The Shadowy Shadow Cabinet

Wildrose Party experts test a new communication strategy.

Danielle Smith revealed her shadow cabinet today, the people who will make up the official opposition in the Alberta Legislature.

First the demographics.  All of the candidates except one, are from southern Alberta.  There are only two urban members, both in Calgary.   Of the 16 official opposition members, 13 are male, 3 female.  I don't know about their average age, but I don't think anyone will refer to the Wildrose party as a 'brat pack' or 'up and comers'.

Starting with Smith, she will take on the role of representing the official opposition to the cities. It was no secret in the campaign that the mayors of Edmonton and Calgary were less than warm to the idea of a Wildrose victory.  Part of it was the vulgar comments about gays and caucasian power.  But really, it was more about funding, taxes and infrastructure.

Also, Smith will represent the opposition on international, intergovernmental and aboriginal issues.

Rob Anderson will be house leader and Finance and Treasury Board critic.  He will also be in charge of theatrics and insane rhetoric.

Joe Anglin will be the environment critic. He really got under the Stelmach government's skin over rural land owner issues.  But in this Legislature he won't have Luke Ouellette or Mel Knight  to interupt his presentations.  Anglin is a grenade, with a wobbly pin. He may or may not be manageable.

Gary Bickman will be the Advanced Education critic. Bickman believes that city folk just don't get it. Irony is a gift that we should always be thankful for.

As for the rest of the caucus, I'm really not familiar with them, so I won't comment.  I'm sure they will make headlines.

I don't believe that the Wildrose Party planned on sitting in opposition, and probably didn't prepare for it. Also, they probably didn't expect such a small caucus.  It will not take them a long time to figure out that the PC Party micro-manages everything in the Legislature.  I don't know how happy they will be knowing that the opposition parties, in practical terms, don't really exist.

With two conservative parties dominating the Legislature, and the media in Alberta almost universally openly supporting one of the two conservative parties, don't expect any progress on issues that matter to liberals and progressives.

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Identity Politics and Some Numbers

The No True Scotsman fallacy often appears in arguments about philosophy or religion.  It has some bearing on the change that is about to engulf Alberta.  The fallacy would sound something like this in a conversation about Alberta politics:

You:     No conservative would vote for the Progressive Conservative Party
Me:      Well...last election 58% of Albertans voted PC, and I think they would call themselves conservative
You:    Ah...well no true conservative would vote PC.

It seems that Alberta is on a collision course with a severe case of right wing identity politics. The biggest scandals of the Wildrose campaign, a  homophobic rant, and a weird statement about caucasian power, are clear examples of the right wing's obsession with identity and conformance. However, I'm pretty sure most Albertan's who got on the Danielle Smith bus think it's really about abstract notions of populism or change. Or even just the opportunity presented by an incompetent PC campaign, an organization seemingly in it's last days. Thus, the main question of the 2012 election seems to be, who are the real conservatives? This question wrapped in the grade school rhetoric of a family feud has overshadowed other topics.

But before we can unravel this question of who the real conservatives are, we have to consider the polling numbers.  Historically, conservative parties in Alberta get between 50% to 60% of the popular vote. In 2008 it was 58%, in 2004 57% and in 2001 61%. That range holds fairly true federally as well for Albertan voters.

In the 2012 election polling suggests that the combined conservative vote will be around 70%. The one I last saw reported 41% for Wildrose and 32% for PC, a total of 73%.  So it appears that this election has magically created an addition 10-15% more conservative voters.

It's obvious that a big chunk of Wildrose voters are coming over from the PC Party, but not enough to explain the 73% estimate.  The drop in PC support is probably more precipitous than we know and may be masked by Alberta Liberal party voters moving to the PC party out of fear and loathing.  What is actually left of the PC party will be an interesting question to look into next week.

That  leaves the original question of who are the real conservatives who will take power tomorrow? Well, the Wildrose Party will cruise to victory on a well crafted narrative that they are Alberta's true conservatives. They and their friends in the media, managed to demonize Alison Redford as a "liberal" and I saw the word socialist thrown around for good measure. So the Liberal Party and the Alberta NDP never really got into the game because Redford and the PC Party became the surrogate for everything true Alberta conservatives are supposed to hate.  They appear to have tapped into some powerful voodoo about what a true Albertan is.

I suspect that the 73% conservative vote estimate will snap back to the historical range when the votes are counted.  But that won't be enough to stop the Wildrose identity movement of true and pure conservatism from being elected.  And you know that that identity will be projected onto the national stage as what every damn Albertan bar none believes.   Gird your loins.

I can just hear it now....no true Albertan would tolerate a human rights commission...










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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.









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