Morton, Hinman and Some Bickering

The last pre-election message on Ted Morton's website:

To our Supporters:

Thank you for supporting me and the PC Party—a party that has madeAlbertathe best place to work, to live and to raise a family. As your MLA for Chestermere-Rocky View, I will work for you to keep it that way.

I wasn't really sure if that was a premature victory speech or an awkwardly worded appeal to get out the vote. A paragraph down, to the undecided voters he wrote:

Vote for a candidate who has known and worked with Prime Minister Stephen Harper for over 20 years, and will work effectively with Ottawa to ensure Alberta’s continued prosperity by getting the export pipelines like Keystone XL and Northern Gateway built.

Vote for a party that will build the new schools and health facilities our growing communities need, not fritter it away with “Danielle Dollars”.

Vote for a candidate and a party that will protect the Bow andElbowRivers, and the Eastern Slopes, not a party that will repeal the Land Stewardship Act.

In summary: I'm pals with Harper, infrastructure spending, and we did nothing wrong with the land use framework. There are all kinds of interesting issues regarding Morton's election loss, however I will simply say that as the key architect of the land use framework it isn't too surprising that the voters walked away from him. The framework was perceived as heavy handed, lacking due process, and just alienated land owners. To get rural Albertans to vote out a PC Cabinet minister takes some special talent.

The sad thing is something like the framework is needed, and the alternate policy that would have been implemented by the Wildrose would have made it impossible to stop polluters, help endangered species, or act in any way in the public good.

Aside from that rumours persisted in the campaign that Morton was disinterested in the campaign. The Premier must have been extremely disappointed that he wasn't reelected. No seriously...

A gratuitous photo of Richard Nixon leaving the Whitehouse for the last time in 1974

Paul Hinman's Wildrose website, on the other hand, went 404 almost immediately after the election.  Today he announced through a local Pravda outlet that he would not be paying back wages recieved for being a member of a committee that never met. Also known as the money for nothing scandal. I'm still a little confused exactly about this pay structure, but so is everyone else. But if all of those involved agreed to pay back those wages, it seems to me that Hinman should as well. I'm not sure it's a great career move.  Rick Bell will have to find another hero.

Naturally, the party leader shrugs her shoulders. What can you do? He's a private citizen now, she roughly said. He's presumably still a party member and was or is on the executive. I only bring this up because the leader spent so much time talking about entitlements, big government, and transparency. I should learn not to be so naive.

Hinman's loss will make it interesting for the Wildrose Caucus having 17 members but only 2 with previous MLA experience, and a leader who has spent her whole career in elitist right wing bubbles. Hinman had some MLA experience that might have been useful. How to table a pseudo-scientific paper on the climate change hoax, for example. Without Hinman who else will  compare mundane legislation to Stalin and the Ukrainian Holodomor.  Someone will have to step into those shoes.

At last we get to Gary Bickman. the new Wildrose MLA for Cardston-Taber, who believes the urban voters got it all wrong and don't understand. It's a dish better served in his own words:

"I think they possess more common sense, a least that's my experience. The people who make their living off the land really seem to understand the way nature really works," said Bickman.

He went on to say that city dwellers just don't understand the issues.

"I think that these social issues that came up during the last week and the PCs ability to exploit them, caused some concern in the voters within urban areas, at least, because they didn't really understand the issues, they didn't really understand that there was an aspect of free speech, " said the Cardston-Taber-Warner MLA-Elect.

Yeah, common sense. The people who live off the land in southern alberta have it tough enough considering how arid it is. I wonder how they think nature will really work when the global climate is a few degrees warmer.

And as far as issues go, Bickman should know that almost the entire Wildrose Platform comes from institutions in the cities:  universities, the churches, and the think tanks. Even homophobia, carefully packaged  for hipsters to seem harmless comes from the large urban mega churches and the urban hate groups like Focus on the Family.  Also, professional sports.

We hope that the Wildrose MLAs keeping expressing their thoughts in the media. The party has made a rather open commitment to free speech and MLA autonomy. It should be interesting when dogma meets reality. Please recommend this post

Alberta Legislature: Scumbags, Holodomor and Property Rights

There was a debate in the Legislature today (29 Nov 2011) regarding landowner property rights. There is no doubt that at least 4 of the bills passed in the Stelmach era went too far by removing basic landowner rights, eliminating public consultation and removing the appeal process.

Wildrose MLA Paul Hinman was talking in circles about the evils of these bills, when he veered off into an analogy to European history and the Ukrainian genocide of 1932, also known as the Holodomor.

Here's what he said as recorded in Hansard:

I mean, when you look at Europe, it's interesting. They still have vivid memories of the starvation. We just had a ceremony on Monday in commemoration of Holodomor, the starvation in Europe. That wasn't because of bad weather or not being able to produce. That was, again, an evil, corrupt government confiscating property from the people and trying to take that to destroy a region which the government was having difficulty controlling. [interjection] It's interesting that the Education minister wants to ask if that's for real when many of the acts that were taken inEurope during World War II and other times very much were brutal acts that didn't respect property rights. There are many areas in these bills that have no respect for property rights. When you step down that trail, we can see the end results, and we don't want to go there, not even one step, here in Alberta. Yet many government members seem to pride themselves on this and say: “We know best. We'll put it in cabinet. Cabinet will make those decisions.” It's just wrong, Mr. Chair. That's the last place we want those decisions to be made. What happens when cabinet makes those decisions is that they become political decisions, and political decisions are rarely in the interest of the people. They're usually more in the interest of a party in retaining and holding that power.

A bit of an offensive comparison I think, and by the way, it's the same inflammatory rhetoric that many far right people use to talk about gun registries, wheat boards and the state broadcaster.  Liberals are really just Communists, after all, and they're coming for you. 

Thomas Lukaszuk, the education minister, rose on a point of order (inflammatory language) and had this response:

Mr. Chairman, before we get to the amendment, I would like to rise on a point of order under section 23(h) of our standing orders, using language that entices, I believe it is, a disorder in the House. The hon. Member for Calgary-Glenmore about three or four minutes ago in his comments made a statement that I was hoping
initially I was mishearing. Then he repeated it several times, so without a possibility of denial he said exactly what I think I heard. I know what he said. Mr. Chairman, he compared the Alberta government's land-use policies legislation to the atrocities and genocide of Holodomor in Ukraine. What he's doing is comparing
polices that we're passing in this Legislature right now to Stalin's genocide during the 1930s in Ukraine, known as Holodomor, which killed somewhere between 6 million and 10 million people. If this isn't reaching a new bottom for the Wildrose, I don't know what is.

Neither do I. It's a complete low point.  Unethical and unparliamentary.   My guess is that Hinman knew the Ukrainian reference would get under the skin. It was a targeted reference. The Wildrose view of property rights excludes any type of public or government interest in infrastructure planning. In their world, there would be no environmental laws, and probably not much public infrastructure.

The question is the restoration of the balance between private and public rights.  The government went too far in removing rights and remedies from landowners. If you've read my blog, you'll know I support almost nothing this government has done, and I don't really expect the new Premier will do much about this issue. She is just as obligated to industry groups as her predecessors.

Full hansard of the debate is here. If you're on Twitter, the debate was raging there this evening.  Check the #ableg hashtag.









Please recommend this post