All posts tagged Raj Sherman

Warning to Tories: It’s not just Trudeau any more … it’s open season on public speakers!

by David Climenhaga on June 16, 2013 in Alberta Politics, Canadian Politics, Speakers Fees with 4 Comments

Dave Rodney, the only Conservative MLA for Calgary Lougheed ever to have climbed Mt. Everest twice, or once, for that matter. He is an inspirational speaker. Really. Below: The young Justin Trudeau. Below Mr. Trudeau: The young G. Gordon Liddy and your blogger, also young. Is that 1970s moustache action just a coincidence, or what? 

Aspiring journalists and bloggers who secretly crave mainstream credibility are bound to soon be trolling the client lists of the Atlantic Speakers Bureau and other businesses of its ilk looking for charities they have done business with that have fallen on hard times.

I mention this in light of the bizarre campaign by the Harper Conservatives and their allies out here on the Great Plains to prove Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is Not Fit to Govern, or at least likely to be just as bad at it as they are, because he hasn’t given his speaker’s fee back to a charity that hired him and then ran into financial difficulties.

Watch out if you’re a Liberal electrician or an NDP handyman, by the way. If you’ve ever done a job for someone who failed to meet a mortgage payment, it looks like the Prime Minister’s Office and Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall – who until Mr. Trudeau came along was thought to be The Most Popular Man in Canada – are now going to be after you to give back any money you were paid.

Plumbers need not worry about this, presumably, as all those engaged in that trade, at least as practiced by conservative icon and Watergate burglar G. Gordon “Sudden” Liddy, are likely to be Tories. (I didn’t make that up about Mr. Liddy’s nickname being “Sudden.” It’s in his biography, Will, which I read at an impressionable age. I still have the burn scars on my hands to prove it! Mr. Liddy is now represented by the Premiere Speakers Bureau of Franklin, Tenn., by the way.) But all that, I guess, is a topic for another day.

Mr. Trudeau, the Globe and Mail solemnly intones, and I guess we’re all supposed to be shocked and appalled or something, managed back in his pre-leadership days to command speaking fees of up to $20,000 an appearance!

Me, I’m seriously envious! The best I’ve ever been able to do for a speaking fee was either $200 and a nice dinner for a charity that’s still solvent (and thank goodness, ’cause the money’s all been spent) or no fee, a nicer dinner, a night at the Jasper Park Lodge and mileage to drive my truck out there and back.

Mr. Trudeau, the Globe also said, was hired through a speakers’ agency – and maybe that’s my problem, seeing as I’ve been trying to save money by representing myself to potentially insolvent charities and other groups that can’t afford the son of a prime minister but might be able to afford what Ezra Levant likely calls a son of a … oh, never mind.

Regardless, I’m seriously going to have to go back and reassess my fee schedule, which brings me to the matter of the Atlantic Speakers Bureau of the evocatively named Scotch Ridge, New Brunswick.

On the theory that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, I was trolling Google looking for the phrases “Speakers’ Bureau” and “Mike Duffy,” just to see what would pop up.

What popped up, as alert readers will already have guessed, was the Atlantic Speakers Bureau, which appears to still represent Mr. Duffy – although I imagine that nowadays demand for his after-dinner repartee has declined a little. Then again, this being a country that elected a majority Conservative government with Stephen Harper at its helm, maybe not.

Senator Duffy, the ASB points out, is “the reporter to whom other journalists listen for insight.” (Check! But insight into what?)

According to the ASB, “Mike credits the women’s movement with helping him ‘make it’ on the air. Early in his career, Mike was fired after brief periods of employment by CJCH Halifax, and by CKOY Ottawa. He was rejected after applying for countless other radio jobs. The reason? He was told his voice wasn’t resonant enough. In letting Mike go at Christmas 1965, Hal Anthony, then of CKOY Ottawa, advised: ‘You don’t have a deep voice. You’ll never make it in this business. Go sell ties at Eaton’s.’”

I pause here to state clearly that I’m not making any of this up, especially the slur about selling ties at Eaton’s. You can follow the link and read this for yourself. And if the link disappears, I’ve got a screen shot.

“As women won their rightful places ‘on the air,’ the sound of Canadian radio changed, and Mike moved from brief on-air appearances to regular hosting duties,” said the Senator’s bio, which, come to think of it, may be a little out of date itself, seeing as it doesn’t mention his important current role in Canadian government and Conservative Party fund raising.

Look, I can sympathize with Senator Duffy about this a bit. I’m past 60, and telemarketers still ask me if they can speak to my mommy. You’ve just got to man up and get over it, though.

Alas, regardless the timbre of his Senatorial voice, the ASB does not list Senator Duffy’s current fees, so there’s just no way for us know if he made $1.3 million over four years, as Mr. Trudeau is supposed to have done, or if he also billed the Conservative Party and the Senate for expenses on the same days, as Mr. Trudeau most certainly didn’t.

It’s said here, though, that it’s lucky Senator Duffy didn’t take that job at Eaton’s, since that grand old Canadian department store has fallen on hard times and somebody would probably suggest he should give his salary back to the Eaton Family, with interest. Mind you, that would be easier for him than most of us, seeing as he could probably get Nigel Wright to cut him another cheque!

Senator Duffy isn’t the only Tory represented by the Atlantic Speakers Bureau, either, as it turns out.

Also on their roster is Dave Rodney, “the only person in the history of this country to summit Mt. Everest twice.” Now, I hadn’t thought Mt. Everest was in this country or that summit was a verb, but what I think they mean here is that Mr. Rodney is only Canadian to climb to the top of Mt. Everest twice.

As it happens, Mr. Rodney is also not only an inspirational speaker who believes in “climbing with a conscience” and who is particularly recommended for charity events, but is the only Associate Minister of Wellness in the government of Alberta Premier Alison Redford who has climbed Everest once, let alone twice!

And if you don’t ask him about it, you can be sure he’ll tell you anyway!

Which means, Mr. Rodney really should be checking his old speaking schedules right now to make sure he hasn’t empowered any audiences that turned out to be made up of people associated with charities that have subsequently gone broke.

You’ve just got to know that if he did, and with the Alberta Liberals led by a guy named Dr. Raj Sherman, who may not have climbed Mt. Everest but who did get through medical school, and what’s more who just happened to be the Conservative Parliamentary Secretary for Health in an earlier life … well, this could really get ugly!

I’m just saying, from now on, it’s going to be open season on public speakers!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Most of us are happy at 29 … but maybe not Alison Redford

by David Climenhaga on April 10, 2013 in Alberta Economy, Alberta Politics, Keystone XL Pipeline, Polling with 6 Comments

Happy 29? Unlikely. Cake shot grabbed from eslpod.com. Below: Alberta Premier Alison Redford and B.C. Premier Christy Clark, 29 and 25 (per cent) respectively.

Most of us are happy at 29. The world is our oyster. The future looks bright.

Alison Redford at 29? Not so good.

But then, we’re talking percentage points here, not years.

A 29-per-cent approval rating is a problem.

The Alberta premier was in Washington, D.C., yesterday trotting out the line heard recently at the Manning Centre “Big Ideas” Conference that a pipeline full of Alberta bitumen might actually be doing Earth a big favour on the planetary warming front.

Opponents of the Keystone XL Pipeline, Ms. Redford told a crowd of curious Americans at the venerable Brookings Institution think tank, “proclaim that either you stand against the oilsands, or you write off the environment, along with any hope for a sustainable existence. That is completely wrong.”

Instead, hecklers notwithstanding, the Progressive Conservative premier said Alberta is one of the most environmentally friendly jurisdictions in the world.

Well, good luck with that one. But even if it’s true, and even if her mission to the Imperial City works out the way she hopes, it isn’t going to help with the problem that really bedevils her, the one summed up in that awful number 29.

As noted, that is the percentage of Albertans qualified to vote in a provincial election who approve of the job Ms. Redford is doing, at least according to the Angus Reid polling company’s highly entertaining periodic horserace survey of how Canada’s premiers and their chief opponents are getting along with the people who give them their jobs.

Who knows if this online poll of 7,091 Canadian voters is perfectly accurate? It’s certainly a guide to how well the premiers and their opposition leaders are doing, and Ms. Redford is not doing very well at all.

This is especially true when you consider her white-knuckle drop of 18 points from the last time the pollster did the survey in December 2012 and the truly terrifying plunge of 26 points from a positive 55-per-cent rating her reputation with voters was enjoying the previous August.

We’re almost talking Christie Clark numbers here – according to the same survey, the B.C. premier is at an approval rating of 25 per cent. In just over a month we should know for sure what happens to Western Canadian premiers with those kind of approval ratings – unless, of course, Ms. Clark’s B.C. Liberals manage to find a way to evade their own fixed-election-date legislation and skid Ms. Clark into Victoria Harbour while they stall and find a replacement for her.

Actually, we already know what’s likely to happen with numbers like those. Both former Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and former Quebec Premier Jean Charest had similar approval numbers of 32 per cent in the previous Reid premiers’ popularity survey and they’re both gone now – the former into retirement and the latter to electoral defeat.

Worse, like British Columbia. where half the respondents (49 per cent) approved of New Democrat Opposition Leader Adrian Dix’s performance, fully 53 per cent of the survey’s respondents in Alberta gave Wildrose Opposition Leader Danielle Smith the thumbs up. (They liked New Democrat Leader Brian Mason and Alberta Liberal Leader Raj Sherman better too – with both at 34 per cent. And Saskatchewanians still love Brad Wall, the Mr. Congeniality of Confederation, but you can read about him and all the rest of them for yourself if you’re so inclined.)

Spin all this stuff however you like – and unlike Ms. Clark, Ms. Redford won’t have to prove anything in a provincial general election for three years – what this obviously means is that an awful lot of Albertans are no longer buying what their premier is selling.

It’s no wonder, really. First she successfully built a grand alliance with the province’s progressive voters to defeat Ms. Smith and the hard-right Wildrose Party, then she turned on them in last month’s hard-line budget, which was apparently designed to appeal to the voters she’d lost to the Wildrose. Now, as Edmonton Journal political columnist Graham Thomson observed, nobody likes her! And that was before the “Bitumen Bubble” she used as an excuse went pfffft!

With a popularity plunge like the one the Reid poll indicates, it’s probably not too strong to say Ms. Redford’s reputation has been obliterated – which means her party is going to have to decide at their mandatory leadership review next November if they want to stick with her and be obliterated too.

Obviously her recent charm offensive – chatty visits to the Press Gallery and all that – hasn’t been very charming.

Which brings us back to yesterday’s junket to Washington.

Premier Redford seems to be labouring under the impression that if she, or someone, can persuade American President Barack Obama to OK Keystone XL to export Alberta’s oilpatch jobs to Texas, all will be forgiven.

Now, why Mr. Obama would feel the need to do that is not at all clear when the pipeline not only faces powerful opposition from the president’s own supporters but passes through states that could be fairly termed Mitt Romney territory in the U.S. presidential election last November. But – who knows? – maybe he will.

But if he does, it’s said here this doesn’t translate into a political victory for Ms. Redford for two reasons.

First, regardless of what you hear from Conservative and Wildrose circles, support for the pipeline is far from universal here in Alberta – especially among the progressive voters Ms. Redford wooed away from their traditional parties a year ago and then kicked to the curb in her last budget.

Second, because the voters who want the pipeline will thank Mr. Obama, not Ms. Redford, for the approval.

Ms. Redford is 48.

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.

Close enough for government work: Alberta Tories manage to hold their centre-right turf

by David Climenhaga on March 7, 2013 in Alberta Economy, Alberta Legislature, Alberta Politics with 2 Comments

Finance Minister Doug Horner preps Albertans for yesterday’s budget. Actual Alberta finance ministers may not appear exactly as illustrated – but that’s the trick, isn’t it? Below: The real Doug Horner.

All in all, I guess, you could make a good case this was a pretty lousy budget.

It’s deeply confusing, as without any doubt the Alberta government intended, and there are a couple of real disasters lurking in its pages – got kids in post-secondary education, anyone?

But in the aftermath of the Alberta Budget Speech read this afternoon by Progressive Conservative Finance Minister Doug Horner, who was wearing his new flip-flops at the time, you have to admit it was a pretty slick example of expectation management.

The usual suspects on the left and the right quickly attacked Mr. Horner’s budget with the usual feigned ardour, as they are expected to do, and from either perspective they probably got it right. But so what? You’ve got to know plenty of their supporters were breathing a sigh of relief and reckoning they’d just dodged another bullet.

NDP Leader Brian Mason, sounding a bit like a broken record, called it a “broken promise budget.” Undoubtedly he’s correct – the question is, will Alberta voters buy Mr. Horner’s and Premier Alison Redford’s explanation that things have really changed? The answer: Probably.

Alberta Liberal Leader Raj Sherman called it a “bankrupt budget” – he meant, morally, presumably, because you can’t call any entity with the kind of cash flow Alberta has bankrupt, exactly, even when you’re feeling the uncomfortable pressure of a bitumen bubble passing through.

So are they morally bankrupt for running a cynical but effective campaign, then changing everything? Almost certainly! But will Alberta voters care in three years’ time? Unless something big changes, almost certainly not.

Opposition Wildrose Party Leader Danielle Smith called it the “back-in-debt budget,” trotting out the standard hard-right line that we’re spending beyond our means, a position that may not get a lot of support here, but that admittedly has a certain constituency in this province.

So are we back in debt? Sure. Will anybody care? Well, the Wildrose brain trust can try to make Albertans care and, who knows, maybe some of them eventually will. Or not.

Many more of the usual suspects, from a couple of well-known unions to right-wing Astroturf groups like the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, rolled out some fairly predictable cris de coeur. The Edmonton Journal even sounded a bit like the official arm of the Wildrose Party, trotting out portentous phrases like “opaque, obscure and cynical.” Well, yeah!

But there’s no escaping the sense the Redford Tories cynically but deftly stage-managed the whole thing by rolling out a number of terrifyingly dire hints and rumours in advance – tough decisions, sharp break with the past, significant restraint, yadda-yadda – then announcing actual budget details that seem on their face considerably less drastic.

Of course, we don’t really know yet. Maybe ever.

But faced with a hard-right obsessive about debt and spending, a centre-left ready to view any cuts in health care or social programming as a major betrayal, and influential groups walk away from any exercises in coalition building, Mr. Horner managed to leave both sides’ supporters feeling as if they might have just been had, but disinclined to start rushing to the barricades.

There’s still some potential for mischief there – the government’s fight with Alberta’s physicians could still cause them some grief, but they’re sure acting like it works for them. It might not be smart to bet against them on that one!

No one’s conducted an opinion poll just yet – Janet Brown! Tony Coulson! C’mon down! – but it’s said here that in their opaque, obscure and cynical way, the strategic brains behind Alberta’s Progressive Conservative Party managed to hold their centre-right ground a little longer.

And the centre right, if you haven’t happened to notice, is territory quite a lot of Albertans will vote for.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Two polls show how, and maybe why, Alberta’s Tory coalition is crumbling

by David Climenhaga on March 5, 2013 in Alberta Politics, Polling with 7 Comments

Weakened but still standing: The mighty Tory edifice. Don’t panic. This is a metaphor! Below: Alberta Premier Alison Redford.

It’s interesting to juxtapose the results of two new polls on related but different topics that were released yesterday – a Think HQ poll of Alberta voter intentions and an Environics poll of Albertans attitudes about taxes and public services.

The results of the former were published in the afternoon by CTV; the results of latter were released in the morning by the Alberta Federation of Labour, for which the survey was done.

If you believe them, the Think HQ numbers show support for Premier Alison Redford and her party alike falling through the floor.

Environics’ results show extremely strong support among Albertans for a return to a progressive income tax, higher corporate and wealth taxes, and higher petroleum royalties.

Looking at the polls in more detail, the Think HQ survey indicates support for the far-right Wildrose Party has shot up to 38 per cent, leaving the Tories of Premier Alison Redford in the dust with the support of committed voters at only 26 per cent.

That would be a drop of 18 per cent since the PCs won a 61-seat majority on April 23.

The poll indicated the NDP had the support of 16 per cent of respondents, and the Alberta Liberals that of 13 per cent. (NDP support was concentrated in Edmonton, where it sat at 26 per cent, in a statistical tie with the Wildrose at 27.) The seatless Alberta Party posted 3-per-cent support.

According to Think HQ’s analysis of the numbers, the PC election coalition that saved Ms. Redford’s bacon in April is eroding from both ends of the political spectrum.

It tells something about the state of political reporting in this province that neither CTV nor the Globe and Mail bothered to report the NDP or Alberta Liberal provincial numbers in their first runs at this story.

The poll was even harsher on Premier Redford’s personal popularity, indicating 58 per cent of respondents disapprove of her performance and 33 per cent approve.

By contrast, the spreads of other leaders’ ratings were much closer: Danielle Smith, Wildrose, 43 per cent disapprove, 46 per cent approve; Raj Sherman,  Alberta Liberals, 40 per cent disapprove, 37 per cent approve; Brian Mason, NDP, 35 per cent disapprove, 40 per cent approve.

Think HQ’s conclusions were based on a survey of 1,214 self-selected members of an “online research panel” between Feb. 12 and Feb. 16. The company says the poll has a margin or error of plus or minus 2.8 per cent.

Turning to the Environics numbers, 72 per cent of respondents said they favour returning to a progressive income tax and abandoning Alberta’s so-called flat tax, a relic of the Ralph Klein era that is not flat at all, but blatantly favours the wealthy.

Environics said 78 of the poll’s respondents favoured higher taxes on corporate taxes and taxes on high-income earners. The pollster also said 71 per cent of respondents agreed with the statement that Albertans are not getting their fair share of royalty revenue.

Respondents identified several spending priorities, including creating a provincial strategy for long-term care for seniors (70 per cent in favour) and protecting publicly funded health care against for-profit health care (57 per cent).

Environics used a telephone survey of 1,014 adult Albertans from Feb. 14-24 and says the margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Now, anyone who has read this blog for long will know that I am not a fan of Think HQ’s methodology and that I have more time for the polling methods used by Environics.

Since the on-line panels like Think HQ’s tend to be drawn from the politically hyper-engaged, I don’t entirely trust this one’s conclusions. That is to say, I think it highlights an undeniable trend, but I seriously doubt Wildrose support has reached 38 per cent, or that Redford Tory support has plummeted to 26 per cent – just yet, anyway.

If I were to guess, I’d put the support for both parties in a dead heat, probably in the low 30s. Who knows, support for the NDP might be even higher – you have to be an eternal optimist to be an Alberta Knee-Dipper like me.

But whatever you think of Think HQ’s methods, the direction it has identified is clear – and real.

The high level of support for public services, public programs and the taxes needed to pay for them identified by Environics are also real – as anyone who talks to living and breathing Albertans knows.

It is said here these attitudes explain a lot about why Ms. Redford’s winning coalition from last April is crumbling, at least on the left-hand side.

Both polls strongly suggest that Albertans aren’t buying what Alison Redford is trying to sell. Both polls strongly suggest that plenty of Albertans are not happy about the fact she’s not keeping her promises.

Given the political position most often taken by Alberta Diary, some readers will find this conclusion tendentious. Fair enough, I guess. Indeed, some non-Albertans may also find these two polls’ conclusions contradictory.

Moreover, there’s still plenty of time for the Redford Tories to pull their fat out of the fire again. Even the way her government handles this week’s upcoming budget on Thursday could make a big difference.

Still, it’s said here that taken together the polls show the Wildrose Party’s departed strategic guru, Tom Flanagan, got it right. To wit: If voters on the left abandon the Progressive Conservatives and return to their traditional political homes, the Wildrose Party has a chance to grasp the brass ring.

It’s almost a shame that Dr. Flanagan, who celebrates his 69th birthday today, is not longer with his party to have his prescience acclaimed.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Why is Alberta’s medical queue-jumping inquiry uninterested in dramatic 1990s case?

by David Climenhaga on February 26, 2013 in Alberta Health Services with 1 Comment

Dr. Ron Bridges of the Helios Wellness Clinic testifying yesterday in a screen grab from CBC’s broadcast. Below, Dr. Ciaran McNamee, who hasn’t been called to testify.

What are we to make of the fact Alberta’s preferential health care access inquiry has failed to call a witness who was at the centre of one of the most spectacular allegations of medical queue jumping in recent years?

Really, yesterday’s report by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. that the often strangely passive inquiry has decided not to bother asking Dr. Ciaran McNamee to testify about what happened to his lung surgery patients simply boggles the mind.

Dr. McNamee told the CBC he is “willing to co-operate, in any form or fashion.”

But the inquiry’s lead council, Michele Hollins, told the national network that Dr. McNamee – who today works as a lung surgeon in Boston, where he also teaches at Harvard University – “is not being called to testify because it was decided his information was ‘dated’ and would provide little useful information about queue-jumping that may be occurring now.” (Emphasis added.)

Just wondering, but isn’t the point of holding an inquiry to look into what happened in the past, with the idea of preventing it from happening again in the future?

Back in the spring of 2011, the CBC revealed that Dr. McNamee, once the head of thoracic surgery at the University of Alberta Hospital, had sued the former Capital Health Region, claiming he’d been improperly hounded out of his surgical practice for complaining publicly about his patients’ long waits for surgery in the late 1990s. He also claimed CHR officials had improperly questioned his competence and even his sanity.

This was one of the incidents that led to calls for a judicial inquiry into bullying and intimidation of medical professionals in the Alberta health care system.

Dr. McNamee’s allegations became public at about the same time as Dr. Raj Sherman, now the leader of the Alberta Liberals, claimed in the Legislature that 250 people had died, many from lung cancer, while on a 1,200-name surgical waiting list in the 1990s.

In 2008, the CHR had been rolled into Alberta Health Services, the massive province-wide health authority that is only one baby step away from being an actual branch of the government.

“CBC News has learned that in the course of McNamee’s lawsuit, there was an allegation that his budget for lung surgery had been all, or in part, effectively taken over by other surgeons at the hospital,” the network reported, cautiously adding, “that allegation also was not proven.”

Unfortunately for those who would like to cast a light on what was going on in Alberta’s health care system back in the 1990s, the lawsuit was settled out of court in 2001 and Dr. McNamee was bound by a convenient non-disclosure agreement – unless he is subpoenaed to testify.

So what about it? “If the commission wishes to subpoena me, I will co-operate, and I will respect their mandate,” Dr. McNamee told the CBC’s interviewer. But the inquiry led by retired Justice John Z. Vertes, apparently, just isn’t all that interested.

In a blog post on the Alberta Liberals’ website, meanwhile, former party leader Dr. David Swann, who like Dr. Sherman is a physician, accused the inquiry of “deliberate avoidance of the most dramatic allegations of queue jumping.”

Dr. Swann can get away with a strongly worded statement like that without risk of being held in contempt, by the way, because the inquiry is not a real judicial inquiry with independent powers, but comes under the authority of the provincial government and reports to Health Minister Fred Horne. Likewise, Mr. Vertes, who has retired, no longer has the full powers of a judge.

Whether or not this has any effect on the actual independence of the inquiry, as suggested by Dr. Swann, is another matter entirely. But it certainly affects the public’s perception of the inquiry’s independence – and circumstances like the apparent willingness of Dr. McNamee to testify and the peculiar lack of interest by the inquiry to hear him, add to it.

“Many of his lung patients were ‘bumped,’ allegedly by other surgeons given preferential access, resulting, allegedly, in preventable deaths among his patients,” Dr. Swann wrote.

Meanwhile, as is well known, the inquiry has stumbled across some evidence of queue jumping in the here and now – the case of the mysterious ability of healthy patients of the $10,000-per-year Helios Wellness Clinic in Calgary to receive cancer screens in mere weeks that took all others years to get.

In testimony yesterday, a letter from senior AHS gastroenterologist Dr. Mark Swain entered as evidence said the health agency found “clear evidence” that one of the Helios doctors’ patients were the beneficiaries of preferential access to the tests.

In testimony reported by the Calgary Herald, Dr. Swain (referred to by the Herald as Dr. Mark Twain, in case you’re wondering, an easy mistake to make) told the inquiry Dr. Ron Bridges was assigned more endoscopy time than was normal for physicians who used the public cancer-screening clinic and benefitted from a “highly unusual” booking process. Dr. Swain’s explanation: “He’s not seeing sick patients.”

For his part, Dr. Bridges testified that he had no idea his patients were getting preferential access. Earlier, Dr. Bridges’ lawyer had tried unsuccessfully to prevent the report referring to patients being entered as evidence.

Well, this is all very interesting, if not exactly a shocker given last week’s testimony about the relationship between Helios and the public colon cancer-screening clinic located in the same Calgary building.

But if this inquiry is really supposed to get to the bottom of queue jumping in the health care system, it’s pretty clear Dr. McNamee needs to be called and asked about what happened back in the 1990s – even if that means discomfort for powerful people with connections to the Progressive Conservative government.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Khan, Cusanelli canned: Alberta premier sacks two rookie ministers in wake of poll

by David Climenhaga on February 5, 2013 in Alberta Legislature, Alberta Politics, Uncategorized with 2 Comments

Steve Khan, eyed suspiciously by a fox. Below: Richard Starke, Christine Cusanelli, Richard III and Thomas Lukaszuk.

Right on the heels of a new poll suggesting a decline in support for the Progressive Conservative government of Alberta, Premier Alison Redford announced a mini-shuffle of her cabinet yesterday, sacking a couple of rookie ministers who for different reasons had turned out to be liabilities.

Coincidence? I think not.

The telephone survey of Alberta public opinion conducted from Jan. 14 to 20 by Leger Marketing was covered by most media and commentators as if it were good news for Ms. Redford’s PCs. “Tories are basically holding their own,” said one of the usual suspects you can depend on the mainstream media to quote in such situations.

Indeed, Leger’s own commentary interpreted the numbers pretty much this way. But buried in the results, and more obvious from the government’s actions, are strong hints this may not be so.

Leastways, compared with the April 23 election results and an earlier survey, the Leger poll suggests the Redford Tories were trending downward by mid-January.

And that was before the premier’s “State of the Province” TV address on Jan. 24, which was widely panned, the latest damning Elections Alberta revelations in the province’s ongoing political donations scandal and now a completely unexpected cabinet shuffle. The government’s March 7 budget – bringing austerity, Alberta style – is yet to come.

Yesterday’s sudden cabinet shuffle, it is said here, suggests the Tories are looking at polls of their own that indicate their support is slipping even more.

The Leger poll published yesterday showed the PCs with the committed support of 40 per cent of decided voters, while the farther-to-the-right Wildrose Party led by Danielle Smith had that of 28 per cent.

The survey of 900 Albertans put the New Democrats under Brian Mason in third place, with 13 per cent, and the Liberals under Raj Sherman on their heels at 12 per cent.

This represents a bigger decline for the Wildrose Party than the Conservatives from election day, when the Tories received 44 per cent of the vote, sufficient to gain a 61-seat majority in the 87-seat House, and the Wildrose Party got 34 per cent and 17 seats. The Liberals had 10 per cent of the vote on April 23, which translated into five seats, and the NDP had 9.8 per cent, which got them four.

So, on the face of it, from the PC perspective, all would seem to be right with the world, with God in his heaven and the Conservatives in power forever more.

Still, the results may suggest a less rosy scenario – or more rosy, depending on the kind of rose you have in mind. For one thing, the Leger poll may indicate Alberta voters are returning to their natural political homes – at least for the time being.

Remember, Wildrose strategist Tom Flanagan has argued the key to his party’s success next time is persuading what he calls left-wing voters to feel it’s OK if they vote for the parties they truly support, whether the NDP, the Alberta Liberals or the remnants of the Alberta Party.

Going by Leger’s numbers – including the large 6 per cent cohort of respondents who indicated they would vote for another party not now in the Legislature and a big bleed to the undecided column, 21 per cent – this may be what is happening.

In October 2012, moreover, a poll by Environics Research showed the PCs still enjoying a small honeymoon bump in support – up a point from their election day numbers to 45 per cent, with the Wildrose trailing at 29, the Liberals at 13 and the NDP at 12.

So in eight months, support for the government appears to have dropped 4 per cent, or maybe 5 per cent, depending on how you look at it.

Naturally, government partisans will argue this is insignificant and to be expected after eight months. It’s said here, however, that it’s at least possible this poll is an early indicator the government should be worried, and universe could be unfolding as the Wildrose Party’s strategists think it should as long as they can hold their vote in areas where they are now strong.

This is especially true in light of the timing of the poll, which was conducted before Ms. Redford’s underwhelming TV message, before the latest brouhaha about illegal donations by public institutions such as municipalities, school boards and universities made to the Conservatives, and before whatever cuts are actually revealed in the March 7 provincial budget.

Will those things make further inroads into Conservative support? Well, that remains to be seen, but it is hard to imagine they won’t.

Which brings us to the matter of Ms. Redford’s cabinet mini-shuffle, also announced yesterday.

Gone is Calgary-Currie MLA Christine Cusanelli, who as Tourism Minister messed up spectacularly by taking her mother and daughter to London for the Olympics on the public tab and by letting her department spend $113,000 on London hotel rooms that sat vacant through the Olympics. She was also known to blunder into press conferences ill prepared to answer even the softball questions lobbed by the Alberta press corps.

It was the family vacation on the public tab that really killed her, though. The former school principal was made to pay back $10,600 in expenses submitted during her first five months on the job as a cabinet minister, including $4,000 for the Olympian jaunt, but the bad odour lingered. With the opposition daily accusing the PCs of corruption and arrogance, the premier had little option but to throw her under the bus.

Ms. Cusanelli will be replaced by Richard Starke, a first-time MLA for Vermilion-Lloydminster.

A strange coincidence will make the blood of many Albertans run cold when they hear this news – and, no, I don’t mean the similarity of Mr. Starke’s name to that of the drummer of the 1960s guitar group knows as the Beatles.

Rather, it’s that the last veterinarian from Vermilion in the cabinet was a fellow named… Steve West, Dr. No himself, premier Ralph Klein’s personal one-man wrecking crew. Dr. West’s name still evokes ghastly shudders and makes small children cry in some corners of Alberta, especially those near government offices in downtown Edmonton.

Gone too as Enterprise and Advanced Education Minister is Steve Khan, the affable MLA for the Edmonton bedroom suburb St. Albert, who like Ms. Cusanelli apparently only learned yesterday the axe was about to fall on his neck.

What sank Mr. Khan is not so obvious, although his replacement by cabinet veteran and Redford loyalist Thomas Lukaszuk, who has been Education Minister before and is also Deputy Premier, is seen by some as a harbinger of deep cuts coming in the budget to post-secondary education.

For his part, the St. Albert businessman is said to have found it impossible to say no to the senior bureaucrats in his department or yes to education stakeholders who wanted a meeting with him. Either tendency could have been a problem in the weeks after the budget, which are bound to be fraught.

Now, at least, he will have plenty of time in the PC backbenches for meetings.

If the speculation here is right that the PC government has been polling since the premier’s message, it’s a certainty they know stuff we don’t about what Albertans are thinking.

If they’re doing something as dramatic as an unannounced a cabinet shuffle on a mild February day, it’s because they have reason to believe the Leger results are just the start of a trend, one they’re highly motivated to try to turn around.

Speaking of difficulties involving wild roses, a body found buried beneath a parking lot in Leicester, England, has been confirmed as that of Richard III, a political figure who left office suddenly in 1485 after experiencing difficulties with a rose of a different colour.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Uh-oh! Premier Alison Redford wants to have a ‘conversation’ with us

by David Climenhaga on January 24, 2013 in Alberta Economy, Alberta Politics, Tax Policy with 1 Comment

Fireside chats? Alberta Premier Alison Redford as she’ll likely see herself while softening up the province’s citizens for the March 7 Budget Speech on CTV tonight. Below: Ms. Redford as Albertans may see her. Below that: the real Ms. Redford; Conference Board Chief Economist Glen Hodgson.

Oh dear. Premier Alison Redford wants to have a “conversation” with us tonight.

Daddy’s new job at the convenience store doesn’t pay as much as the old one. We’re all going to have to tighten our belts a little, and that means you kids too. We’ve had to cancel the snow clearing service – so you’re going to have to shovel the walks yourselves if you still expect to get your allowance – and it will be smaller, so get used to it! There will be no trip to Hawaii this winter.

In an email to her remaining Progressive Conservative party faithful yesterday, Ms. Redford explained how, this evening, “I will begin a conversation with Albertans about the challenges we face as a result of the rapidly falling price of Alberta oil. As loyal party supporters, I wanted to let you know first.”

In this conversation, Ms. Redford explained, she will do all the talking. She’ll talk for eight minutes on CTV, right after the suppertime news. After that, as part of Alberta’s new reality, we’ll all go into the kitchen and help with the dishes. There will be no conversing.

“In this year’s budget,” the premier’s email to the party loyalists went on, “we’ll hold the line on our spending and we’ll live within our means.” But she also promised “to focus our spending on the priorities that you told me were important. And that is exactly what we’ll do.”

Addressing us this way retrieves from the provincial Tickle Trunk a homey old propaganda technique favoured in Alberta by long-ago premier Ralph Klein – the televised fireside message.

This was considered too lame even for premier Ed Stelmach, the kindly fellow who ran Alberta Inc. into the ground in the interregnum between Mr. Klein and Ms. Redford, but over at CTV right now they’re probably assembling the gas-fire set that Mr. Klein used to use when he had something serious to chat with us about. Interestingly, every clip and shot of Mr. Klein’s fireside chats seem to have been purged from the Interwebs!

Well, Alberta has a boom-and-bust economy that goes bust with metronomic regularity, but it’s still always sort of amazing the way it catches our PC masters by surprise every time it does. Plan for it? Why bother when we can have a fireside chat on CTV two weeks before the March 7 Budget Speech?

Brian Mason, the leader of Alberta’s New Democrats, adopted a more sinister tone than the premier yesterday, but his message nevertheless had the effect of reinforcing hers. “She promised Albertans in the election there would be no service cuts and she promised there would be no tax increases,” he told the Edmonton Journal, by the sound of it through gritted teeth. “She’s very likely to break both of those promises in this budget. I think the cuts we’re going to see are very serious.”

Indeed, the cuts already seem to be starting. Yesterday, the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees announced it had been notified that 48 Licensed Practical Nurses’ jobs were being eliminated in Edmonton to accommodate a $3-million budget cut to Capital Care Inc., a directly owned long-term-care subsidiary of Alberta Health Services.

Insiders say the union expects similar cuts at CareWest, the AHS long-term-care subsidiary in Calgary, and possibly others at large not-for-profit seniors’ care operators.

Alberta Health Minister Fred Horne was unavailable for comment, conveniently out of the country while the LPNs got the bad news, doing a little chit-chatting himself with “the best European minds” in England and Ireland, two well-known paragons of health care management, with a side trip to Belgium for a convention. The AHS spokesman the media managed to dredge up claimed it was all part of a plan hatched long ago.

As for the province’s other political leaders, Alberta Liberal Leader Raj Sherman just sounded put out that Ms. Redford wasn’t going to hold her conversation in the Legislature and Wildrose Opposition Leader Danielle Smith actually sounded as if she were cheerfully looking forward to the premier’s message – something to take shots at, maybe, or just a neoconservative predilection for service cuts perhaps.

Still, new Albertans are advised not to worry too much just yet. Those of us who have lived here for a while have all seen this show before – literally, back when it starred Mr. Klein.

It usually ends up to be an exercise in expectations management – a kind of reverse bait-and-switch scam that generations of Alberta Tory governments have perfected. First the bad news (that will be tonight), then the news that’s not quite as bad as everyone expected (that’ll be on March 7, accompanied by sighs of relief), and finally the return of happy days (a few months before the scheduled 2016 election).

If Alberta voters perform to expectations, we’ll then reelect the Tories by a landslide!

Meanwhile, in other news yesterday, the chief economist of the Conference Board of Canada, said it was time for Alberta to return to a grownup tax system that would make government operations and public services sustainable and reduce the impact of entirely predictable wild swings in commodity prices.

“Not having a provincial consumption or sales tax is highly popular and has been great politics, but it denies the provincial government a steady and stable source of revenue through the business cycle,” said Glen Hodgson in a research paper published yesterday.

Well, no kidding! But don’t hold your breath waiting for the Alberta PCs to adopt a sensible approach to taxation, especially with the far-right Wildrose Party breathing down their neck.

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.

A last thought for 2012: 2013 is bound to be an important year for Alberta’s NDP

by David Climenhaga on December 30, 2012 in Alberta Politics, New Democratic Party with 9 Comments

2013 could be a big year for Alberta’s NDP – if they play their cards right. Members of the Alberta NDP caucus and their opponents may not be exactly as illustrated. Below: NDP Leader Brian Mason.

Surely the strategic goal of Alberta’s New Democrats between now and the next provincial election must be to move the NDP from being the fourth party in the Legislature to the second one after 2016.

In other words, although an NDP government in Alberta is simply not in the cards over the medium term, the NDP could form the Opposition in 2016 if the party’s Legislative caucus is dealt the right cards in the next round of the great game of political poker … and manages to play them the right way.

Such an outcome would require a full measure of skill, since it is hard to see how it could come to pass without a degree of co-operation between the NDP and the right-wing Wildrose Party, which won 17 seats in the April 23 provincial election and is now the Opposition.

For it is axiomatic that if the NDP is to become the Opposition in 2016, the Wildrose Party will have to defeat the Progressive Conservatives under Premier Alison Redford and become the government – with all the dangers that would entail.

So the Wildrose Party’s 2012 campaign manager, former Stephen Harper confidante Tom Flanagan, almost certainly got it right when he told the Opposition party’s annual general meeting in November that the key to forming a Wildrose Government in 2016 is “to liberate those left-wing voters to go back and vote where they would actually vote.”

Of course, readers are forgiven if they wonder how this would benefit the NDP under Brian Mason or whomever follows him when it is the Alberta Liberal Party under Raj Sherman that is the third party in the Legislature, with five MLAs to the NDP’s four.

But this is why 2013 is such a crucial year to the NDP if it is going to vault from last place to second – because 2013 is the year the erstwhile Alberta Liberals, nowadays apparently known as the Libealbertans, are most likely to self destruct.

Certainly, the strains among Alberta Liberals are more evident than they have been for a long time. Indeed, it was a surprise to many and a disappointment to some that they didn’t collapse in the April election.

It is said here that Dr. Sherman – a medical doctor who has been accused of caring only about one issue, health care, and a former Progressive Conservative with Tory instincts – is not a natural leader for the Liberals. Party officials’ angry overreaction to the recent call by Liberal MLA Kent Hehr for centre-left parties to work together is one illustration. The Bronx cheer that greeted Dr. Sherman’s disappointing testimony before the health care preferential-treatment inquiry is another.

So a worthy if untraditional goal for the Alberta NDP in 2013 should be to ensure Liberal MLAs unhappy with Dr. Sherman’s leadership know they would be welcome in the New Democrat caucus.

For many reasons, this would probably be as hard for the four New Democrat MLAs as for any of their Liberal counterparts, but the payoff is potentially significant – attracting at least some of the Liberal voters who traditionally can’t stand the right-wing parties but view the NDP with almost equal discomfort.

On the other hand, if Dr. Sherman can hold his fragmented and unhappy caucus together through 2013, the opportunity to cement the NDP in the minds of Alberta voters as the natural centrist opposition party will be far more difficult to achieve.

But if the NDP can cross this important steppingstone without getting its feet wet in 2013, it will be in a position to achieve something much bigger after that.

It seems likely that in 2016, the PC Government will try to replay the campaign that worked for it in 2012 – to paint the Wildrose as social and economic extremists and Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith as a doctrinaire market fundamentalist, and to woo worried NDP and Liberal supporters to a big tent party that they see as both progressive and conservative.

Public service union members are sure to be a seen by the Conservatives as a key part of this unlikely coalition – a goal that is in conflict with the government’s immediate need to appear fiscally tight-fisted in the face of more years of deficits and an inflexible resistance to raising taxes. So the government’s ability to shore up this corner of its coalition is far from a sure thing.

Thus if the Alberta Liberals fall apart in 2013 under Dr. Sherman – and time their collapse conveniently for the NDP – the fight for Liberal voters with no traditional home to go to will be between the NDP and the Conservatives.

Who gets them may hinge on how scary the Conservatives can make the Wildrose Party look versus how corrupt the Wildrose Party can make the Conservatives appear.

The NDP needs the Wildrose Party to succeed dramatically enough that the Conservatives are swept from the board, but not so dramatically there is no room for the last centrist party standing to effectively oppose the mischief a market-fundamentalist Wildrose government might get up to.

So the difficult question for the NDP would become: how much co-operation with the Wildrose Party would be a good thing, and how much could lead to a catastrophe?

Naturally, there will be no shortage of scoffers at this scenario, and fair enough. Maybe the Orange Wave of 2011 and the little Orange Ripple that followed it through Alberta in 2012 were just flukes and order has once again been restored to the universe.

Moreover, New Democrats have been known before to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Still, perhaps the cards really will start to break the NDP’s way in 2013. Whatever happens, next year is likely to be a significant one for Alberta New Democrats.

Happy New Year!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

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