it was just a misunderstanding,” Dr. Flanagan said. “The publisher forgot to say it was supposed to be a work of fiction.”

June: Jason Kenney weds Hungarian in secret ceremony

The marriage of Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney to a woman he met at a street market in Hungary last summer stuns and shocks his friends and political associates. Little is known of the identity of the bride or the details of the ceremony, although one Ottawa insider is said to have cell-phone video of fellow Calgary MP Ron Anders sobbing throughout the service, which appears to have taken place outdoors at a campground. Sun News Network political commentator Ezra Levant turned down a request to serve as best man and refused to attend the rites. There is apparently some disagreement between Mr. Levant and Mr. Kenney about whether the European country is a safe destination for on-air political commentators. Alberta’s Mr. Lukaszuk, who serves as Premier Redford’s representative in matters involving European protocol, said he would not be sending a gift to Mr. Kenney and his bride.

July: Pope visits Fort McMurray, blesses Alberta oil sands

Accompanied by Prime Minster Stephen Harper, Pope Benedict XVI, flies into Fort McMurray, where the leader of 1.2 billion Roman Catholics worldwide blesses the Alberta oil sands, conducts services for a huge throng of worried Newfoundlanders and prays for an increase in petroleum prices. The Papal aircraft is accompanied by a flight of J-20 stealth fighters from the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, which the RCAF-FARC is said to be considering purchasing for the bargain-basement price of $35 billion. The Prime Minister is also said to have been persuaded by former British PM Tony Blair to become a Roman Catholic, since that would make it easier for him to get a great diplomatic gig after he retires from politics and because it’s been sort of a tradition with Canadian prime ministers, the better ones from Quebec, anyway.

August: Danielle Smith quits; Ted Morton to lead Wildrose Party

Saying that explaining the basic concepts of market doctrine MLAs from southeastern Alberta “is just too much work,” Wildrose Party Leader Danielle Smith announces she is leaving politics to move to Vancouver and join the Frasertarians, a New Age religion that worships Ayn Rand as the “Ascended Master and Mistress” and the late economist Milton Freedman as the “Missing Messiah.” After an emergency meeting of the party leadership at a retreat in the Rocky Mountain town of Cochrane, a press release is posted on the Wildrose website saying former Conservative finance minister Ted Morton has been asked to lead the party. Wildrose House Leader Rob Anderson is reported to be in the southern Alberta community of Cardston conferring with someone named Craig Chandler about plans to establish a new party, which will be even farther to the right than the Wildrose Party. Mr. Chandler will draft the Wild Rosehip Tea Party’s constitution, an area where he is said to have experience if not expertise.

September: On ‘sabbatical,’ Kim, Jong-un commences studies at U of C

Saying he on “on sabbatical” from his duties as leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Kim Jong-un commences studies in political science and economics at the University of Calgary. “I was very disappointed when I got here to learn that Professor Flanagan would no longer be teaching classes because of his duties in Ottawa,” said Mr. Kim. “My late father and I have both admired the professor and studied his advice for many years and I felt there were still some things I could learn from him.” However, Mr. Kim said, “I am looking forward to meeting and taking classes with other signatories of the Firewall Manifesto. As you know, it has been necessary from time to time to remind the American and Japanese imperialists of the DPRK’s own Firewall Doctrine, under which a Wall of Fire can be called down upon them at any time if they do not respect the territorial integrity of the DPRK. We were always encouraged by the existence of people who thought like us in the Canadian West.” Mr. Kim said he also hopes to make a “Gangnam Style” video with Justin Trudeau before returning to the Korean Peninsula in 2015. “Justin has enough star power to put a small satellite into orbit, although only for peaceful purposes!”

October: Raj Sherman quits, Darshan Kang to take over as Liberalberta leader

Liberalberta Leader Raj Sherman takes Albertans by surprise when he announces he will soon be stepping down as leader of the Liberalberta Party. “I’ve already achieved what I came here to do,” Dr. Sherman told an extremely small group of supporters. “You’ll know what I’m talking about very soon,” Dr. Sherman added mysteriously. Darshan Kang, the only remaining member of the Liberalberta Caucus, will become interim leader until a joint leadership convention is held with the Alberta Party in the spring of 2014. The Liberlbertans will publish advertisements in all Alberta community newspapers asking any Alberta Party members to come forward and identify themselves.

November: President Obama says cold fusion is product of ‘new Manhattan Project’

U.S. President Barack Obama announces in Washington that the work of a top-secret “new Manhattan Project” has resulted in the creation of a cold fusion reactor that will solve the world’s energy problems forever and end the threat of global warming using only water and peanut butter. Oil prices plunge to below $5 a barrel for sweet Saudi Arabian crude. Former PC leadership candidate Gary Mar is reported to have returned from Hong Kong to Calgary, where he is raising funds for another run at the Progressive Conservative Party leadership, should Premier Alison Redford decide to step down. “We all know that Alberta has a great future as a top producer of world-class beef and barley, and as the No. 1 holiday destination for Americans thanks to the steep decline in the value of the Loonie,” Mr. Mar said. Ms. Redford, who was reported to have been admitted for a period of rest at the Ralph Klein General Hospital on Third Way Trail in south Calgary, was not available for comment.

December: Raj Sherman awarded Nobel Prizes in Medicine, Economics

The Nobel Prize Committee in Stockholm, Sweden, announces that former Albertalberal Leader Raj Sherman had been awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in Medicine. The Emergency Room physician and former politician will receive the prize for having come up with all the answers to the problems faced by Alberta Health Services in just 18 months, then offering them to Mankind, the committee said. He will be honoured at a dinner of fermented herring and köttbullar (Swedish meatballs) in Stockholm later this month. The committee also awarded Dr. Sherman the Nobel Prize for Economics, for the same reasons. Dr. Sherman is the first winner of two Nobel Prizes in a single year. Dr. Sherman will take up a teaching post at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, where he said he has really good contacts. “See,” he told reporters who met him at Arlanda Airport near the Swedish capital, “I really was the smartest man in Alberta!”

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

The Alberta Apocalypto: The world as you know it is about to end! Again…

by David Climenhaga on December 20, 2012 in Alberta Economy, Alberta Politics, Energy Revenues, Taxes with 8 Comments

Alberta Finance Minister Doug Horner gets ready to make a sacrifice to placate the mighty and angry Deficit God. Alberta politicians, not to mention the Legislative complex, may not be exactly as illustrated. Below: The real Mr. Horner.

Oh my God! The world is coming to an end!

I’m not talking about the Mayan calendar, either, which says the jig is up tomorrow, which is going to be a big disappointment to those of us who were looking forward to a nice weekend followed by a little time off for the holiday.

But this time, it’s way worse than that. This is the Alberta Tory Calendar, after all, in which the End Times just keep coming around again and again with the regularity of a metronome. Tick-tock!

I’m telling you, it’s so bad that by the end of this post I’m going to have entirely used up my quota of italics for the rest of the year!

Right on schedule – Tick! – Alberta Finance Minister Doug Horner was up on his hind legs in Edmonton yesterday – Tock! – to grimly inform us all that this time he really means it – Tick! – really, the world as we know it is coming to an end, we’re all going to have to wear sackcloth and ashes – Tock! – and get a haircut too, because, oh golly, the world’s most volatile commodity seems to have shown some volatility again.

Oil prices. Fluctuating! Who’d’ve thought?

But yes, the sands of time are finally running out – and, this being Alberta, we thought for sure it would take longer than this because the sand in question was all clumped together with oily goo. But, nope, this is it, people. We’re screwed. It’s all over. Finished. Done. Finis. …

You get the picture. And if you don’t, you will when you watch the evening news.

Here are the key parts of the Edmonton Journal’s story about Mr. Horner’s dire warning yesterday. I’ve left out nothing important: “Tough choices … plunging price … big bite out of provincial revenue … warned his colleagues … facing financial constraints … not the greatest Christmas news … we have to adjust … everything is on the table … taken off the table … facing a deficit … oil has fallen to a record low … different than in the past … might not be able to count on any increases … live within their means … reining in and restraining our spending … meet our targets … tough stuff … tough decisions … spending freeze …” yadda-yadda.

Yes, everything is in there except the bit about tightening our belts, and, count on it, they’ll have added that by lunchtime today.

Alberta Energy Minister Ken Hughes warned us the same warning the day before yesterday, by the way, and Premier Alison Redford added a dire warning or two in the afternoon. Prime Minister Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty are known to be fretting about this too, so count on them to weigh in on the need for more austerity momentarily.

And they just found out!

So, seriously, how stupid is this?

Of course we’ve got a freaking revenue problem! We don’t collect enough taxes.

We don’t collect enough taxes on purpose, because it keeps the oil companies who own our government’s soul happy and behaving themselves, politically speaking.

Last time they got exercised about this particular issue, they cooked up the Wildrose Party, which stands for exactly the same thing as the Mr. Horner’s PCs – only even more of it!

We also don’t collect enough taxes – and those that we do we take from the people who can least afford them through our thoroughly regressive and unproductive tax system – because it keeps voters disengaged.

Disengaged voters behave themselves too – by not voting.

That is, disengaged voters are good from the “conservative” perspective because they don’t feel like they have a stake in the province or anything it does, and so you get to stay in power for 41 years and counting.

Alberta politicians like Mr. Harper – the prime minister of Calgary – took this idea to Ottawa and would like to put it to work nation-wide. It was disengaged Alberta voters, you might say, combined with a useful split on the centre left, that got Joan Crockatt elected in the recent Calgary Centre federal by-election. Joan Crockatt!

Of course we have a cash shortage. We insist on paying cash for everything, including the house, the car and the new washing machine.

If I didn’t know better, I’d think we were run by economic imbeciles who hadn’t figured out that commodity prices go up and down like one of those pump jacks out on the Prairie. But we know for a fact these folks aren’t imbeciles – in fact, some of them, like Mr. Horner and Ms. Redford, for example, are quite smart. So something else must be going on.

Maybe they’ve actually bought the political calculus pushed by the right for three decades that you can’t do the sensible and prudent thing no matter what because … that’s just not the way we do things in North America. (“No taxes!” Ms. Redford barked this afternoon. She meant, presumably, no new taxes.)

Or maybe it’s because they have a plan to completely destroy our public institutions and they need the cash flow-through from a ’round the clock out-of-control boom non-renewable resources boom to keep us all distracted while they privatize everything.

While you think about those possibilities, here’s a home truth. Commodity prices are cyclical. They go up and down and they’re never going to stop going up and down. So plan for it! Put a little money in the bank. Don’t always pay cash. Have another revenue stream – you know, like a reasonable level of taxation.

Indeed, we could add a nice round figure like $10 billion to the taxes we collect here in Alberta and they’d still be the lowest in the country!

In the mean time, though, the world is ending, and the fact that the fixes are pretty obvious, easy to implement and relatively painless for everyone involved doesn’t mean for one second that they’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell of being implemented.

So have a wonderful holiday and a great 2013 … and if the world doesn’t really end tomorrow, tighten your belt.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

And the winner is … no one: everybody missed Monday’s biggest story

by David Climenhaga on November 28, 2012 in Alberta Politics, Calgary Centre By-election, Canadian Politics with 7 Comments

Alberta families like this one just stayed home Monday and watched TV. Below: Pollster Janet Brown.

So who stayed home?

While poll analysts and pundits pontificated yesterday about what the somewhat-less-than-stellar victory of Conservative Joan Crockatt in the Calgary-Centre by-election might mean for the national political parties, the real story went largely unexamined – to wit, the wretched voter turnout.

With fewer than 30 per cent of the eligible voters in the inner-city Calgary riding able to bestir themselves to wander out and cast a ballot, it’s pretty obvious that a clear majority of electors truly didn’t give a hang about who governs them, or how. Indeed, given recent historical trends, the same thing can probably be said of all of Albertans.

“The big story from Monday night isn’t that Calgary Centre is leaning more left or more right,” observed the well-known Alberta pollster Janet Brown in a note she sent me. “It’s that the vast majority don’t care who represents them in Ottawa.”

“Although it got far more news coverage than the other two by-elections that were held Monday, Calgary Centre had the lowest voter turnout,” she observed, noting that 30 per cent isn’t all that unusual for a by-election, but it ought to be for this one.

“It was shockingly low for this particular by-election because the news coverage was so intense,” Ms. Brown said. “Every national public affairs program … covered the Calgary Centre by-election on multiple occasions.”

Well, maybe. Ms. Brown certainly speaks the truth about voter turnout. It was at 55 per cent in the riding in the 2011 general election, and at 29.4 per cent Monday it compared unfavourably to 35.8 per cent in Durham, Ont., and 43.9 per cent in Victoria, B.C., neither of which received quite the national publicity.

So what caused this truly pathetic turnout? We can only speculate.

It has been fair in the past to accuse the Conservative Party of Prime Minister Stephen Harper of engaging in Republican-style voter suppression tactics, especially in the last federal general election, but it is said here this likely did not pay much of a role in Monday night’s Cowtown tally.

True, the efforts by the Conservatives and the party’s Sun News Network auxiliary to dredge up old comments by prominent Liberal Party figures and spin them as anti-Alberta were an effort of sorts to persuade some Liberal voters to stay at home.

If nothing else, this suggests the private polls to which the Conservatives had access made it clear Liberal candidate Harvey Locke was not losing support to Green candidate Chris Turner, and that in their estimation he still had the potential for growth.

Still, with Ms. Crockatt seemingly languishing in voter enthusiasm, the Tory effort this time focused more on a desperate drive to get out their vote than an organized effort to keep anyone else from the polling booths. Anyway, there was no way the national neoconservative party would take the chance on creating a Pierre Poutine-style scandal in a low-stakes Alberta by-election when observers and opponents were sure to be on the alert for misbehaviour of just that sort.

They’ll save that for the big one in 2015 or whenever, and for more desperate circumstances than these.

So who stayed home, and why?

It’s doubtful New Democrat stay-at-homes had much impact, if only because there were so few of them. More likely, the majority of the small number of committed NDPers in the riding who voted strategically against Ms. Crockatt would have switched their votes to the Greens, although it sounds as if a fairly significant number held their noses and went Liberal too.

Mr. Locke seems to have held the Liberal vote, and Ms. Crockatt also held onto her always-motivated Alberta Wildrose Party base. Moreover, fringe candidates managed to collect only a fringe vote.

So, it is said here, the largest group of stay-at-home non-voters in Calgary Centre Monday were Redford Red Tories, the kind of people who supported former MP Lee Richardson in past elections without qualms and who, in the event, just couldn’t live with themselves if they voted for a Wildroser like Ms. Crockatt and at the same time couldn’t bear to vote for anyone who wasn’t a Conservative.

If this theory is correct, the split on the right played out relatively harmlessly from Ms. Crockatt’s perspective, while the split on the left meant Mr. Turner drained votes from Mr. Locke. Oh well, as said here last time, there’s no point moaning about this, it’s the way the system is designed to work and it’s not likely to be changed any time soon.

But Ms. Brown thinks I’m giving Alberta voters way too much credit. “I think people stayed home because they simply don’t care who represents them in Ottawa,” she argued “They feel so disconnected from their federal representatives on a day-to-day basis, that they don’t feel much of a stake in who wins.”

She holds out hope they’re likely to be more engaged in a general election, when there’s more attention on the personalities and the policies of the leaders.

Well, it’s all grist for the mill. Maybe someone will do some ex first-past-the-post facto research and find out for sure.

Regardless, if my speculation holds any water, it goes to an important point. Both New Democrats and Liberals, if they are to have any chance of success in the next federal general election, need to do more than just fight over their own split voters.

One or the other of them is going to have to find a way to persuade soft Conservative voters – those legendary Red Tories – to come across and vote for someone who isn’t a Conservative.

In most places, convincing them merely to stay at home won’t make the grade.

Well, Ms. Crockatt has already jetted off to Ottawa to be sworn in and this will be the last I will have to say on this topic for a little while.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Go back to sleep everyone: another Tory win in Calgary

by David Climenhaga on November 27, 2012 in Alberta Politics, Calgary Centre By-election, Canadian Politics with 17 Comments

Joan Crockatt, the first pest past the post, flanked by Calgary MPs Rob Anders and Jason Kenney, gives her victory speech in Calgary last night. Actual victorious Alberta Conservatives may not be exactly as illustrated. Below: The unsuccessful Liberal, Green and NDP candidates; the real Ms. Crockatt.

Oh, how very depressing.

Progressive voters outnumbered Conservatives, Big-P Progressive and otherwise, by a largish margin in Calgary Centre – and split their vote in last night’s by-election so tidily between the Liberals and the Greens, with a smattering to the NDP, that Joan Crockatt, one of the weakest Conservative candidates in a generation, managed a comfortable victory.

Just over a quarter of the eligible electors voted.

So after all the Calgary Centre hype, here in a nutshell is the Harper Conservative election strategy for 2015. It seems to have worked just fine in Calgary last night.

Indeed, if I were a true-blue Tory, I’d be thinking of opening up my wallet right now with a generous donation to the Greens!

Of course your blogger is personally disappointed by this outcome in that he predicted a Green victory in the by-election, and thus was double-skunked, seeing as the Liberals’ Harvey Locke had considerably outdone the Greens’ Chris Turner and in turn been outdone by the Tories’ Ms. Crockatt by the time the dust had settled. No matter, though, he’ll just remind readers that he originally bet on Ms. Crockatt, who when the closing bell had rung was indeed the winner.

At any rate, the progressive vote split, so convenient to the Conservatives, allowed Ms. Crockatt, a tiny but apparently sufficiently perfect neoconservative for Calgary’s tastes, to hang on to a victory that while close enough to make the evening exciting at times was nevertheless convincing enough, and grew more convincing as the night went on.

And that was in the Calgary riding that had the best chance of electing someone other than another Harper Tory.

The Harper Conservatives and Ms. Crockatt’s supporters in particular must be thanking the first electoral god past the pantheonic post for the undemocratic vagaries of Canada’s electoral system.

Ah well, no point moaning. That’s the way the system was designed to work, and it stood the challenge of democracy once again, so everyone can go back to sleep for the moment.

If there are lessons in this, they are Delphic, more auguries than axioms.

But if anything is clear from the opposition standpoint, it’s that notwithstanding hoked-up allegations of anti-Albertanism, even in Cowtown’s hotbed of Conservatism, it sure doesn’t hurt to have Justin Trudeau come out and campaign for a fellow.

Presumably this has been duly noted by the Tory slime machine, and as this is written they are no doubt topping up the tanks of sticky psycho-reactive goop for the 2015 election campaign. Mr. Trudeau had best be braced for icy jets of psychomagnotheric slime from Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s unsavoury gang of Gritbusters.

The Greens too can take comfort that their support is wide, even if it is not satisfactorily deep, which is always a problem in our unbeloved system of single-member plurality, otherwise known as the first pest past the post.

The news is not really all that good for the Harperites either of course, despite two comforting by-election victories, unless progressives can be induced again to split their vote – as happened last night in Calgary and Victoria. In that case, the outcome may be happy enough for the W.L. Mackenzie King of the 21st Century.

As for my New Democrats, I am hard pressed to spin this their way, unless it was simply the better part of valour that led to their uninspired and unenthusiastic campaign in Calgary Centre. One can only hope.

Which leaves us where exactly? Well, pretty much where we were yesterday, as a matter of fact, only without the bracing tonic of an impending by-election.

As predicted here before, Ms. Crockatt has the right attitudes to do well in the Harper Tory caucus, and will soon be a key player by the PM’s inner circle.

Wildrose leader to Albertans: You’re gullible and stupid!

by David Climenhaga on November 25, 2012 in Alberta Politics, Wildrose Party with 9 Comments

Pastor Allan Hunsperger in exile, as seen by the Wildrose Party’s leadership. Below: Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith (mean photo by Dave Cournoyer); the real Allan Hunsperger; party strategist Tom Flanagan; Wildrose House Leader Rob Anderson.

Despite an amusing Pierre Poutine moment before it started, the Wildrose Party’s one-day annual general meeting in Edmonton yesterday seems to have gone swimmingly for Leader Danielle Smith, whose key messages were transmitted uncritically by media and apparently accepted in a similar spirit by members.

Reading between the lines of the media coverage, Ms. Smith’s three main points to her right-wing supporters were as follows:

  1. Bozo eruptions by bad candidates, not Wildrose policies, caused the party’s election loss on April 23
  2. Nothing substantive in the Wildrose economic agenda needs to change, but the party may have to be sneakier about some of its members’ social conservative views
  3. Albertans are gullible and stupid and were easily fooled by fear-mongering Tories into not voting Wildrose

OK. I admit it. I’m not a Wildrose supporter! I wonder what gave me away?

But really, people, how else are we to interpret Ms. Smith’s statements, as channeled to us by the Edmonton Journal?

It’s certainly apparent that poor old Pastor Allan Hunsperger, the Lake of Fire guy, is going to be made to to wear last spring’s election loss for all of eternity by the party brass.

It’s said here that most Albertans would have forgiven the party the pastor’s Bronze Age theological views – after all, he seemed sincerely concerned about the fate of certain voters’ eternal souls no matter how quaint his interpretation of how they were endangering them may have seemed to Albertans in this secular age – if they hadn’t so distrusted the party’s economic policies, particularly on health care.

But in the Wildrose worldview, the policies are fine, the problem with them is caused by fear-mongering, smear campaigns and Tory perfidy. Well, fair enough – Tories are pretty perfidious! It’s just that nowadays here in Alberta, they’re also sticking pretty close to the centre, and voters obviously liked the centre a whole lot better than the far right fringe.

Ms. Smith, at least, showed some recognition of this reality, calling for reassessment by party members of such contentious policies as “conscience rights” (code for allowing discrimination against gays and inconsistent application of reproductive rights), abolishing the Human Rights Commission (which smacked of encouraging bigotry to a lot of Albertans) and such nutty relics of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s independentiste Firewall Manifesto as replacing the Mounties with an Albertan-speaking provincial police force and heaving the Canada Pension Plan over the side.

This is progress of a sort, even if it doesn’t quite add up to the “fresh, innovative and forward-looking” policies Ms. Smith promised.

In addition, bozo eruptions by ill-prepared candidates will no longer be tolerated. While Ms. Smith won’t come right out and admit it was a mistake to stand by her men last April, she did note that “if the candidate created such a controversy that it’s going to bring down the entire party, that it’s going to affect our ability to form government, I hope they would have the respect for their colleagues and choose to fall on their sword.” And if they won’t, depend upon it that an able swordsman will be found.

As for the economic agenda, the Wildrose Party will continue to be sneaky about its plans for health care – describing the U.S.-style market system it wants to impose as “European” and emphasizing its own brand of fear-mongering about debt financing and fair taxes.

That’s OK too. There are lots of voters who support such views in Alberta just as, quite obviously, there are more who prefer a more centrist approach.

As for Point 3, well, here’s her argument and what she said: The whole party got smeared with Pastor Hunsperger’s bozo eruption – just as, you know, Wildrose supporters of Joan Crockatt’s federal campaign in Calgary Centre are trying to get supposedly anti-Alberta comments by Liberals Justin Trudeau and David McGuinty to stick to the Liberals’ popular candidate in that riding. (Psssst! This is called politics.)

“Frankly, I didn’t think Albertans would fall for it,” Ms. Smith said. “I was wrong. I thought people would understand that having a couple of candidates make controversial comments doesn’t cast a pall on all 87. I was mistaken.”

Sorry, as noted, it was Wildrose policy that caused voters, who it is said here were in a mood to punish the Tories by handing them a minority government, to stampede back to Ms. Redford when the polls made it look as if they were about to elect a far-right Wildrose majority.

Or, as Wildrose 2012 campaign manager Tom Flanagan accurately told the Globe and Mail, the strategy didn’t work in part because the party hadn’t expected to be as far ahead as it was by mid-campaign. “We thought our job was to scratch up to parity, not to defend a big lead.”

The party wheeled out (figuratively speaking) the ancient Dr. Flanagan, who has a well-known sideline drumming neoconservative nostrums into the heads of University of Calgary students, with a more believable assessment for the crowd of what went awry on April 23.

To wit, said Dr. Flanagan, 68, while the Tories were losing their most right-wing supporters to the Wildrose, the government’s pitch to those closer to the centre was working.

Plenty of folks on the left side of the political spectrum will agree with Dr. Flanagan’s prescription that, “we have to liberate those left-wing voters to go back and vote where they would actually vote.”

According to the Globe and Mail, Perfesser Flanagan also trotted out a suspect Abingdon Research opinion poll that supposedly shows the Wildrose Party firmly back in the hearts of Alberta voters. The word from the trenches of opinion research is that a poll replete with loaded push-questions about Daryl Katz’s political donations has been making the rounds, so supporters of Ms. Redford should probably wait for another survey before lining up to jump off Edmonton’s High Level Bridge.

In an interesting historical aside, the Globe revealed in its mini-interview that Dr. Flanagan said he himself wrote the infamous 2001 Firewall Manifesto, which then-premier Ralph Klein wisely tossed into the recycling bin. I wonder if the other noted western separatists who signed it, men (all men) like Prime Minister Harper, disgraced B.C. political advisor Ken Boessenkool and Ted Morton, the worst premier Alberta never had, remember the drafting process the same way?

OK, about that Pierre Poutine moment. Some naughty person – another perfidious PC, presumably – circulated an email to party members a couple of days before the AGM reading in part, “Rob Anderson needs our help if he’s going to become leader of Wildrose!” The email suggested that names candidates to support for party office to “be successful at forcing a post-AGM leadership review.”

It concluded: “With your help, we will make this a reality and elect Rob Anderson as Premier in 2016!” Mr. Anderson, a Mormon bishop who is party House leader and a particular favourite of the Wildrose social conservative wing, would no doubt love to be premier, but he really has pledged his fealty to Ms. Smith.

Anyway, the fun was soon spoiled by an email from Wildrose Chief Administrative Officer Jeffery Trynchy: “Please be advised that this email is fraudulent. We are currently taking steps to determine the identity of the sender.”

Darn!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

On Monday in Calgary, will the Tories come second … or third?

by David Climenhaga on November 23, 2012 in Alberta Politics, Calgary Centre By-election, Canadian Politics with 21 Comments

Conservative candidate Joan Crockatt campaigns in Calgary while a supporter covers his face in embarrassment. (Joke.) Below: The winner of Monday’s by-election, as forecast by Perfesser Dave, Chris Turner.

The great political minds of Alberta are pondering today where Conservative Party candidate Joan Crockatt will place in Monday’s Calgary Centre by-election.

Will she come second? … Or third?

You think I’m joking? This is no joke – especially for Prime Minister Stephen Harper!

Face it, people, if the Conservatives lose the safest seat of safe seats – in downtown Cowtown, for crying out loud – it is not going to tell a happy story about where Canadians are at when it comes to Mr. Harper’s angry neoconservative caucus, a government so cranky it can’t even stay on the same page as its provincial cousins who run the government in Edmonton!

But the contest now as it’s coming to be seen here in Alberta is that by election day each of the Liberals, Greens and Conservatives will own about 30 per cent of the committed vote in the riding, and the NDP will have the remainder.

So the race could go any of three ways, and in normal times there’s just enough of an edge from old habits that die hard for the Tories to win it easily.

But these, as they say, are not normal times. The Harper Conservatives, so focused on ideology they couldn’t see the dangers of their alliance with the far-right Wildrose Party, which they enthusiastically backed in last spring’s Alberta provincial election, have upset their own political applecart.

They have so alienated the riding’s traditional Tories – the kind of people who are comfortable backing Red Tories like their neighbour Alison Redford, the Progressive Conservative premier of Alberta, and former federal PC leader Joe Clark, who once represented the riding – that many of them are determined to teach their no-longer-comfortable federal political party a lesson by voting for someone else.

What’s more, despite her ability to articulately present her thoughts, Ms. Crockatt has turned out to be a far-from-ideal candidate.

Apparently thoroughly controlled by her Wildrose/Harperite advisers, the former journalist and right-wing commentator has avoided all-candidates’ forums, earned the wrath of Calgary’s popular mayor and run away from the media she’s supposed to understand. In economic terms a harsh, far-right ideological candidate, Ms. Crockatt seems to have assumed she could count on the riding’s traditionally reliable Tory vote without thinking too deeply about what kind of Tories many of those voters are.

But a lot of them, it’s turning out, are Red Tories just as disturbed as other Canadians about the authoritarian tone the country has taken on under Mr. Harper’s heavy hand.

Yes, Ms. Crockatt is a good door-to-door campaigner. But a lot of Calgary Centre voters, it is said here, are paying attention for once to the issues, and as a result we have a real race.

So what’s going to happen? Well, I’ve been wrong before and I will be again, but it’s said here Green candidate Chris Turner, an author, will win by a whisker.

The logic behind this speculation?

Easy. Liberal Harvey Locke, a lawyer, may hold most of his 30 per cent of the vote, shown in two recent Forum Research polls, helped a little by the recent visit of the undeniably charismatic Justin Trudeau and hindered a bit by the Albertans Go Home ejaculation Wednesday of former federal Liberal Energy Critic David McGuinty.

The bogus two-year-old “exclusive” about supposedly anti-Alberta remarks by Mr. Trudeau, dredged up by the Sun News Network in an attempt to resuscitate Ms. Crockatt’s flagging campaign, will likely have little impact – or at least not the impact its generators intend.

Mr. Turner, meanwhile, will hold the quarter of voters committed to voting Green who were identified in the last Forum poll and look to gain more support from other anti-Tory camps.

NDP candidate Dan Meades will lose a few more of his remaining 8 per cent, as soft Knee-Dips continue to migrate to the next-best anti-Tory candidate. They will go to the Green because it’s just too hard for a New Democrat to vote for a Liberal.

Then there are the Tories – deeply split now in the riding between the Wildrose rightists and ideological hardliners who dominate Ms. Crockatt’s campaign and the Redford-style Red Tories who were happy with their softer-edged former Tory MP, Lee Richardson, who is now Ms. Redford’s principal secretary.

But if it’s hard for NDPers to vote Liberal, it’s even harder for Conservatives – and that would be true even if the former Liberal natural resources critic hadn’t shot off his mouth about Tory Albertan MPs. That’s why, it’s said here, Mr. McGuinty’s ill-timed commentary and Mr. Trudeau’s long-ago remarks won’t have much impact on the outcome Monday. Many disaffected Red Tories have already made up their minds to go Green, rather than Liberal or NDP, and as usual Mr. Harper’s brain trust has concentrated its fire on the wrong opposition candidate.

So what’s the risk to these unhappy Conservatives of teaching the Harper-Wildrose crowd a lesson by voting for a Green? Virtually none. Heck, everyone’s pretty green nowadays anyway!

So Mr. Turner will pick up a few strategic NDP votes and lot of strategic Red Tory votes. At the last minute, he’ll even pick up some extra strategic Liberal votes, cast by electors either unhappy about Mr. McGuinty’s blathering or following those soft New Democrats to the strongest anti-Tory candidate.

Then the patented Alberta come from No. 3 strategy will have worked again! Indeed, a fourth Forum Research poll is said to be about to be released within hours that will confirm this predicted flow of votes toward Mr. Turner.

So Monday’s vote will be really close, I predict, but it’ll shake out in this order:

  1. Greens
  2. Liberals
  3. Tories
  4. NDP

Then again, I may be out to lunch. Maybe the NDP will come third. We’ll see on Monday.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Latest Calgary poll results – perhaps aided by party’s sophisticated moves – show Green Wave developing

by David Climenhaga on November 19, 2012 in Alberta Politics, Calgary Centre By-election, Canadian Politics with 7 Comments

Calgary Centre Greens get ready to surf the Green Wave, expected momentarily. Actual Green Party supporters may not be exactly as illustrated. Below: Chris Turner, Joan Crockatt and Naheed Nenshi.

The latest poll of residents of the Calgary Centre riding shows a Green Wave developing among opponents of the Conservative Party in the Nov. 26 federal by-election.

Organizers for Green Party candidate Chris Turner are taking a highly sophisticated approach to polling in the Calgary Centre by-election, tipping their supporters when they get wind of opinion polls in the riding and instructing them to be sure to pick up their phones and answer the questions.

Nothing wrong with this, of course – but it should serve as a warning to undecided voters and other observers, especially journalists, that the “narrative” candidates’ campaigns try to spin around small-sample polls like those being conducted in Calgary Centre can be easily manipulated by smart efforts to game the polling process.

In the case of the Calgary centre by-election, the narrative being developed by Mr. Turner’s supporters is that their candidate is the only one with momentum after he appeared unexpectedly in third place among respondents to a Nov. 12 poll of riding voters conducted by Forum Research Inc.

And it may well now be true, as Mr. Turner told the Globe and Mail yesterday after another Forum research poll appeared to confirm the results of the Nov. 12 survey, “we’ve got the momentum now. I know for sure we can win it. This is the most vulnerable Conservative campaign in Calgary in decades.”

The Nov. 12 poll showed Mr. Turner in a strong position to vault into the lead among the riding’s many voters who are opposed to front-running Conservative candidate Joan Crockatt. This would be an important consideration for strategic voters opposed to Ms. Crockatt and looking for the best candidate to whom to give their anti-Conservative vote.

The Nov. 12 Forum poll put Ms. Crockatt in the lead, barely, with 32 per cent of committed supporters. Liberal Harvey Locke was in second place with 30 per cent of those surveyed and Mr. Turner – at that time surprisingly – was in the key No. 3 spot with 23 per cent. NDP candidate Dan Meades had 12 per cent, according to that Forum survey.

The Forum Research poll released last night appeared to reinforce the narrative. In the survey conducted Saturday, Ms. Crockatt was back up a little at 35 per cent, but well below the 48 per cent she recorded in the first poll on Oct. 26. Mr. Locke was holding at 30 per cent. Mr. Turner had moved up again to 25 per cent. Mr. Meades’ support slipped to 8 per cent.

If this narrative sounds familiar to Alberta political observers, it ought to. It was exactly the strategy used to catapult Naheed Nenshi into the lead in the October 2010 Calgary municipal election and Alison Redford to victory in the 2011 Progressive Conservative leadership race. Both really got on the radar when a poll unexpectedly placed them in the No. 3 spot in their respective contests. Mr. Nenshi is now mayor of Calgary and Ms. Redford, of course, is the premier of Alberta.

It is likely no coincidence that many of the same people backing Mr. Turner were also involved in the Nenshi campaign, and possibly in the Redford campaign as well. Indeed, Mr. Nenshi stepped into the fray last week, slamming Ms. Crockatt for not showing up at some all-candidates’ forums.

So journalists and citizens interpreting the various Forum Research poll results ought to take note of the fact that the survey samples are very small – the Nov. 12 poll had only 376 respondents and the Nov. 17 poll had 403, which means that approximately four responses could move the level of support for any given candidate by a full percentage point.

Interactive voice response surveys like these Forum polls (which is pollster talk for robocall push-button polls) tend to have lower response rates than other polling methodologies, further increasing the impact of individual respondents.

After the Nov. 12 results, media quickly picked up on the fact Ms. Crockatt’s support appeared to be dramatically lower than it was on Oct. 26, when she recorded the backing of 48-per-cent of respondents. Journalists also quickly ran with the idea Mr. Turner was the candidate whose support was showing the most upward movement.

So it is significant – though impossible to criticize – that a Green Party organizer emailed committed supporters a note headed “There is another poll tonight – be sure to pick up,” not long before the latest survey.

“Word from Chris Turner’s Head Quarters is that another poll is being conducted at this very moment,” said the email from Green Party Volunteer Co-ordinator Natalie Odd to committed Turner supporters. “Please be sure to pick up any calls your receive this evening!”

The emails were followed up with phone calls to supporters, although the pollster actually appears to have called a day later than the party expected.

In addition to such emails and calls, Mr. Turner’s supporters posted similar messages on Facebook and some people distributed the call-display number the polling company was using.

As previously noted, there’s nothing wrong with this, any more than it would be wrong for a politician to encourage supporters to show up at all-candidates meetings and cheer loudly. Other campaigns may also be doing the same thing.

But as citizens we need to be aware that this method of polling can produce results that do not precisely reflect the true distribution of public support at the time the survey was taken. Furthermore, we would be naïve not to realize that poll results influence voter preferences during campaigns, especially among undecided voters pondering a strategic vote against a particular candidate.

Advance polls in the Calgary Centre by-election are scheduled to open today.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Will the Tories meet their Waterloo on the field at Calgary Centre? One can only hope!

by David Climenhaga on November 14, 2012 in Alberta Politics, Calgary Centre By-election, Canadian Politics with 7 Comments

Napoleon after the Battle of Waterloo. Events in the Calgary Centre by-election may not turn out to be exactly as illustrated. Below: Liberal Harvey Locke, Conservative Joan Crockatt and Green Chris Turner.

Is Joan Crockatt about to meet her Waterloo?

As reported first by Dave Cournoyer of the Daveberta blog and moments later by the Globe and Mail, a new poll released yesterday shows the by-election campaign in Calgary-Centre tightening into a three-way race among Ms. Crockatt, who is the Conservative Party’s standard bearer, and Harvey Locke of the Liberals and Chris Turner of the Greens.

Ms. Crockatt has been described by many commentators, with some justice, as a polarizing candidate. Even so, it would be a shocker if an electorate in a dependable Calgary riding were to send a brisk message to Prime Minister Stephen Harper about the way he runs the government by electing either one of the two environmentalists who showed well in the Nov. 12 robopoll by Forum Research.

The survey, of 376 randomly selected residents of the downtown Calgary federal electoral district, showed Ms. Crockatt, a former journalist and right-wing commentator, in the lead – but barely so, at 32 per cent. Nipping at here heels were Mr. Locke, with 30 per cent of the respondents, and Mr. Turner, with 23 per cent.

Forum says the margin of error for the poll is five percentage points, which would certainly appear to put Ms. Crockatt and Mr. Locke, a lawyer and prominent conservationist, within spitting distance of one another.

The NDP candidate, Dan Meades, who was nominated late and whose party for some reason only recently made much of an effort in the riding, trailed distantly with 12 per cent.

The idea that a robocall poll – called an interactive voice response, or IVR, in pollster talk – with a tiny sample to boot, could call it right when I’ve said repeatedly I thought Ms. Crockatt would be a shoo-in because of the way Calgary voters historically behave leaves this blogger torn.

I’ve called ’em wrong before and will no doubt call ’em wrong again, but it still makes me cringe when it happens. On the other hand, given Ms. Crockatt’s hard-right economic views, nothing could delight me more than to see Calgary Centre’s voters coalesce around any more progressive opposition candidate, Mr. Locke looking like the most likely at the moment, to give Mr. Harper and his unconservative neoconservatives a sound and much deserved spanking on their home turf.

Given the choice I’m going to plump for the horserace and pray that progressive voters in the riding rally ’round the best placed non-Conservative.

The Calgary vote will take place on Nov. 26.

After the Battle of Waterloo, which was fought on Sunday, June 18, 1815, in present-day Belgium, Napoleon Bonaparte wrote to the British: “Exposed to the factions which divide my country, and to the enmity of the great Powers of Europe, I have terminated my political career.” One can only hope for a repeat of history.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

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