All posts tagged Ted Morton

CBC journalist Charles Rusnell: slaying Alberta’s Tory dragon, one scandal at a time …

by David Climenhaga on May 17, 2013 in Alberta Legislature, Alberta Politics, CBC, Investigative Reporting, Media, Progressive Conservatives with 1 Comment

Your blogger with CBC investigative reporter Charles Rusnell. Below: Edmonton-Manning MLA Peter Sandhu; Mr. Sandhu with Alison Redford in a Tory Party photo grabbed from the Daveberta.ca blog. The photo-bomber is Calgary-Fort MLA Wayne Cao.

You’d think it would be easy to run a petroleum-soaked, cash-rich jurisdiction like Alberta, but a day seldom seems to pass out here on the western edge of the Great Plains without our governing Progressive Conservative Party suffering another pratfall or embarrassment.But how many Albertans know that so many of these scandals bedevilling our permanent governing party have been uncovered by the same guy — a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. investigative reporter named Charles Rusnell?

It was Mr. Rusnell who broke stories on, among other things, former Tory leadership candidate and senior minister Ted Morton’s bogus government email account; a host of illegal political donations, including the one from Athabasca University; Tobaccogate, wherein a law firm that had the premier’s ex-husband for a partner got picked for years of highly lucrative legal work; former Alberta Health Services CFO Allaudin Merali and his wonderful expense account; Alison Redford’s sister’s iffy political donations; and the disturbing tale of the whistleblower at Transcanada Pipelines.

The latest Conservative caucus calamity (C3) uncovered by Mr. Rusnell is the troubling case of Peter Sandhu, the Tory MLA for Edmonton-Manning, who since his election in 2008 has generally been assessed as a legislative under-performer but not much more.

A low performance rating is no barrier to re-election around here, however, as long as the MLA in question has official permission to put his or her face on a blue-and-orange PC lawn sign, something Mr. Sandhu proved in April 2012.

Nevertheless, Mr. Sandhu is performing well beyond specifications in the press clippings department right now – indeed, to such a degree that he’s at least temporarily no longer a member of Premier Alison Redford’s PC caucus.

On Tuesday, the Edmonton investigative staff of the CBC was reporting that Mr. Sandhu’s house-building company, NewView Homes, not only has a history of chronic debt and faces dozens lawsuits for unpaid bills, but a goodly portion of its liabilities weren’t properly disclosed as required of an MLA under the province’s Conflicts of Interest Act.

Worse, Mr. Rusnell revealed, his investigation “uncovered a false statement made by the MLA in a sworn affidavit filed in a civil court case involving a dispute over an alleged debt.” The CBC says it can show Mr. Sandhu was in Canada at a time he swore he was in India.

Yikes! Now the opposition parties of the left and right are screaming for Mr. Sandhu’s head and demanding that the RCMP step in and lay charges.

The Redford Government would really rather do nothing at all, thank you very much. Premier Redford and Human Services Minister Dave Hancock – who is also the Government House Leader and as readers of this blog will recall, according to the Edmonton Journal the moral compass of the Tory caucus – lamely tried to praise Mr. Sandhu for doing “the honourable thing” and jumping before he was pushed.

So, is Mr. Rusnell on a crusade against the Progressive Conservatives?

No doubt it seems that way deep inside the Redford cabinet bunker, but it’s said here that it wouldn’t really matter which party was in power, Mr. Rusnell would be going after bad behaviour with the same pit-bull fervour.

Charles Rusnell is just one of those guys who can’t stand hypocrisy, special dealing, rule breaking, insider trading and the idea that the law is for everyone else – just the sort of things you’d expect to be rampant in a province that has been run by the same party for 42 years and essentially the same crowd for almost twice that long. Really, probably the only way to get him off your case is to behave yourself.

If Mr. Rusnell were a police officer, he’d be the kind of cop who’d ticket the chief’s car at a funeral. Instead, he’s a former print reporter with a lot of knowhow about filing Freedom of Information requests.

Years ago, Mr. Rusnell worked for the Edmonton Journal, but they pushed him over the side along with many other skilled senior reporters who cost too much and knew too much for the beancounters in Ontario who run the paper.

So nowadays, while the investigation-free daily timorously ducks behind its leaky new paywall, Mr. Rusnell wins awards and breaks scandals one after the other for the national public broadcaster, which is hated by Conservatives everywhere for doing just this kind of thing.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised Mr. Rusnell will be breaking another C3 very soon.

Meanwhile, in other news, Mr. Merali, the former AHS CFO, is back in the news, demanding the payment of the $580,000 severance package he was denied when he was made to walk the plank for embarrassing the government when his sometimes lavish expenses turned up in one of Mr. Rusnell’s most famous reports.

And reading between the lines of the news coverage Wednesday, it sounds very much as if the people who run AHS recognize they’re going to have to pay him – which will be yet one more serious embarrassment for the Redford Government.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Tom Flanagan, neoconservative spiritual leader, consigned to utter darkness

by David Climenhaga on March 1, 2013 in Canadian Politics, Neoconservatism with 12 Comments

Conservative icon Tom Flanagan’s defining moment. Below: Dr. Flanagan in happier times; the six signatories of the Alberta separatist Firewall Manifesto; Richard Nixon saying goodbye during his 1952 Checkers speech. Unlike Dr. Flanagan’s likely career trajectory, Mr. Nixon came back. 

Who could have predicted that yesterday would be the pope’s last day on the job?

I speak, of course, of Professor Tom Flanagan, spiritual leader of the neoconservative movement in Canada.

Well, Dr. Flanagan is the neocon pope no more, having uttered the astonishing opinion at a seminar the previous evening in the deep-south Alberta city of Lethbridge that child pornography is, if not exactly OK, more of a freedom of expression issue than an exploitation of children issue.

Not only that, but in response to a questioner at the University of Lethbridge seminar, Dr. Flanagan informed his audience he’d once been on the mailing list of the North American Man-Boy Love Association for two years. One can only hope this was in error, as he seemed to be implying.

I was driving the car when I heard that one, and that was the moment I spat Tim Horton’s coffee all over the dashboard and the windshield. It’s going to be a dickens of a job to clean up the mess this weekend!

Now, it’s been understood for a while that Dr. Flanagan – hitherto best known for his role as self-proclaimed godfather to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s political career, signatory to the Alberta separatist Firewall Manifesto, chief strategist of Alberta’s far-right Wildrose Party and advocate of the assassination of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange – has a small problem with knowing when not to use his outside voice.

But one would have thought that he would have realized by now in the age of the tiny phone-mounted digital camera that any voice one chooses to use – even a whisper – is in effect your outside voice.

Such recent examples as Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney telling well-heeled donors that 47 per cent of Americans were lazy parasites and Pastor Allan Hunsperger of Dr. Flanagan’s own Wildrose campaign last spring advising gays in a blog they’d better repent or their fate would be an eternal hot bath in a lake of fire should have been fresh in his mind.

Perhaps the U of L’s classroom ambience made the American-born neocon icon forget he was not back in the loving embrace of the University of Calgary, where his odious economic views have been treated as infallible and inspired by generations of students and administrators since the late 1960s?

Alas for Dr. Flanagan, he is also known for controversial and unsympathetic views about First Nations rights, which inspired Idle No More activists to attend his lecture. One of them, a young man from the nearby Blood Tribe named Levi Little Moustache, brought a digital camera and asked an unsympathetic question – although he, like many others in the room and out of it, gasped with shock when Prof. Flanagan uttered his career-ending opinion.

Within hours Dr. Flanagan discovered that even for a pal of the prime minister and comfortable senior Conservative party ideologue known as the Karl Rove of Canadian politics, there are limits to what may be said aloud without consequences – especially when it’s posted on Youtube.

In the hours after the video of Dr. Flanagan’s remarks went viral, spokesthingies for conservative groups and political parties, previously obsequious media organizations and once-sympathetic employers were practically knocking over the furniture in their haste to be the first to tack their former neoconservative idol to the wall.

The University of Calgary announced Dr. Flanagan has already promised to retire, and he wouldn’t ever be coming back, thank you very much. The CBC immediately canned him as a commentator. The prime minister’s spokeperson and Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith both forcefully denied him. The Wildrose Party vowed he’d never come near one of its campaigns again. Even the Manning Centre chopped him as a featured speaker at its upcoming national conservative scheming session in Ottawa next week.

Dr. Flanagan, sounding stunned at the rapid reversal of his fortunes, issued a meek apology, but it was too late. His career was already covered in ignominy.

Only his old “Calgary School” buddy Barry Cooper stood by him, explaining to the Calgary Herald that Dr. Flanagan’s swift fall from grace was actually because Canadians are stupid – although not, Dr. Cooper hastened to add, such paragons of Canadian virtue as the Wildrose Party and the Manning Centre.

It is said here this is a defining moment in Canada’s conservative movement, if only because one of its most influential figures will no longer be around – at least where anyone can see or hear him. (Count on it that Dr. Flanagan’s strategic advice, which has been proved to be effective, will continue to be sought.)

As the late Richard Nixon said of himself, we won’t have Dr. Flanagan to kick around any more – “thank you, gentlemen, and good day.” And I, for one, will miss kicking the always-deserving Dr. Flanagan.

Indeed, it has not been a good couple of years for the six signatories of the independantiste Firewall Manifesto – former Alberta finance minister Ted Morton has been kicked out of office by angry voters, Ken Boessenkool has been removed as B.C. Premier Christy Clark’s chief of staff after a murky incident in a bar involving a woman and too much alcohol, and now Dr. Flanagan has been consigned to utter darkness for his views on child porn. Mr. Harper, of course, continues for the moment as prime minister.

Neoconservative admirers of Dr. Flanagan such as his former colleague Dr. Cooper can take comfort in the knowledge that the professor, a lifelong advocate of brutal market fundamentalist nostrums and an opponent of fair treatment of public employees, will have a very nice University of Calgary pension to fall back on.

Meanwhile, in Rome, the other pope, the one who leads the planet’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, also departed from office yesterday. A successor for Pope Benedict XVI is expected to be elected within a few weeks.

It is not known when adherents of the Canadian neocon faith will elect their new spiritual leader – although it’s likely Preston Manning will be available for the job after the conservative conclave in Ottawa next week.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Education minister’s bluff called by apoplectic schoolteachers! Now what?

by David Climenhaga on February 27, 2013 in Alberta Politics, Alberta Teachers Association, Jeff Johnson, Labour Relations with 7 Comments

The trading pit: Is this what Alberta Education Minister Jeff Johnson sees when he thinks of the Alberta Teachers Association? Actual Alberta schoolteachers may not be exactly as illustrated. Then again, these days … Below: Mr. Johnson and ATA President Carol Henderson.

OK, Alberta Education Minister Jeff Johnson’s bizarre attempt to bluff the province’s 35,000 unionized schoolteachers into signing a contract has failed. Now what?

One week ago, Mr. Johnson mailed the president of the Alberta Teachers Association and the Chair of the Alberta School Boards Association a rambling letter setting out the government’s latest bargaining demands in what’s turned out to be a rocky round of negotiations with the province’s teachers.

While not particularly generous, it could be argued the government’s parsimonious position wasn’t all that far from the ATA’s modest last offer – a four-year deal with no pay increase in the first three years and a 1-per-cent lump sum in the fourth versus a four-year-deal with no pay increase in the first two years and 1 per cent and 3 per cent in the final two years.

The two sides also have differences over workload issues and how to resolve them. Still, veteran labour negotiators have bridged far bigger gaps when everyone agrees to sit down and act like grownups.

However, Mr. Johnson – who according to his official Legislature biography has a background selling photocopying machines and as a “futures trading floor pit boss” – blew the idea of playing nice to smithereens when he included a threat in his letter to cut teachers’ salaries if they wouldn’t agree to his proposal by March 7, when the provincial budget is scheduled to be tabled in the Alberta Legislature.

He’d already publicly mused about using legislation to force the teachers to live with whatever sort of a deal he wants to impose on them.

Well, maybe that kind of thing works when you’re a pit boss on the notoriously chaotic futures trading arena. But in labour negotiations it’s like waving the proverbial red flag in the face of a big angry bull.

Teachers all across the province – key members of the unnatural coalition that unexpectedly re-elected Ms. Redford and her government last April – collectively blew a gasket.

Yesterday, ATA President Carol Henderson told Mr. Johnson he could drop dead, although not in quite as many words.

“Teachers do not respond well to ultimatums,” she advised a news conference where, surrounded by teachers from throughout the province, she said the ATA’s Executive Council has unanimously rejected the government’s demand.

So if Mr. Johnson and the government of Premier Alison Redford had imagined they could force a deal with teachers to be signed by the time the budget comes down in eight days, that idea’s now done like dinner.

It’s almost as if Mr. Johnson had the misapprehension teachers couldn’t add up simple sums – they teach arithmetic, for heaven’s sake – and figure out that whatever they agreed to now could have no possible impact on a budget that is already written, sent to the printers and has quite possibly already rolled off the press!

It’s hard to imagine the pandemonium of negotiations among the ATA and various school boards across the province, which is apparently what’s on the agenda now that Mr. Johnson’s bluff has been called, being anything except protracted, acrimonious and politically deeply embarrassing for the government.

And if the government steps in now and legislates any deal for the teachers, it’s almost certain to destroy the progressive coalition that came to Ms. Redford’s rescue on April 23.

So what could Mr. Johnson have been thinking when he drafted his ridiculous letter – which seems to have been specially designed to wreck one of the few areas where the Redford Government has been doing quite well, labour relations with public sector unions?

After all, the fiasco that now seems very likely is sure to make us all forget the five years of labour peace with teachers shrewdly negotiated by the government of former premier Ed Stelmach, Ms. Redford’s unlucky predecessor, who nowadays looks pretty good.

In an excellent blog post yesterday, Daveberta.ca author Dave Cournoyer suggests the whole strange episode goes back to the deep divisions within the Progressive Conservative caucus over Ms. Redford’s leadership.

Mr. Cournoyer suggests Tory caucus members who supported other leadership candidates – which would be pretty well all of them – blame teachers for joining the party and electing Ms. Redford as leader.

“The tension is said to have led to more than a few heated arguments behind the thick wooden doors of Tory caucus meetings,” he wrote, considerably understating widespread rumours of screaming matches between the education minister and the premier. Well, she can hardly fire Mr. Johnson – the third education minister in as many years – without suffering another black eye.

So now, according to this way of thinking, disgruntled supporters of candidates such as Gary Mar, Ted Morton and Finance Minister Doug Horner are out for revenge against Alberta’s teachers.

On the face of it, this interpretation is almost as bizarre as Mr. Johnson’s negotiating strategy. After all, while teachers may have voted for Ms. Redford’s leadership, they also voted for her government – saving many a Tory MLA’s job in April 2012.

What’s more, they would almost certainly have done so again, had Mr. Johnson not blundered into their negotiations.

Still, as Sherlock Holmes so famously observed, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

And it’s getting so that Albertans need the assistance of a famous “consulting detective,” and not a fictional one either, to figure out what this government is up to!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

The Redford Tories’ conundrum: Progressive reason versus Conservative passion

by David Climenhaga on January 17, 2013 in Alberta Politics with 2 Comments

They kissed us once. Will they kiss us again? Alas, in Alberta right now, there’s no way to be cert- cert- certain. Alison Redford chats with a typical Alberta voter last spring – although, Alberta politicians and their supporters may not turn out to be exactly as illustrated. Below: The real Ms. Redford, Finance Minister Doug Horner.

Here in 14 words is the conundrum that faces the Progressive Conservative government of Alberta Premier Alison Redford: you can be progressive, or you can be conservative, but you can’t be both.

So which is it?

The problem that confronts Ms. Redford’s PCs is that they aren’t really sure themselves.

Progressive? Or Conservative? Great taste? Or less filling? Breath mint? Or candy mint?

This, it is said here, is the source of the real pain that shows through the Redford Government’s commentary about how we all need to reduce our expectations for the provincial budget scheduled for introduction on Thursday, March 7.

Yeah, I know, Alberta Tories have a long history of saying things are going to be terrible come budget time, then laughing at us behind their hands when we all heave a huge sigh of relief after things turn out not to be as quite as bad as forecast.

That’s a perfectly plausible explanation for much of the gloom and doom about declining petroleum revenues that is emanating from Ms. Redford’s inner circle nowadays.

It’s also true that Ms. Redford probably promised more than she could sensibly deliver in the desperate final days of the 2012 election campaign, when it looked very much as if the ultra-conservative Wildrose Party might actually win a majority. That was when she told Albertans that thanks to a heaping dosage of political Retsyn ™ her party could be a breath mint and a candy mint!

But neither of those cynical explanations account for the level of genuine angst apparent in the Red Tory Budget Blues that are playing continually in Alberta these days.

After her first 2013 meeting with her PC caucus, Ms. Redford warned that falling petroleum prices – which with metronomic regularity catch Alberta PC governments by complete surprise – mean tough choices, deep cuts, reduced expectations, haircuts all ’round, programs under the microscope, tighter belts, (insert spending-cut metaphor of choice here), yadda yadda.

Finance Minister Doug Horner has also joined this chorus of Gloomy Thursday, a tune so melancholy many listeners that hear it are immediately tempted to jump off a fiscal cliff!

But their real problem is that old habits die hard. The Alberta PCs have been a party of deep fiscal conservatism and knee-jerk austerity for so long that the instinct to cut in a crisis is bred in the bone.

Like a Civil War surgeon presented with a health care problem, the only thing they can think of is a hacksaw and a broom handle for the patient to bite down on while they cut. So they can’t help telling us that if you think that image is painful, just wait for the Budget Speech on March 7 – and they mean it!

After all, that strategy has worked for years for the Alberta Tories, at least once the quasi-NDP government of their founder, Peter Lougheed, came to an end in the mid-80s just as the neoconservative verities of Ronald Reagan, the Fraser Institute and General Augusto Pinochet began to really take root around the globe.

Many believers in that worldview remain influential in Tory ranks.

The trouble is, in the Alberta of the early 21st Century, that territory has been ceded to the Wildrose Party led by former Fraser Institute apparatchik Danielle Smith and abetted by the unprogressive federal Conservatives of Prime Minister Stephen Harper who campaigned tirelessly for the Wildrosers last spring.

And those voters, it now seems clear, are not coming back. To them, Ms. Redford is beyond the political pale, and nothing she says or does will assuage their bitterness at her defeat of former finance minister Ted Morton, the worst premier Alberta never had, and her rejection, however temporary, of their Paleolithic values.

Faced with the grim prospect of defeat at the hands of these unreconstituted market fundamentalists and social conservatives, Ms. Redford’s strategists did a clever and rather courageous thing – on very short notice they cobbled together a new coalition with small-l liberal supporters of the Alberta New Democrats, Liberals and Alberta Party who preferred a soft Tory government to a hard-edged Wildrose premier. If that meant fewer seats for the parties they traditionally supported, well, the Devil take the hindmost!

The Redford Tories built this instant coalition by promising things that were traditionally anathema to many of their party’s core supporters: public services, investment in health care and education, commitment to inclusive values.

Now, facing a temporary decline in resource revenues, their deepest instinct is to backslide – just when what the situation calls for is a modest tax increase, a recommitment to small-l liberal values, a willingness to live with deficits a little longer and the courage to stay the course on health, education and social spending.

If they respond to their the primitive instincts of their political lizard brain, they will likely lose the new and still fragile coalition that saved their bacon in 2012, but they won’t win back the right-wing rump they have already lost to the Wildrose Party.

So reason tells them to stay the course. But passion tells them to abandon it. The resulting pain they feel is real.

To paraphrase the breath mint ad of yore: They kissed us once. Will they kiss us again? Alas, in Alberta right now, there’s no way to be certain until March 7.

Right now, they don’t even know themselves!

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Darn!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Alberta Premier Alison Redford gets warm reception in union lions’ den

by David Climenhaga on October 21, 2012 in Alberta Politics, Labour, Public Services with 3 Comments

Alison Redford speaks to the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees’ convention in Edmonton yesterday. (AUPE photo.) Below: Ms. Redford with AUPE President Guy Smith. Is she trying to build an alliance with public service unions?

It’s tempting to say Alberta Premier Alison Redford walked boldly into the lions’ den yesterday and emerged unscathed – whether or not what she found there resembled a room full of pussycats.

There are certainly those in some corners of the labour movement who will think Premier Redford’s welcome to the annual convention of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, the 80,000-member public service workers’ union that is not affiliated to the Canadian Labour Congress, was entirely too congenial.

And it’s true it’s unlikely this was a performance Opposition Leader Danielle Smith could have managed before the same crowd, her evocative first name notwithstanding.

Premier Redford brought a warm message, and in return she was received warmly by the 1,000 or more people in the hall at Edmonton’s Shaw Conference Centre. Warmly enough, indeed, that some people there might have imagined they heard purring.

But there is something subtler and more intriguing going on, methinks, as Ms. Redford now appears to want to try to maintain the informal and in some ways unlikely alliance her Progressive Conservative government built in the final days of last spring’s provincial election campaign with unionized public service workers such as civil servants, health care workers and teachers.

The view of traditionally progressive political parties and many labour leaders after last spring’s election was that public employees were naïve to be wooed by Ms. Redford into voting strategically for her PCs, and that the premier’s still-conservative party would quickly revert to form once it had its majority safely in place. As much has been said in this space.

It was just, back in those scary days when the way-out market-fundamentalist Wildrose Party was riding high in the polls, that the PCs seemed like a safe, reliable and possible refuge to a lot of good rank-and-file Alberta trade union members.

But here it is October with the first snow of the season flying – as it does almost without fail during AUPE’s annual convention – and Premier Redford is still courting union votes, and indeed seems to be cozying up to public service union leaders like AUPE President Guy Smith as well.

Hers was the first time in history a sitting Alberta premier had ever come calling at an AUPE convention, and as far as anyone can remember, any union convention. Her staff phoned up and asked if she could speak.

So this is starting to smack of a real effort to put up some bridges to the union movement, especially public sector unions – structures that are built to last.

In this regard, Ms. Redford’s charm offensive is reminiscent of the coalition departing Ontario Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty built with the union movement back when he was still pursuing a strategy that worked for him.

It was also foreshadowed by things said by some of the brighter PC party leaders back in premier Ed Stelmach’s day, including Mr. Stelmach himself, who seemed to be trying to move the party closer to the centre, notwithstanding pressure from the right by the Wildrose Party and market-fundamentalist Tory insiders like Ted Morton, the worst premier Alberta never had.

All this said, it would be a mistake to read too much into this. Ms. Redford is not a social democrat. But she does seem now committed to preserving public services in sectors of the economy traditionally served by public employees. This is a change from her privatization talk during the Conservative leadership campaign in 2011.

Ms. Redford’s short speech to AUPE yesterday – frequently punctuated by applause – was pretty much boilerplate. But it was friendly boilerplate.

“This is an opportunity for me to personally thank your members for the work they do every day across the province … with integrity, dedication and compassion,” she began.

If you were waiting for tough news after this friendly start – and with the government staring at a deficit and the Wildrosers howling about it, that seemed like a possibility – it never came. Instead, she went on to say “the work you do is central to our government’s vision” and to express other similar sentiments.

“I remain committed to balancing the budget in 2013-2014,” Ms. Redford stated. But “at the end of the day, Albertans look to their government to provide first-rate public services, and we won’t let them down.”

Ms. Redford also made an effort to reassure provincial employees about the implications for their workplaces of the province’s “results-based budgeting” scheme – “this isn’t as simple as spending less to meet some arbitrary target.” Click here to read the full text of Ms. Redford’s speech, from which she barely deviated.

At an informal news conference after her speech, Ms. Redford reconfirmed her support for public services: “Absolutely, and I made that very clear during the election and I haven’t at all changed my position. It’s fundamental.”

Now, there are those in Alberta – not necessarily people hostile to Ms. Redford’s stated position on public services – who think this could be a dangerous strategy from her perspective. After all, they say, you can’t keep the loyalty of budget hawks and market fundamentalists, traditional supporters of the Alberta PCs, and also win the hearts of public employees.

Maybe so. But Ms. Redford’s apparent public service strategy suggests she has figured out the Alberta electorate had changed from the days the Conservatives came to power and that the smart place to move is indeed the centre, not the far right.

The right-wing rump in her own party may scream, and the Wildrose Opposition will fulminate. But if Ms. Redford really can build and maintain an alliance with public service labour unions, whose rank and file members show clear signs of understanding the issues and at least knowing who their friends aren’t, it could go work out quite nicely for her.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Rats! Alberta has ’em … and not just the kind Ed Stelmach warned us about

by David Climenhaga on August 16, 2012 in Rats with 8 Comments

Norwegian rats have their eyes on Alberta! It’s time to root them out, and their pipeline hating, royalty demanding, revolutionary pals! And where’s the AHS Plague Plan? And why does Norwegian crude cost so much? Below: More warnings, plus Verlyn Olson.

I don’t know about you, but a lot of Albertans are surely going to have trouble sleeping tonight when they realize their province is no longer rat free. Presumably a sales tax could be next!

This has been a lousy couple of summer weeks for Premier Alison Redford’s government, what with all the health executive pension plans and whatnot becoming public, but this rat report has got to be the topper. Well, look at the bright side: it’s a break from a steady drumbeat of health-care disasters – at least until someone asks Alberta Health Services if we have a Plague Plan!

After all, we’ve prided ourselves for a lot of years on the fact the only rats welcome in this province are, as former premier Ed Stelmach might have put it, the two-legged variety found in the vicinity of the provincial Legislature.

Mr. Stelmach, musing back in February 2011 about certain politicians who played a role in his decision to quit public life in disgust, observed that there are two things Albertans can be proud of: “We don’t have any four-legged rats and we don’t have a sales tax.” (Ted Morton! C’mon down!)

Now we’re down to only one such point of pride. (That’d be the sales tax, naturally, which we still don’t have. But how much longer can we stave that off if the price of non-Norwegian oil continues to languish below a hundred petro-loonies a barrel?)

As for the rats, Agriculture Minister Verlyn Olson told a news conference yesterday that 19 of ’em were discovered on Aug. 9 huddled down in – what else – a rat hole in a dump near Medicine Hat, which is also home to a lot of venomous snakes and has all hell for a basement, the location for which it serves as the trap door, but never mind any of that just now.

No word on whether any of these four-legged rats had a gold-plated Kalashnikov given to it by a certified Enemy of Alberta – you know, like the premier of British Columbia – but Mr. Olson (who is a guy, notwithstanding being named Verlyn by his mom and pop) said there may be more of them in the region and we’re going to have to send in special forces to root them out.

That may not be so easy, because we’re not just talking kangaroo rats (which, dirty little secret, have been living here for years). Nope, these invaders are, wait for it, Norwegian rats!

This is bad, really bad. First the Norwegians embarrass our fine Progressive Conservative government by charging embarrassingly high royalties for their oil, and then not just pissing the proceeds away on pricey buyouts for health care executives who move to other provinces like we do here in Alberta, but actually using it to fund social programs and putting the rest of it in a savings account. And their oil costs a fortune compared with ours – what’s with that?

Now their rats start turning up in significant numbers just inside our eastern frontier. And you think this is a coincidence? Surely not!

My advice? Well, first thing, just stay the heck from strangers with a funny accents offering you tasty Kjøttboller – which even the Wikipedia admits is “a rougher version of the Swedish meatballs” – without a contents label.

Traps and digital cameras with infrared spotlights have been set up around the dump, we were assured by Mr. Olsen, who is the MLA for Wetaskiwin-Camrose. (What were his parents thinking?) Meanwhile, we await the Wildrose press release weighing in with demands that we purchase Predator drones with little rodent-sized Ratfire missiles.

Over at the Ethical Oil Institute, I think you can rest assured they’ll be looking into the Rattus norvegicus-Christy Clark-Norwegian Brent Crude nexus.

Royalty-demanding rats to the east of us! Pipeline-hating revolutionaries to the west of us! Guilty looking former health care executives walking around among us! It’s just not easy being an Alberta Conservative these days.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

It’s summertime, and the livin’ is easy – especially if you’re Alison Redford

by David Climenhaga on July 20, 2012 in Alberta Politics with No comments

It’s just one long summer vacation for Alberta’s Tory family. Premier Alison Redford, possibly not exactly as illustrated, can be seen in the front seat of the Edsel at left. Below: The Wildrose Party on their way to summer school at Chestermere Slough; Kelley Charlebois; Thomas Lukaszuk.

It’s summertime, and the livin’ is easy – especially if you’re Alberta Premier Alison Redford.

Indeed, it’s hard to imagine a more congenial political climate than the one Ms. Redford and her Progressive Conservative government now find themselves enjoying this summer.

Not quite three months have passed since Ms. Redford’s unexpected but decisive victory on April 23, and we are not yet embroiled in the minutiae of a fall session. So this is the perfect moment to assess the true strength of her Progressive Conservative government, now and possibly forevermore.

First of all, of course, the Redford Government is at the very start of what looks now like a long four-year run. Later, when less time is left, things will look a little different, of course. But right now, arriving at the Legislature in the morning must seem to the premier like the first day at a particularly pleasant holiday resort.

Moreover, none of the inevitable mistakes that plague any democratic government have taken place yet – unless, perhaps, you count the appointment of Kelley Charlebois last Friday the 13th as executive director of the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta or random social media messages left by Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszuk.

Mr. Charlebois, rather famously, was in 2004 paid more than $400,000 in “untendered consulting contracts, with scant records of what taxpayers got in exchange,” as the Calgary Herald put it, while serving as executive assistant to then health minister Gary Mar. But while plenty was wrong with the process, Mr. Mar deservedly took the pounding for it when he ran for the Tory leadership. It’s harder to fault Mr. Charlebois for taking the money – he was in business, after all, and they were dumb enough to pay him!

As for Mr. Lukaszuk, here’s the memo: Remember what happened to Stephen Carter. You’re forgiven … but get someone more diplomatic to run your Facebook and Twitter accounts! The only landslide you should say anything about is the one that sweeps Adrian Dix into power in B.C. next spring. And if you can’t say anything nice about Mr. Dix that evening, don’t say anything at all.

Other than that, the Tory backbenchers are still figuring out where the washrooms are located – loose tongues, MLAs dressing monochromatically in protest against this or that and similar nonsense is all at some indeterminate point in the future.

Even so, with a comfortable majority of 61 seats in an 87-seat Legislature, there will be plenty of wiggle room for Ms. Redford and her government as the clock runs down toward the next election. No need to listen too closely to bored and rebellious Tory MLAs, no need to fly into a panic over a death, a resignation, a floor crossing or the consignment of some naughty boy or girl to the rest of a term on the Independent benches.

Plenty of time, even, for Ms. Redford to play the Statesperson of Confederation and – who knows? – possibly even succeed at it!

Meanwhile, the premier enjoys almost the perfect Opposition in the Wildrose Party – doomed, paradoxically, to continue to present the caricature of a market-fundamentalist menace to Albertans and yet daily likely to grow weaker and more marginalized.

The Wildrose Opposition under Danielle Smith is big enough after its fluky bump in the polls in 2012, after all, to credibly claim to be a government in waiting – and thereby scare the bejeepers out of almost any sensible Albertan voter. At the same time, it is now the established home of the most annoying sub-group of the Redford Conservatives’ traditional power base – the social-conservative denomination of the loony right.

How convenient for Ms. Redford and her advisors that they no longer have to listen in caucus to this extremist faction and their tiresome calls for hard-right policies that are sure to alienate (and frighten, as we saw in April) the majority of middle-of-the-road Alberta voters.

The far-right’s standard bearer in the old PC cabinet, Ted Morton, is also conveniently gone – defeated, ironically enough, by a Wildroser in the Chestermere-Rocky View riding, where this week the Opposition  party was holding an appropriately named “summer school” for its rookie MLAs. With Dr. Morton and his ilk gone, the chances of the kind of rebellion that brought down former premier Ed Stelmach are considerably reduced.

What luxury, from the PC perspective, to be able to pursue a moderately conservative course without having to compromise with these extremists, while still being gently pushed by them to the moderate right – precisely where Ms. Redford’s instincts tell her to go.

After the April election, we heard lots of cries of “we’ll be back,” from disappointed Wildrosers. With the caveat that anything can happen in politics, it’s said here they won’t be, except as a convenient boogie-person to keep nervous Albertans strategically voting Progressive Conservative instead of NDP or Liberal at election time.

For one thing, as the influence of disaffected social conservatives within the Wildrose ranks continues to grow, as is inevitable with the PCs again holding the reins of power, the Wildrose Party will look and sound crazier as time goes on.

In addition, people who want power – and those who donate money to influence power – will drift back toward the PCs, as they always have in Alberta, for the obvious reason that that’s where the power is actually located.

At the same time, the talented political operators attracted to the Wildrose in 2011 and 2012 will disappear into the woodwork, uninterested in lending their talents to a lost cause that is increasingly the home of zany and self-righteous social conservatives.

More than likely, as a result of these fissures, a power struggle will emerge within the party with social conservative challenges to Ms. Smith’s pragmatic and reasonably sensible economy-centred approach growing steadily over the next four years. That is if Ms. Smith can sustain her own interest in what will surely increasingly will look even to her like a lost cause.

Meanwhile, from the perspective of the PCs, the parties of the left don’t look like much more than a nuisance to be swatted at half-heartedly. Here’s hoping the NDP can fulfill its traditional role of real opposition, or that a couple of Liberals can rediscover their forcefulness of yore. As for the Alberta Party, it will blow away in the next puff of wind like so many dandelion seeds – only, unlike those pretty yellow flowers, without their notorious regenerative power.

So where does this leave Premier Redford and her Tories? Exactly where any politician would wish to be! Firmly in control now, likely to remain that way well into the future, her power base purged of its most irritating component, with no opposition party anywhere in the political spectrum that can mount a meaningful challenge.

As the fall of 2012 drifts closer and we can begin to see the shape it will take, the biggest threat facing Ms. Redford is that a few of her backbenchers, their cabinet ambitions thwarted unlike Mr. Lukaszuk’s, will get bored and do or say something embarrassing.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

With Alberta’s budget all but balanced, where’s Ted Morton now that we don’t need him?

by David Climenhaga on June 29, 2012 in Alberta Economy, Alberta Politics, Budget Deficits with 5 Comments

Cock of the walk: Everybody wanted to talk to Ted Morton on June 26, 2011. His message to then-premier Ed Stelmach: Balance the budget or else. (Calgary Herald photo.) Below: Alison Redford, Rob Anderson.

Can it be less than two years since Ted Morton, then Alberta’s steely-eyed finance minister and hard-right fiscal hawk, was poised to become premier himself?

Readers with long memories will recall how Dr. Morton had in January 2011 just stuck the knife into then-premier Ed Stelmach. Dr. Morton wanted a painfully instant balanced budget that Mr. Stelmach was too smart or too humane to accept. When he didn’t get his way, he quit – precipitating the crisis that led to Mr. Stelmach’s resignation.

Oh how the winds of change were blowing then! Dr. Morton was The Man, the cock of the walk, the tight-fisted front-runner in the then-nascent Progressive Conservative leadership race. He was the self-described leftists’ nightmare, an American-born “right-winger with a PhD” – his thesis dissertation in “political economy” assailing the U.S. Supreme Court for its “confused understanding of the relationship between sexual equality and the family.” He was the guy who as soon as he was in the top job would reunite the PCs and the Wildrose Party into a neo-Con monolith that would turn the screws on Alberta till the pips squeaked!

With Dr. Morton ensconced in Edmonton, and his fellow Firewall Manifesto signer Stephen Harper entrenched at 24 Sussex, well, things were gonna move so far to the right you wouldn’t recognize them all over again!

Now it’s June 2012. Alberta has a new premier, its budget is balanced (or, “essentially balanced” as the finance minister explained yesterday), and happy days are here again, just as Dr. Morton promised they would be.

The only thing is, the premier is Alison Redford – avatar of the Red Tory wing of the PC Party who back in January 2011 wasn’t even considered an also-ran by the provincial commentariat. Doug Horner, another leadership candidate whom those supportin’ Morton disparaged as even redder than Redford, is now the finance minister. And balancing the budget barely required a single howl of pain!

The annual financial statements published by the Redford Government yesterday show the province had only a $23-million (that’s million, with an M) deficit last year, way down from the $3.4 billion deficit predicted in the spring of 2011.

This just isn’t the way the narrative – carefully crafted by the skilful mythmakers of the right – was supposed to unfold. Who could have predicted this? (I mean, other than me.)

Once Dr. Morton was out of the leadership race, the storyline of the majority of pundits, pollsters, think-tankers, neo-Con federal politicians and even a few gullible bloggers quickly changed direction.

This time Danielle Smith’s right-fringe Wildrose Party – Dr. Morton has been accurately described as its “intellectual godfather” – was said with one voice to be poised to sweep Ms. Redford and her PCs from power. Once again, Albertans were about to hear the satisfactory sound of pips squeaking, and possibly some civil servants too.

But that didn’t happen either. And, oh, how the mighty have fallen! There was a little miracle on the Prairies, but not one the Fraser Institute can celebrate with any enthusiasm. On election night 2012, April 23, the Wildrose Party didn’t have as much to celebrate as it had hoped. But it did knock off Dr. Morton.

How could this have happened – other than Ms. Redford having turned out to be the sharpest knife in Mr. Stelmach’s kitchen cabinet, running a brilliant leadership campaign followed by an election campaign that was either brilliant too or the closest run thing since the Battle of Waterloo?

The way Mr. Horner explained it yesterday, the government managed to bring in $3.6 billion more revenue than it expected, mostly from the province’s booming natural resources sector.

This makes the Wildrose Party’s complaints last week that the province is in big, big trouble and really ought to be squeezing the juice out of the public service sound plain silly. Wildrosers have been reduced to complaining that the government’s predictions are too optimistic, which, face it, wouldn’t make voters lose much sleep even if there were an election any time soon. And there isn’t.

Seeing as accounting is more art than science, the only mystery about yesterday’s announcement is why the government reported a statistically meaningless $23-million deficit at all, instead of just declaring the budget balanced. This gave Wildrose Finance Critic Rob Anderson the opportunity to grump: “It shows that you can win the Lotto 6/49 and still not balance your budget.”

The answer, of course, is that Ms. Redford will hold off the glorious balanced budget announcement for a couple of years, when she does have the prospect of an election breathing down her neck again. Until then, as NDP leader Brian Mason expressed it yesterday, “the government’s got horseshoes in their pants.”

But if Ms. Redford and her colleagues have horseshoes in their pants, someone else doesn’t. That’d be Ted Morton.

There may be no place he’d rather call home than Alberta, but expect this far-right fiscal hawk to fly away greener pastures in the land of his birth, perhaps at some think tank where he can explain to his heart’s content why his new audience just can’t afford good public services until the budget has been balanced.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

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