All posts tagged Laurence Decore

It’s election day and Alison Redford’s hole card is all she has left: Is it an ace or is it junk?

by David Climenhaga on April 23, 2012 in Uncategorized with 5 Comments
Alberta Premier Alison Redford, not exactly as illustrated notwithstanding the Stetsons, has only one good card left to play. Is it an ace, or is it junk? We’ll find out tonight. Below: The real Ms. Redford and Danielle Smith.

As Albertans head to the polls today with large numbers of voters obviously in a mood for change and the media telling us a Wildrose majority is unstoppable, Progressive Conservative Premier Alison Redford may have only one good card left.

If her hole card turns out to be an ace, it’ll be because of the caution of the significant number of
Albertans and their families who work for and with this government, its agencies and the many groups and businesses that depend on it to survive.

A political party can score points by gratuitously attacking such people – as the Wildrose attack on “big government” without question has through this campaign, notwithstanding the party’s too-cute claim to recognize the value of “front-line” government employees.

And maybe that will be enough to deliver the 50 to 60 seats that pundits and pollsters have been pretty consistently calling for – although the final poll of the campaign, by Forum Research Inc., shows the race growing very close again.

And while this pitch may play well in Provost and Pincher Creek, it’s less likely to do so in Edmonton – or even places like Ponoka, home of the former Alberta Hospital Ponoka, a major regional employer.

In other words, you can’t expect people and their families who depend on the government for their livelihoods not to understand their situation, and you can’t blame them for voting with their families’ interests at heart.

Remember, an Alberta government is much more than just the 87 people who sit in the Legislature. It encompasses a very large pool of citizens who toil anonymously in its ranks, in such public services as health care, in other levels of government that interact with the province and with such public safety workers as police, court workers and correctional officers.

So if, despite all the blatantly pro-Wildrose propaganda in the mainstream media these past few weeks, Ms. Redford somehow manages to pull the fat from the fire, it will be with the help of people like these.

Most of them, it can be said, will be motivated by a very human combination of self-interest and genuine concern for the fate of their province if they vote in significant numbers to save the Progressive Government’s sorry hide.

A good example are the 100,000 or so people who work for Alberta Health Services, the giant province-wide “super board” the Conservatives under Ed Stelmach created, certainly for the wrong reasons, but which can hardly be dismantled now without grave consequences.

This group includes not just unionized health care workers, but large numbers of heath sector managers, physicians and other health care professionals, health facility contractors, their staff and all of those people’s families – who surely recognize that, despite leader Danielle Smith’s glib promises, their lives are in for a major shakeup and a long period of economic uncertainty if the Wildrose Party forms a majority government tonight as expected.

These are the citizens – highly motivated to actually make sure they get out and vote – who have been circulating a letter from health care researcher and University of Alberta nursing professor Donna Wilson, who is both a Registered Nurse and a PhD, warning that disbanding AHS would result in “immediate chaos” within the system. If every hospital in the province has its own independent board, she asks, “Would anybody plan where expensive new equipment or services are really needed in the province?”

Dr. Wilson also debunks the Wildrose claim that AHS has a top-heavy and expansive bureaucracy, an argument that is likely to carry weight with voters who happen to be part of it.

Consider Alberta’s teachers, professionals who have been excoriated for their pension deal with Ms. Redford’s Conservatives – again, people who will make sure to vote, and who are legitimately fearful of the attack a Wildrose government with its loony education theories would do to their pensions, their jobs and the working conditions of those who managed to salvage their careers and remain in the field.

Or even Alberta’s Mounties, who don’t necessarily see their force eliminated by some future Alberta firewall, like the one advocated by Wildrose campaign manager Tom Flanagan and his fellow Western independentistes in their famous 2001 Firewall Manifesto.

Or employees of Alberta municipalities and arm’s-length Alberta public agencies spun off from the government by premier Ralph Klein through the mid-1990s.

The list is quite a long one. The people who make it up, thoughtful and well educated. Are there enough of them to make a difference tomorrow night? It’s hard to say. There are a lot of factors in play.

One thing is certain: they are unlikely to sit it out this time and not bother to vote.

If Ms. Redford’s PCs manage to pull off another Miracle on the Prairies, like the one Ralph Klein worked in 1993 when it appeared Liberal Laurence Decore cast as more conservative than the Conservatives was about to knock him off, Wildrose supporters will go wild with rage and self-pity.

And if Ms. Redford does manage to survive thanks to such a miracle, she needs to remember very clearly who made it possible!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Lloyd Snelgrove’s Dinner with Danielle: far-right desperation or another Wildrose exodus?

by David Climenhaga on January 28, 2012 in Uncategorized with 7 Comments
Phone camera photo? Former Stelmach right-hand man Lloyd Snelgrove spotted with Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith in Calgary brewpub! Alberta politicians may not be exactly as illustrated. Below, the real Mr. Snelgrove (caught without his trademark goatee) and the real Ms. Smith.

With election fever gripping the province and the far-right Wildrose Party facing the bleak prospect of a do-or-die election campaign from a weaker position than it has faced since soon after its generously financed and publicized creation, a real rift on Alberta’s historically unified conservative right is opening up.

Whether the divide grows bitter and deep enough to become a meaningful advantage to more progressive Alberta political parties remains to be seen. Ironically, for that to happen, centrist parties like the New Democrats and the Alberta Liberals need to wish the Wildrose Party a modest degree of success in 2012.

At any rate, such an outcome must at least be considered a possibility as the reaction to today’s decision by Ed Stelmach’s former Man Friday to sit out his last months in the Legislature as an Independent illustrates.

Tout le monde political Alberta was abuzz this afternoon with reports Lloyd Snelgrove, Treasury Board President and right-hand man to his friend Mr. Stelmach, had not merely brusquely resigned from the Progressive Conservative caucus but had earlier dined with Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith at a Calgary Brewster’s restaurant.

Some of the further right corners of the blogosphere were soon Twitterifically a-chirp with suggestions Mr. Snelgrove’s atypically ungracious resignation was the start of another great exodus of Tory MLAs disgruntled with Premier Alison Redford for the Wildrose benches.

Needless to say, with Premier Redford and her version of the PCs apparently riding high in public opinion, this seems extremely unlikely. Even Ms. Smith, who needs to manage a pretty serious problem with her own supporters’ expectations, was quick to scotch the suggestion.

In the event, Mr. Snelgrove – who anyway seemed like an unlikely fit for the Wildrose caucus – apparently declined the invitation and a doubtless disappointed Ms. Smith informed the Herald “he told me that he was going to sit as an Independent and that he is looking forward to finally being able to stand up and speak for his constituents, and I respect that.”

Mr. Snelgrove always seemed one of the more sensible and better-grounded members of Mr. Stelmach’s cabinet, so in fairness to those excitedly Twittering, it was very hard not to speculate about what his resignation from caucus might mean. Inevitably, this made one wonder what was most significant about his Dinner With Danielle – the fact it took more than two hours, had a brew-pub for a venue or happened in Calgary, hours from the Vermilion-Lloydminster MLA’s redoubt in east-central Alberta?

It seems most likely that Mr. Snelgrove was simply disillusioned by Ms. Redford’s come-from-behind victory in the Tory leadership race last fall over candidate Gary Mar, the front-runner he had bet on. He announced his decision not to run again on Nov. 28 and has been sharply critical of Ms. Redford on more than one occasion since.

Though he is only 55, Mr. Snelgrove also quite likely strongly disapproved of the 46-year-old premier’s decision to enforce generational change in her caucus and move some of its more geriatric members along while they were still ambulatory without the assistance of a walker.

Regardless, the leak to the media about Mr. Snelgrove’s Dinner With Danielle was convenient for the struggling Wildrose Party, which faces an existential crisis if it can’t regain its former momentum in the face of the onslaught by Ms. Redford, a candidate who appears to have been genetically engineered to defeat Ms. Smith.

As Daveberta.ca blogger Dave Cournoyer recently pointed out, Ms. Smith has not tackled the tough job of managing her core supporters’ soaring aspirations, encouraged in the heady days of 2010 when right-wing journalists journeyed from afar to worship at the feet of Ms. Smith.

“Not properly managing expectations can be a politically deadly mistake,” Mr. Cournoyer observed, pointing to the experience of the late Alberta Liberal leader Laurence Decore who in 1993 “pumped expectations of forming government so high that when his party only formed Official Opposition, he faced open revolt from his caucus and defections to the Tories.”

Moreover, despite its clear No. 2 position in public support, it is not guaranteed the Wildrose Party can emerge from a general election as the Official Opposition party because its support is concentrated in regions of Southern Alberta where the Redford Tories are even stronger.

Facing such a desperate prospect, it seems probably Wildrose campaign manager Tom Flanagan, who can be fairly described as a radical far-right ideologue, will spare no effort to blacken the reputation of the Redford Tories.

If Dr. Flanagan’s efforts manage to snatch the Wildrose irons out of the fire, his success is likely to leave the Alberta right bitterly and deeply divided.

However, if the Redford Tories roll to an overwhelming victory, which at this moment in the campaign seems more likely, the conservative far right personified by Dr. Flanagan will likely quickly return to the Redford fold and resume their perpetual insider schemes to push the Natural Governing Party even further to the right.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Redford Tories have good news and bad news for government union’s president

by David Climenhaga on October 15, 2011 in Uncategorized with 5 Comments
AUPE President Guy Smith with some of the approximately 1,000 demonstrators who gathered at the Alberta Legislature yesterday afternoon to protest against privatization talk by Premier Alison Redford. Below: Former AUPE President Dan MacLennan talking with former premier Ralph Klein; Human Services Minister Dave Hancock.

Veteran Conservative cabinet minister Dave Hancock had good news and bad news for Guy Smith, who was acclaimed yesterday to another two-year term as president of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees.

As the minister in charge of Premier Alison Redford’s unwieldy Ministry of Human Services, Mr. Hancock told the Calgary Herald Thursday the provincial government has no plans just now to privatize or download onto municipalities any of the province’s many social programs and services.

That’s good news for Mr. Smith, who had to be deeply concerned when Premier Redford started talking openly about her privatization ideas toward the end of the Conservative leadership campaign, because it means the government will likely put off at least until after the next general election what has to be a nightmare scenario for the president of the province’s largest public service union.

But it’s bad news for Mr. Smith because it means privatization of social services likely remains on the government’s wish list, if not on its agenda.

As Mr. Hancock told the Herald: “It’s too early to really set timelines. I mean, that’s certainly a goal. Obviously she set it up as a goal and I think we want to have over the next six months a very clear indication of what the possibilities of this department might be.”

That doesn’t sound like someone who’s completely ruling out the idea of a pretty extensive program of privatization – which, since we’re talking about the services that are essential to Alberta’s weakest and most vulnerable citizens that are more professionally and accountably delivered by public employees, sounds like a pretty bad idea.

Indeed, the very notion of the ridiculously massive Human Services Ministry – made up of such former ministries and programs as Children’s Services, Employment, Homelessness, Seniors and Community Supports – lends itself to conspiracy theories. It may have simply been set up as a public-relations gambit to reduce the number of cabinet ministers, but it sure sounds like a bunch of “assets” slated for the chopping block.

The potential for bad news is why AUPE could move more than 1,000 participants in its annual general meeting down the street to the steps of the Alberta Legislature yesterday afternoon to blow whistles and generally raise a hullabaloo about the prospect of more privatization.

It made for a great show, although it’s highly doubtful anyone inside the august old legislative building was paying attention – after all, as so often seems to be the case in that place, the lights were on, but no one was home.

However, since these are not normal times for Alberta, it behooves everyone on both sides of this privatization brouhaha to pay attention to what the other guys are saying.

From the perspective of public service unions like Mr. Smith’s, it means first that they need to be realistic about who Ms. Redford is.

It’s almost as if everyone was so enthusiastic about her pledge to defend public health care – or so frightened of then-frontrunner Gary Mar’s suggestion he’d be open to health care privatization – that they forgot to look at what she had to say about other potential targets for private sector mischief.

They shouldn’t have. Her privatization plans, after all, were all there on her campaign website in black and white (black and green, actually) from Day 1 of her campaign.

It also means that supporters of public services need to be prepared not just to blow whistles and yell through bullhorns – although that may yet turn out to be the most effective tactics in their arsenal – but also to try talking with the Redford Government.

After all, thanks to three strong presidents over the past decade and a half, AUPE has been a remarkable success story – growing to close to 80,000 members since the dark days of the mid-1990s when premier Ralph Klein went after public employees wearing a hockey mask and wielding a chainsaw – metaphorically speaking – reducing AUPE to well under 40,000 members.

A significant part of the secret to AUPE’s growth and success during this period was the willingness of presidents Dan MacLennan, Doug Knight and Guy Smith to talk to the government as well as to yell at it.

Unfortunately for Mr. Smith, some of the government people he spent time talking to are no longer in Ms. Redford’s cabinet, so he is going to have to work on that relationship, as well as keep his powder dry.

From the Redford Government’s perspective, its strategists need to remember that talk like the premier’s privatization musings is not normal chitchat to any of the public service unions whose members, acting on their own, arguably pushed her campaign over the top.

Despite high support in public opinion polls right now, in the next general election Ms. Redford likely to face the most energized and enthusiastic opposition since the Liberals under Laurence Decore in the early 1990s. So she’s going to need the support of those public servants’ votes again if she wants to succeed in the election that really counts. And she’s sure not going to need noisy and inconvenient public demonstrations in the run-up to a provincial election.

As has been said here before, public service union members are notoriously hard to tell what to do. Indeed, it’s a dirty little secret of Alberta politics that a majority of Alberta public employees happily vote Conservative most of the time. But they will act in their own interests if threatened, just as they did when they felt they were threatened by Mr. Mar.

And since the depredations of the Klein Era are still fresh in many memories – and Alberta is still suffering from the damage he did to health care, human services, environmental protection and the like – Ms. Redford’s recent talk sounds threatening indeed.

So it makes sense for Ms. Redford to work on the relationship too, and to do it sometime in the next six months.

A good place to start would be for her to make a clear commitment not to download or privatize essential government services to children, seniors and the poor, just as she promised to defend true public health care in her leadership campaign.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Conservative candidate Ryan Hastman has his Dan Quayle moment

by David Climenhaga on April 14, 2011 in Uncategorized with 6 Comments
Conservative candidate Ryan Hastman hangs around with a dubious character in hopes of drumming up some votes in NDP MP Linda Duncan’s Edmonton-Strathcona riding. Trust your blogger: this guy won’t help! Below, Dan Quayle, who had his Ryan Hastman moment in 1988; Laurence Decore; Linda Duncan.

Ryan Hastman has had his Dan Quayle moment.

Mr. Hastman, 31, is the Conservative Party’s star candidate in the Edmonton-Strathcona riding, chosen to appeal to the electoral district’s large population of university students and thereby unseat New Democrat Member of Parliament Linda Duncan in the May 2 federal election.

As the only New Democrat elected in Alberta, which as stated in the Gospel According to St. Stephen Harper is supposed to be an unbroken sea of Conservative blue, Ms. Duncan is an irritating burr under the prime ministerial saddle.

She makes the PM so mad he accused her of trying to shut down the entire oil industry and put all Albertans out of work, which, even given the usual evidentiary challenged standards of Reform Party electioneering, was a little over the top. Mr. Hastman, as the 21st Century’s version of Rahim Jaffer, is supposed to fix all that.

Dan Quayle, of course, was the Republican vice-president of the United States during the first Bush presidency who compared himself to John F. Kennedy in the 1988 vice-presidential TV debate with Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, the Democratic candidate for VP on the Michael Dukakis ticket. Sen. Bentsen famously snapped back: “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”

Meanwhile, back in Alberta, Mr. Hastman made a radio appearance in which he compared himself to Laurence Decore, the late mayor of Edmonton and leader of the Alberta Liberals who 1993 came closest in decades to toppling the provincial government’s historically unassailable Tory dynasty.

Up to then, the only big news from Mr. Hastman’s campaign has been the role played by his pal Sebastien Togneri (allegedly just pounding in election signs) who turned out to be under investigation by the RCMP for interfering with access to information requests that could have embarrassed the government while he worked in a Conservative minister’s office in Ottawa. When that news leaked out, Mr. Togneri beat a hasty retreat back to Central Canada.

At an all-candidates’ meeting Tuesday on the University of Alberta campus, Mr. Decore’s widow emotionally stood up and took Mr. Hastman to task for using her husband’s name in an attempt to advance Prime Minister Harper’s neo-con agenda.

“It’s insulting. He’s a man who is nothing like you,” Anne Marie Decore told the 200 students at the forum. “To try and ride the coattails of a man who has been dead 12 years is repugnant.

“My husband’s ideals and beliefs were not like this Tory government of Mr. Hastman’s!”

The Edmonton Journal covered Mrs. Decore’s observations in a news story that also quoted a leaked email from Mr. Hastman telling supporters he’s losing to Ms. Duncan. The Edmonton Sun, which is now openly campaigning for Messrs. Hastman and Harper in its news columns (“Iggy Channels Mao”), did not bother to report on the exchange with Mrs. Decore at all.

As for Mr. Hastman’s emailed plea telling supporters that “if tomorrow was election day, we’d probably lose, I need help,” this is profoundly to be hoped.

But New Democrats in Edmonton-Strathcona must not risk assuming that their candidate, who squeaked in by only 463 votes over the appalling Mr. Jaffer in 2008, is actually in the lead. The Conservatives have been pouring (subsidized) mail, manpower and money into the riding to eliminate of the tiny dot of NDP orange on Alberta’s electoral map. Despite the deficiencies of their current standard bearer in Edmonton-Strathcona, they could well succeed.

Still, Dan Quayle never lived down his Ryan Hastman moment. It would be nice if history were to repeat itself in Edmonton-Strathcona, at least in this regard!

This post also appears on rabble.ca.

Dan ‘Buff’ MacLennan and the Alberta Liberals: It’s just a rumour … maybe

by David Climenhaga on February 24, 2011 in Uncategorized with 7 Comments
Dan “Buff” MacLennan: Never afraid to make friends with politicians of all stripes, even this guy! Below: Laurie Blakeman. Hugh MacDonald.

What if the Alberta Liberals found a leader who could generate a little excitement – say like Dan MacLennan, the former union leader controversial in labour circles for not being a New Democrat and beloved by the media for his entertainment value and easy way with a quote?

Full-disclosure here: the charismatic former jail guard known to his friends as “Buff” was my boss for many years, and I’ve seldom met a better retail politician, or a luckier one. Never afraid to do something no one else had tried, Mr. MacLennan left the union movement more than four years ago to become a senior manager for a major oilpatch construction company.

Last year, he was one of the eight members the government’s advisory committee on health care policy. (Controversial.) He’s now chair of the committee organizing the 2012 national Special Olympics Winter Games in St. Albert. (Less so.)

Mr. MacLennan was always a Liberal, and, in case you missed it amid the buzz about the Progressive Conservative leadership race and all the Tweets about the Alberta Party leadership, the Alberta Liberals are choosing a new leader too.

Outside Liberal circles, however, up to now there’s been very little public engagement with the effort to replace Opposition Leader Dr. David Swann, who never caught on with the public. This lack of interest is a sign of the depth of the trough into which the Alberta Liberals sank during Dr. Swann’s uninspired leadership.

Reasons now include the widespread assumption – most likely correct – that after the next general election the Wildrose Alliance will become the Official Opposition. Plus, there’s the fact leadership of the eight-member Liberal caucus is mainly of interest to people whom the public know of, but aren’t particularly thrilled about.

Still, it would be a mistake to rule the Liberals out completely. After all, even if the Wildrose Alliance becomes the Official Opposition, Liberals will continue to play an influential role among the parties of the centre and moderate left.

The thing to remember about the Liberals is that while they are the perpetual victims of their “damaged brand” (hence the rise of the Liberal-like Alberta Party), and haven’t seemed to have what it took to challenge the governing Conservatives since Laurence Decore was at their helm in the 1980s and 1990s, they have a determined base that just won’t vote for anyone else.

The most recent Alberta polls show that this is true. So, no matter how you cut it, there will always likely be a few Liberals in the Alberta Legislature.

Moreover, if voters fail to cotton on to the Alberta Party, as even that group’s enthusiasts must recognize is a possibility, where are disillusioned Alberta Partiers to drift but back to the Liberals?

Which is another way of saying that, for all its troubles, leadership of the Liberals is still a prize worth fighting for.

The trouble is, as noted, most of the names of potential leaders being bandied about so far are present or former Alberta Liberal caucus members – nice folks, capable local politicians, hard workers for their constituents, but no one that’s going to set the world afire.

Perennial Edmonton-Centre MLA Laurie Blakeman, now justly famous for demonstrating the political verities of Alberta using fruits and vegetables, is the only candidate officially in the race. Not so many days ago she was musing about running for the Alberta Party leadership.

However, Ms. Blakeman will soon be joined by others. There’s talk that Calgary-Buffalo MLA Kent Hehr is also interested. Not so many weeks ago he was thinking about running for mayor of Calgary. (As the whole world knows, that didn’t work out.) Former Edmonton-McClung MLA Mo Elsalhy, who tried for this particular brass ring once before, may try again.

Likewise, Edmonton-Gold Bar MLA Hugh MacDonald will probably take a run at the job, out of a sense of duty if nothing else. If there was only one Liberal left on earth, Mr. MacDonald would be that person, which seems a better motivation for wanting to be leader than seeing the job as Door No. 2 of a political exit strategy.

But the lack of enthusiasm generated by these good people brings us back to Mr. MacLennan.

There have always been reports he might someday, somehow be interested in making a run for the Liberal leadership – maybe even an eventual bid for the leadership of a united left. They’ve mostly been wishful thinking by people looking for a liberal saviour.

Lately, though, Mr. MacLennan’s been dropping hints he might actually be interested in the job. Leastways, he’s not denying the rumours any more.

Does he mean it? Beats me.

I can tell you one thing, though. I hope so. Because, if he does, the Liberal leadership race just got a whole lot more interesting!

This post also appears on rabble.ca.