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Alberta Election (23 Apr 12)

Edward Campbell

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Here is a report, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, on the opening of the campaign:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/redfords-pcs-face-off-with-wildrose-party-as-alberta-election-kicks-off/article2381450/
Redford’s PCs face off with Wildrose Party as Alberta election kicks off

JOSH WINGROVE

Globe and Mail Update
Published Monday, Mar. 26, 2012

Alberta’s provincial election is underway, one that pits Premier Alison Redford’s Progressive Conservatives against, for the first time, a well-funded, well-organized right-wing challenger, Danielle Smith and her Wildrose Party.

Ms. Redford visited Lieutenant Governor Donald Ethell just before 10 a.m. local time Monday morning to suspend the legislative session, drop the writ and kick off the campaign. Shortly after, both she and Ms. Smith were giving speeches at the legislature before embarking on a campaign trail that will see both head south to Calgary before the day is out. The vote is scheduled for April 23.

The campaign will see both leaders claim to be an agent of change – Ms. Redford a centrist who has overhauled her venerable party since winning its leadership on Oct. 1 last year, and Ms. Smith a libertarian seeking to put an end to 41 years of consecutive PC rule in the province.

The party leaders stayed quiet early Monday morning awaiting the formality of an election call, but the campaign and attacks have already begun. Wildrose is targeting Ms. Redford, saying she’s a closet liberal who will raise taxes (a notion the premier has been coy about) and whose party has grown entitled and corrupt during its time in power.

A series of recent controversies will help Wildrose’s cause, including revelations that a PC-dominated committee hasn’t met in three years but has been paying its members (including three from Wildrose) $1,000 a month, records that show Ms. Redford’s party accepted donations from public institutions and outcry from doctors over the state of the health-care system.

Wildrose’s campaign has already released a glitzy attack ad and will be one built on attacking Ms. Redford and casting itself as the true conservative option. “Remember boys and girls ‘Progressive’ is code for Liberal,” on Wildrose supporter and former Tory wrote on Twitter Monday.

Ms. Smith, a 40-year-old former school board trustee and journalist, began by releasing her fundraising totals from her 2009 leadership campaign, one that saw her raise roughly half of her total of $487,748 from small donations. She hasn’t yet won a seat as an MLA.

“I am the leader of a party that is now capable of defeating the Progressive Conservatives and forming the next government,” Ms. Smith said in a party release. “We are going to be running a campaign on transparency, accountability and better democracy, and it has to start with me.”

Ms. Redford, meanwhile, has cast herself as a fresh start for her party – similar to a strategy employed by Ralph Klein two decades ago, one that saw him revive PC fortunes. The 47-year-old human rights lawyer, who was first elected in Alberta’s last vote four years ago, has an extensive party machine at her disposal, ample funding, well-known MLAs and had 66 of 83 seats when the writ dropped Monday. Wildrose had just four, three of whom ran as PCs in the last election.

“In the six months since I was elected Premier, we have introduced policies to bring discipline to spending, to support seniors and vulnerable Albertans, to enhance education, and to put health care on a better path forward. In this campaign, I will talk about how we build on those foundational policies, and how we embrace the energy and imagination of all Albertans to continue building the finest place in the world in which to live,” she said in a campaign statement Monday.

Speaking with reporters on the last day of the legislative session last Thursday, Ms. Redford said she worried about the negative tone Wildrose’s ad has already set the campaign. “You put yourself into politics, and that’s what it is. I worry a little bit about my family, but we’ll see,” said Ms. Redford, the mother of a nine-year-old girl. She was, however, eager for the campaign to begin. Asked by one reporter if she could “take” Ms. Smith in a debate, Ms. Redford smiled: “Oh yeah.”

The official opposition Liberals are expected to see their fortunes fall in the race, but will kick off their campaign at an Edmonton hotel on Monday afternoon. The two other major parties are the New Democrats and Alberta Party, a centrist upstart. Of the three, only the NDP have a full slate of nominated candidates and are poised to add to their caucus, which currently includes two MLAs.

“I’m very optimistic and excited about the opportunities for us,” NDP candidate Rachel Notley, one of the two incumbents, said last week. She shares Ms. Redford’s concerns about the tone of the campaign. “I don’t think we really need to have the debate to descend into the gutter. I think it’s better for us if Albertans get to hear a balanced assessment of all the different ideas of all the different parties, and I hope we don’t descend into an Americanized kind of campaign.”


I commented, almost a year ago that I liked what Danielle Smith has to say. It will be interesting to see how Alberta likes her.
 
Not only do I like what Danielle Smith has to say, but I happen to know another person running for them who was actually touted as potential leader not so long ago...Dave Yager.

Dave is one of the single most switched on people I have ever met in my life and I have no doubt that he'd make for a great elected representative.
 
For the first time in many years i will probably not vote for the Alberta PC's. I don't like the .05 or the home schooling ideas that they came up with, amongst other issues. The fact that they will only pay back 6 months of the commitee that never was is another.
 
Perhaps the most significant part of the race is the effect that having an actual race is going to have on our election turnout. The winner will be, I think, the WAP - I just don't know how much it will translate into seats in northern Alberta. The Liberals and NDP could pick off a few PCs in the urban centres, but that may be due to vote-splitting more than better organization. The PCs are simply a spent force; the best they can hope for is that voters stay away, as they are wont to do here, or that many voters revert to them (a friend of mine who canvassed for the Liberals years ago experienced the following all too often: "I hope you win. I can't vote for you.") A minor boost to the PCs can and will come from swayed liberals, who would rather have Redford as Premier than Smith. In Calgary, where the WAP gets 33% support, I could see many opting to vote strategically in this manner, especially in the southern parts of the city.

All in all I have to say it's terribly exciting to be living through my first actual election in this province... ha.

 
It is interesting that for the first time it seems that the PCs actually have competition in the province. The only caveat to this is the idea of "coffee shop" politics that seems to dominate in the rural areas of Alberta. The "I voted for Jim because Jim lives down the road, or I know Jim's dad, or someone knows Jim's dad, and he's a good guy." That can sometimes be a hard area to crack into, but if someone other than the PCs can get candidates into that community, then they might make some headway there.

It is funny, I can remember a couple of elections in Alberta when I lived there, and I never knew if my vote REALLY counted or not. And that might be the downfall of the PC party, people might turn out in greater numbers. With a party considered competition, you might see increased voter turnout and perhaps more strategic voting. I know I am interested to see how everything shakes out in the end.
 
Under Stelmach there were issues come out that the PC's are so ingrained into the structure of everything electoral that a lot of stuff was dependant on the local PC member giving it his/her nod of approval.

Boards, Municipal Governments, et al were all beholding to the PC's......especially after the number of years they have been in power.

The Wild Rose has come a long way in digging into that structure, and I like what I hear from Danielle Smith, but I don't know if they have enough to get over the top. It would do the PC's good to be out of power for awhile.....

edit: It is nice to see two women running for premier.....nice change. They are both smart, articulate and forcefull.
 
Here is more analysis, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the National Post:

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/26/election-called-in-alberta-for-april-23/
Alberta election called for April 23 as Tories face unprecedented Wildrose fight

Jen Gerson

Mar 26, 2012

Alberta premier Alison Redford made the long-awaited call for an election Monday, starting what is expected to be the most contentious campaign in the province in almost 20 years.

After locking in 41 years of majority governments, the Progressive Conservatives are facing a well-organized, well-funded scrap against the right-leaning Wildrose Party, led by former journalist Danielle Smith.

alberta.jpg

Alberta premier Alison Redford and Wildrose Party leader Danielle Smith.
National Post picture from the article


Smith took over the helm of the rag-tag team of libertarians and fiscal conservatives in 2009, and has since transformed the party into the de facto opposition, although it currently holds only four of the Alberta legislature’s 83 seats — half that of the Alberta Liberal Party.

Yet some poll numbers show the Wildrose may be gaining enough support to form the official opposition, if not topple the ruling PCs altogether.

If that weren’t uncommon enough, this election call comes after several scandal-plagued weeks for the Tories.

Albertans are still railing about the funding that went to MLAs who sat on a committee that rarely met. The chair of the “no meet” panel, Ray Prins, announced he would not seek re-election last Tuesday.

Then there’s the recently released report from Elections Alberta, which announced it had found 23 examples of illegal campaign funding from tax-payer funded institutions — although it refused to disclose to which party the money had gone, or who would be facing sanctions.

Redford defended Elections Alberta’s secrecy when she spoke to Postmedia last week.

“The discussion was to avoid exactly these sorts of circumstances where you start to see these sort of McCarthyism approaches to ongoing investigations,” she told reporters.

Gary Mar, who was bested by Redford during the PC’s October leadership campaign, remains suspended from his far-flung job as Asian envoy as he faces an investigation into a fundraiser he held in Edmonton earlier in the year.

And the Tories are likely to continue to take flak for their budget, passed last week, that increased government spending, pulls $3.7-billion from the Sustainability Fund, and still relies on an optimistic forecast of oil revenues from a predicted oil price of $105-per barrel.

Amid that turmoil, both the PCs and the Wildrose have launched pointed advertisements at each other; earlier this month, the Tories released a radio spot in Calgary trashing Smith’s opposition to tougher drunk driving laws.

“Danielle Smith and the Wildrose: not worth the risk,” it stated.

Wildrose responded in kind, launching a video ad that took aim at Redford’s record since taking over the leadership of the PCs in October.

The 28-day campaign will end with voting day slated for April 23.

National Post


Here, reproduced from the same article, is a graphic showing recent party support levels:

toronto-na0327-alberta-prim.jpg


On that basis it looks like a tight race and a Wildrose government is not beyond question.

 
Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, is an assessment of the core differences between Redford and Smith:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/albertas-election-campaign-brings-out-discordant-views-of-the-province/article2383510/
Alberta's election campaign brings out discordant views of the province

JOSH WINGROVE

CALGARY— From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Mar. 27, 2012

Alberta’s boom has changed the province – its population has jumped by 800,000 in a decade, the balance has shifted from farms to cities, and the booming oil sands have made it a player on the global stage.

Amid its new realities, the provincial election campaign is coming down to a fundamental question: What has it all meant for Alberta today? Does the province remain a bastion of small-government conservatism with firewall tendencies, or is it now a big-government energy capital looking for a lead role in Confederation?

Alison Redford’s Progressive Conservative dynasty hangs in the balance – she sees Alberta as the latter, saying the province has changed and can’t stick to the “simplistic” approaches of the past.

“My view is that we have to have a different relationship with Canada and the other provinces than we’ve had in the past. It’s a more complicated world than it used to be. The fact that we have resources isn’t enough to allow us to dictate on anything on a national policy stage,” Ms. Redford said on Tuesday in Calgary.

But her chief rival, Wildrose leader Danielle Smith, is a libertarian banking on the notion that Alberta’s conservative ethos is the same as it was before the boom.

“I think she’s wrong,” she said about Ms. Redford’s idea of the province. “I don’t think Alberta has changed and I don’t think it needs to be changed.”

That discord informs much of the campaign. On Tuesday, Ms. Smith visited a supporter’s home, a sheep farm, and then a party rally. Ms. Redford went to a 125-year-old company, Sprung Structures, that once made wagon covers and now exports high-tech building materials to 90 countries.

Ms. Redford, a 47-year-old lawyer, talks about investing in health and education, reaching outside of borders, and her vision for a Canadian energy strategy. She’s the face of wealthy Calgary’s global ambitions, PCs and red Tories.

Ms. Smith, 40, is focused squarely on running surpluses, cutting spending and championing traditional conservatism. The former columnist and school board trustee (who is married to a Sun News Network executive) hasn’t served as an MLA, but became the populist darling of disaffected conservatives and small-town Alberta by casting the PCs as out of touch.

“They are going to have to get out of their limos and put down their flutes of champagne,” Ms. Smith said on Monday. “And they’re going to have to drop their caviar spoons and they’re going to have to stop counting their ridiculous retirement packages. And they’re going to wake up to a new Alberta, which feels like Alberta is supposed to.”

Conservatives are split. The parties are tied in polls, one of which showed only 54 per cent of people who voted for Ms. Redford’s PCs in the last election planned to do so again.

“We’re getting back to real conservatives if we get this Wildrose in,” John Kalbhen, a former Tory, said at one of Ms. Smith’s events. “That’s why we’re on board with Wildrose.”

The themes were reflected over and over in campaign stops in which both women visited the other’s riding during the first two days.

The campaign is about “defining our future differently,” Ms. Redford said in Edmonton on Monday, adding later in Ponoka, Alta., that the province has “an opportunity to take a direction we haven’t yet taken.” Then, at an oil sands welding shop that exports half of what it produces, she spoke about what “Alberta has become.”

Ms. Smith, meanwhile, stresses “common-sense conservative values” of Albertans. On Tuesday, she pledged she would never run a deficit (a move the PCs say would cost thousands of teachers and nurses their jobs) and warned Alberta’s current path will “destroy what makes this place exceptional.”

Some of Alberta’s recent political history supports Ms. Redford’s vision. The most conservative candidate to run against her in the leadership race, Ted Morton, didn’t make the final ballot; Ms. Redford won by reaching outside the traditional party base; and Naheed Nenshi, the centrist professor who talks about “politics in full sentences,” won Calgary’s 2010 mayoral race.

“I have a great deal of certainty and confidence in terms of where Albertans are viewing the future of the province,” Ms. Redford said. “I don’t think it’s the status quo, and I don’t think it’s going back 15 or 20 years. I think it’s about the future, understanding we’re a different community, we’re a different society … and my sense is that’s what Albertans are looking for.”

Ms. Smith, however, said Albertans are looking for the opposite – those common-sense conservative values she cites at each stop as her poll numbers surge. “I think that this is what this election is about.”

With a report from Dawn Walton


The conventional wisdom in the national, mainstream media, is that Canada has grown more and more conservative: favouring smaller, lower spending and less intrusive governments. Maybe the forthcoming Alberta election will add (or subtract) some meat to (from) those bones.
 
Let the race begin . . .


"EDMONTON - If an election were held in Alberta today, Danielle Smith would be premier and her Wildrose Party would boast a commanding majority, according to a new poll.

A Forum Research survey published exclusively in Sun Media papers found the Wildrose Party leading the pack with 41% of decided voters and Progressive Conservatives losing steam at 31%.

The poll of 1,000 Albertans was conducted hours after the writ was dropped Monday to signal an April 23 election.

It is the first major survey to find the Wildrose ahead of the Tories and, based on the responses, Forum projects the upstart party would have 58 seats in the revamped 87-seat Alberta Legislature, while the Tories would be reduced from their current 66 seats to 22."



http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/politics/archives/2012/03/20120328-071331.html
 
More details on the poll:

http://www.stephentaylor.ca/2012/03/albertas-wildrose-way-out-ahead/

Polling done by market research firm Campaign Research was completed last night in Alberta and the results are no short of stunning.

The details:
- Wildrose is leading the PC Party by 9 points across the province among decided voters
- 18,000 households called, 924 responses
- Wildrose leads PC is 49%-25% among men
- PC leads wildrose 34%-30% among women
- Wildrose leads in Calgary and Rural areas
- In Edmonton: PC 28%, WR 23%, NDP 23%, LPA 18%
- Smith leads Redford for “Best Premier” by 3 points

Campaign Research, usually known for internal party polling with conservatives parties in Canada, is about to publicly release this poll. CR had the polling accurate in the Toronto mayoral race and predicted a majority government for the federal Conservatives early. In the 2011 Ontario election they had the seat projection accurate and were off by only one seat.

 
The Globe and Mail has a full on-line section devoted to the Alberta election at ALBERTA ELECTION WATCH. It's worth a look.

The current stories are:

Saturday, March 31, 2012 12:46 AM EDT
Danielle Smith’s Wildrose vision is focused much closer to home
GARY MASON


Saturday, March 31, 2012 1:56 AM EDT
Meet the voters key to a Wildrose victory …
DAWN WALTON AND JOSH WINGROVE

Friday, March 30, 2012 8:21 PM EDT
Greenpeace: The loneliest campaign in the Alberta election
Josh Wingrove

Friday, March 30, 2012 8:22 PM EDT
Trash talk builds as Alberta race heats up
JOSH WINGROVE

Friday, March 30, 2012 6:39 PM EDT
Georges Laraque wants to fight the tar sands
JOSH WINGROVE

Friday, March 30, 2012 6:04 PM EDT
Wildrose commits to eliminate mandatory school fees in Alberta
DAWN WALTON

Friday, March 30, 2012 12:08 AM EDT
Wildrose wouldn't fund costly Oilers arena if elected, Smith says
Dawn Walton, Josh Wingrove and Allan Maki

Friday, March 30, 2012 8:05 PM EDT
Alberta’s election locked in a dead heat
JOSH WINGROVE AND DAWN WALTON

Thursday, March 29, 2012 1:54 PM EDT
Instead of attack dogs, Wildrose party bus has ‘happy, friendly dogs’
DAWN WALTON

Thursday, March 29, 2012 6:34 PM EDT
Wildrose’s Smith unveils tax credit for Alberta families
Dawn Walton and Josh Wingrove

 
Here, reproduced in two parts, under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, is an article about Premier Redford's campaign:

Part 1 of 2

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/alison-redford-a-leader-on-the-brink/article2387909/
Alison Redford: A leader on the brink

SANDRA MARTIN

From Saturday's Globe and Mail
Published Saturday, Mar. 31, 2012

A few days after she won the leadership of the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party last October, Alison Redford had an appointment to call Prime Minister Stephen Harper. “Well, Alison,” he drawled – and here, in her retelling, she lowers her voice and flashes a mischievous smile – “when we were sitting in Jim Hawkes's basement, who ever thought we would be having this conversation?”

Who, indeed? Back in the mid-1980s, Mr. Harper was a parliamentary aide to Calgary-West MP Jim Hawkes; Ms. Redford, already a veteran politico, was engaged to his boss's son, Robert Hawkes. “I don't know if he would want me to repeat this conversation, but it is kind of fun,” she allows in an interview in her suite of offices two weeks ago at the Alberta Legislature, a massive Beaux Arts edifice that dominates the landscape of central Edmonton.

Connections are one thing. What you do with them is what matters in the political arena. She and Mr. Harper have both made an effort, she says, to reconnect and to build on “their natural rapport” to get “constructive things” done for the province. Despite their differing brands of conservative ideology, Ms. Redford says, “both of us know that it is very important for Alberta and Ottawa to have a strong relationship.”

While the two are collegial now, Ms. Redford can't recall if Mr. Harper attended her first wedding in August, 1985. And she shows no signs of following the tortuous path he took to 24 Sussex. Such was the drama surrounding conservative politics in those days that Mr. Harper chose twice to run for office against his old mentor Mr. Hawkes, losing once and then finally heading to Parliament as a Reform MP in 1993. Originally a Liberal supporter, Mr. Harper flirted with several political persuasions before the 2003 merger of right-wing parties in the new Conservative Party.

No one has ever needed a dance card to keep track of Ms. Redford's political affiliations. Although she says she supported the merger, she has been an unwavering “progressive” Conservative – a Red Tory, by many definitions – since she was 16 and Peter Lougheed was premier of Alberta.

“He was a larger-than-life figure,” she says – he represented the same values and attitudes that she had absorbed around the dinner table from her grandfather. When she decided to get involved in politics, she phoned the PC party “because that was the party that Mr. Lougheed led.”

Outside Alberta, people tend to think that Ms. Redford came out of nowhere to win the leadership of the Alberta PCs, but she has been mentored for decades (she is now 47) by icons of the provincial and federal parties, including Mr. Lougheed, Joe Clark and Jean Charest – yes, that Jean Charest who once was a Tory and has been the Liberal Premier of Quebec since 2003.

Today, they engage in the kinds of conversations between Alberta and Quebec that haven't occurred since Mr. Lougheed retired from politics. “We are filled with joy to see how this young woman has progressed to become Premier of Alberta,” Mr.Charest said before delivering a speech on March 5 in Toronto. “We did a small press conference afterwards and she spoke in French. The media's jaws dropped,” he said, “and the first tweet I had afterwards was: ‘Can she coach the Habs?' ” Pausing dramatically, Mr. Charest answered his own rhetorical question: “No. She is busy.”

That she is. Not only is she using her Rolodex to build a national conversation with other premiers, she is running hard to become the first woman elected premier of the resource-rich province. That may be the toughest item on her agenda: A little more than a year ago, she was a rookie MP and Minister of Justice when she decided to contest the leadership of the Alberta party after Premier Ed Stelmach announced he was stepping down. Not one cabinet minister supported her leadership bid, which shows how at odds she was with the old PC party Mr. Stelmach had inherited from former Calgary Mayor Ralph Klein.

“Mr. Klein came along and he reverted the party backward to what I call the old Social Credit days, when Alberta was the whole focus and it wasn't a cross-Canada focus,” said Mr. Lougheed in an interview. Today, Premier Redford's progressive outlook is turning that tide back again, he said, “and I think that is exceptionally important.”

Anybody in Alberta can pay $5 to join the party and vote directly for the leader. That allowed Ms. Redford to gather support from outside a crony-dominated caucus, campaigning on education and health-care reforms that appealed to women voters. “She was not the front runner and yet she moved into being the front runner,” Mr. Lougheed said, “because she went into all those constituencies where we didn't have strong organizations and won supporters, and hence won the leadership.”

And then there was the sympathy vote. Late in the campaign, her mother developed a sudden systemic infection; she died in hospital on Sept. 27, with Ms. Redford at her bedside. Ms. Redford won respect and voters the following evening in the leadership debate, appearing composed, articulate and smart, despite her grief, compared to leading rival Gary Mar, an overly confident PC old boy.

The new guard

If women helped Ms. Redford win the leadership, it may well be a woman who will deny her victory in the provincial election when Albertans go to the polls on April 23.

Danielle Smith, the leader of the upstart Wildrose Party, is running hard in a well-financed campaign, fielding candidates in every riding. Although the two women attended the same high school in Calgary, they don't really know each other: Ms. Smith, 41, came of age during the rise of the Reform Party, and belongs to a political persuasion much further to the right.

In the opening days, the Wildrose and PCs had been running neck and neck; Ms. Smith's party is now surging in the polls. Their visions for Alberta are radically different. “I come from a hands-off, laissez-faire approach and she very much comes from a hands-on, activist approach,” Ms. Smith said in a telephone interview. “Are we going to go down the path of more and more government interference, more and more government spending, more and more government taxes? Or are we going to go down the path – which I think Albertans are more in line with – where we believe that individuals and families and communities should be free to govern themselves in their own way, without too much interference from the provincial legislature?”

For Ms. Redford, though, “change” is more about attitude. “There are political parties out there who are talking about change who are made up of a lot of people who used to be members of this party 20 years ago.” For her, this is an opportunity for a change of the guard. A younger generation – people with young kids and aging parents – can come to the cabinet table with fresh ideas and new approaches about what government needs to do: to “think differently,” says Ms. Redford, “about what research and post-secondary education looks like, what renewables look like, what we need to do to create a different energy economy. That is change.”

In her grand vision, the development of Alberta's oil sands and pipelines (for access to Asian as well as American markets) is as crucial to the economic future of both the province and the country as the construction of Canadian Pacific Railway or the St. Lawrence Seaway was in their eras.

“We have a resource in this province that belongs to Albertans, but it is also of tremendous economic benefit for Canadians,' Ms. Redford says. Part of her Canadian Energy Strategy, she readily admits, is to make decisions on the federal and provincial levels that will help market landlocked Alberta's resources. But what she wants to discuss with other provinces “is not just our resources, but how do we partner on other economic opportunities” by sharing research and manufacturing and refining opportunities.

Set aside rhetoric, campaign promises, and photo ops – the stuff of partisan politics – and the real struggle between the contenders in this election is between an insular, protectionist view of Little Alberta and the image of the province as the pulse of a dynamic country in a surging global energy economy.

If Ms. Redford can persuade Albertans to come along with her, she might change the province and perhaps the country. Is she the nationally focused, truly progressive Conservative who can bring a new political conversation to Ottawa?

Beyond borders

When The Globe and Mail went to see Ms. Redford on her home turf, she'd recently weathered a public spat with the genial Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty over Alberta's “petro” dollars harming the Ontario economy. In the legislature, the opposition was trying to score pre-election headlines about her big-spending “NDP” budget, a shelved health-care inquiry, an education bill that riled religious homeschoolers and, most ominously, a sloppy MLA bonus-payment scheme that had mushroomed in the damp darkness of a party that had been in government for almost as long as she had been alive.

Time was running out if she was going to ask the Lieutenant-Governor to dissolve the legislature so that she could call an election before farmers had to put in their crops. Within a few short days, she'd pleasured in feinting and parrying in Question Period; delivered speeches to oil-industry mavens and farmers and ranchers in rural communities in which she'd assured them she held their interests separately and collectively close to her heart; and talked with a bunch of kids in a school library about bullying as casually as though she were drinking a cup of tea at her own kitchen table. She seemed to be heeding Mr. Lougheed's election advice: “She needs to get out with the people.”

On this particular morning, though, she is late for an interview, stuck in her office, dealing with an internal crisis, as MLAs rush in and out. “They have to decide something,” one of her press secretaries confides: Ms. Redford is trying to persuade her caucus to return their bonuses for being on committees that never met – a policy that pre-dated her (although she benefited from it) but was hurting the PCs badly in the polls.

Finally, she appears, sweeping quickly and quietly into the room. A fresh-faced woman with short auburn hair hooked behind her ears, Ms. Redford has a forthright manner and a ready laugh. She is not a stylish dresser, typically appearing in open-necked shirts under lawyerly, dark-trousered suits and flat shoes.

Her most notable accessories are pearls and a series of bracelets that she wears on her left wrist. The pearls – a long strand and a shorter necklace – came from her late mother and grandmother, so they are more talismans than fashion statements. Two of the bracelets were gifts from the other significant female in her life – her nine-year-old daughter Sarah; the third one she bought herself as a birthday gift, a month before Sarah was born in April, 2002. They symbolize a melding of past and future, not unlike Ms. Redford's own political career.

Though she acts the part of the new broom with international experience, Ms. Redford also has deep Alberta roots, planted when her maternal grandparents Scotty and Robina Anderson emigrated from Scotland after the Second World War and settled in Edmonton in 1948. Her grandfather contracted pneumonia that first winter, in the days before Medicare and easily dispensed antibiotics – a point she likes to make on the campaign trail as she announces new family-care clinics. But Mr. Anderson survived to move with his wife to Redwater, a town 50 kilometres northeast of Edmonton, where they opened the corner store and became stalwart members of the United Church.

Their daughter Helen married Merrill Redford, from Turner Valley, the site of the original oil-and-gas boom in Alberta. In the early 1960s, the couple moved to Kitimat in northwestern B.C. so he could finish his apprenticeship as an electrician at an Alcan plant, and that's where Alison Merrilla Redford was born on March 7, 1965.

After a couple of years they moved back to Alberta temporarily, and then the family – which by then included two younger daughters, Melody and Lynn – began travelling, as Mr. Redford found work as an electrician on oil rigs as far afield as Nova Scotia and the island of Borneo in southeast Asia. These journeys gave Ms. Redford an early and lasting education about poverty, and the fact that “that there was a big wide world out there and we were part of it.”

She learned these lessons “toddling along” behind her mother in the crowded streets of Miri, the centre of Malaysia's oil industry, while complete strangers stroked her ginger hair: “We were a privileged minority, but we were different, and being different helped me understand that there are a lot of people who feel different,” she says, sitting at a polished oval table in a boardroom in her Legislature office suite – another potential hurdle on the campaign trail. (Last week, Ms. Smith attacked a scheduled $275-million renovation of the century-old building, calling it “the Taj Mahal of provincial waste.”)

By the time Ms. Redford's family returned to Alberta, she was 12, and the odd one out in her own country. She and her sisters were used to wearing uniforms to school and having servants. “I can remember my mother fighting with me for months to make my bed because I had never made my bed,” she says.

And then there was the culture shock: “These were the days of Welcome Back, Kotter [the schoolyard sitcom that made a star of John Travolta] and kids being ‘cool' at 10 or 12,” a concept totally foreign to her – she'd never even watched TV.

End of Part 1 of 2
 
Part 2 of 2

The youthful activist

Meanwhile Alberta was undergoing a cultural upheaval of its own, as Peter Lougheed swept the Alberta Progressive Conservatives into power and the Social Credit Party out after three decades. Mr. Lougheed brought with him a modern, progressive agenda, determined to make the most of Alberta's resources. Ms. Redford became the president of the party's youth executive and was excited to sit in meetings with the new premier: “I learned a lot from him including how to behave as a leader.” On the federal front she devoted her energies to Joe Clark, another Alberta Red Tory.

By then she had graduated from high school and begun a patchwork progress through university, spending a year each at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Mount Royal in Calgary and Queen's in Kingston. But politics was her real education. It also played the matchmaker in her romance with her first husband, Robert Hawkes. They met in 1985, working for Ron Ghitter, who ran against Don Getty for the leadership of the provincial party after Mr. Lougheed retired.

“She was super-smart and very engaged and very likeable,” recalls Mr. Hawkes, now a lawyer in Calgary. They married in August, 1986, while she was a law student at the University of Saskatchewan.

After finishing her degree in 1988, she was set to article with Jim Prentice (who would become Minister of Industry and later the Environment in Mr. Harper's cabinet before quitting politics in 2010), but the Free Trade campaign had a stronger pull than a Calgary law office: She headed east to Ottawa to work for Brian Mulroney and then stayed on after the election.

Eventually an opening came up in Mr. Clark's office – he was Minister of External Affairs, and taking a leading role in mounting Commonwealth sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa. “Even then,” Mr. Clark remembers in a telephone interview, “she had a great intuitive understanding of politics, of how people related and what the issues were.”

Once a year, Mr. Prentice would call from Calgary and ask if she was coming back, and she would always beg for an extension. “Finally,” she recalls, “he said ‘No, it is time you come back.'” So she returned to Calgary (after meeting and travelling with Nelson Mandela after his release from prison in February, 1990) and did her articling at Rooney Prentice. Mr. Prentice was unavailable for an interview but it is clear from some of his recent speeches that he shares Ms. Redford's pan-Canadian view of resource sharing and infrastructure building.

She split up with Mr. Hawkes in the spring of 1991, and both have since remarried – her second husband is Glen Jermyn, the father of her red-haired daughter Sarah, and a senior lawyer in Aboriginal Law Services for the federal Department of Justice in Calgary. But she and her first husband remain friends – although she says they still argue (“Now, that's why I divorced you,” she will parry), she did ask Mr. Hawkes to lead her transition team after she became Premier.

After completing her articles, Ms. Redford formed a small law firm with another lawyer with whom she had articled and then went out on her own, before deciding to become a consultant with Agriteam Canada, a Calgary-based NGO that works internationally on development issues such as legal and judicial reform. One of her first assignments was in South Africa, working with Mr. Mandela and the African National Congress in their discussions with the beleaguered former apartheid regime.

“The negotiations were amazing,” she says. “They would often turn to Canada in a critical way and say, ‘This is what you did – explain it to me: Why did you do that, how does it work, what are the problems?'” She found herself examining how our legal and political systems work, an experience she repeated in other assignments in developing countries over the next several years. “You learn a lot about your own country,” she says.

After returning home, she was determined to test her ideas, but the forum she chose – the federal riding of Calgary West – showed her inexperience in partisan politics. She put idealism ahead of pragmatism by running against Rob Anders, because, as she said later, he “did not speak to the province that I wanted to live in.” (Their divergent views dated back at least to 2001, when Mr. Anders was the sole dissenting vote in making Mr. Mandela an honorary citizen of Canada, on the grounds that the president of South Africa was a terrorist and a Communist.)

For her next political foray she went for a winnable provincial riding: Ralph Klein's former seat in Calgary Elbow. Premier Ed Stelmach immediately appointed the rookie MLA Justice Minister, and then Attorney General. That might seem like challenge enough, but Ms. Redford was still impatient to make real change in the party and the government.

“A lot of people said it must be really difficult to be premier,” she says. On the contrary, she feels “an awful lot more comfortable being part of government now as the premier than I did as a cabinet minister trying to make change from a position around the cabinet table.”

Dog bites politician

For all Ms. Redford's sense of mission, however, election campaigns are often predominantly about dealing with the issues that come out of nowhere, like a feral dog sneaking out of the shadows to bite you on the leg – the MLA-bonus imbroglio being a prime example. How does she find a way to cope?

She says she still abides by the lessons she learned as a teenager, watching Mr. Lougheed in action: “You have to set the plan, do the groundwork, set the foundation and know what direction you want to take, so that the work of government on the policy side can continue, no matter what comes at you. That doesn't mean you are never going to change course. If there is a cataclysmic event, of course, you have to deal with that.”

And that is precisely what she did early this week by publicly changing course about the phantom committees: She had compromised in the emergency caucus meeting before the writ was dropped, agreeing that MLAs should only give back the money they'd received since she became premier. Now, however, she was demanding – not asking – that they refund the money as far back as the 2008 election, if they wanted to sit in her caucus.

“When you are in a political campaign,” she says before climbing back on her campaign bus, “some of these issues become focused very quickly and that is a good thing. I am not beyond admitting when I have made a mistake.”

Her mistake was not sticking to her values in the first place. She'd known the payment system was wrong – she'd said so in her leadership campaign and then set up an inquiry to figure out how to fix it.

“I didn't change my mind. The system was in place well before I was elected, and I wanted to change it and we are going to.”

What she wants now is to move beyond the issue and get back to debating the future of the province.

“Albertans deserve that,” she says.

Sandra Martin is a feature writer for The Globe and Mail.


It behooves all Canadians to get to know more about provincial politics and politicians in BC and Alberta - Misses Redford and Smith, and the decisions they take, are just as important to Canada's future as are Messers McGuinty and Hudak and, arguably more important than M. Charest and Mme. Marois.
 
According to this article, which is reproduced under the fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, Alberta may see a change in governing party:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/a-week-in-alberta-election-is-wildroses-to-lose/article2389070/
A week in, Alberta election is Wildrose’s to lose

ÉRIC GRENIER

Globe and Mail Update
Published Monday, Apr. 02, 2012

With Alison Redford’s Progressive Conservatives in freefall and Danielle Smith’s Wildrose gaining steam, Alberta is on pace to replace its government for the first time in 41 years.

ThreeHundredEight.com’s vote and seat projection model, which aggregates, weighs and adjusts all publicly released opinion polls, indicates Wildrose would have the support of 37.3 per cent of Albertans if an election were held today. The Progressive Conservatives, who have governed the province since 1971, would take only 33.7 per cent of the vote, a dramatic 19-point drop since the 2008 election.

With these levels of support, Wildrose would likely capture 44 of the Alberta legislature’s 87 seats, giving Ms. Smith the narrowest of majorities. Ms. Redford would be bumped from the premier’s office to the role of Official Opposition, with her party winning 36 seats.

nw-number-cruncher_1391085a.jpg

Ingr-graphic from the Globe and Mail

Albertans are headed to the polls on Apr. 23.

Since Feb. 6, the PCs have seen their support slip by 11.6 points and their projected seat haul by 37 seats. Plagued by questions over an inquiry into the health-care system, MLA pay for non-sitting committees and fundraising methods used by the party, the Progressive Conservatives have taken a big hit from Wildrose’s message of fiscal restraint and accountability. Since early February, Wildrose has picked up 14.6 points, a significant shift in a matter of only eight weeks.

Wildrose has supplanted the Tories in two of their fortresses: Calgary and the rural parts of the province. In Alberta’s major city, Wildrose has picked up more than 14 points since February and now leads with a projected 43 per cent of the vote, enough to give the party 21 seats in the area. The PCs have dropped 13.9 points to 31.5 per cent, and are projected to win only six seats.

Outside of Calgary and Edmonton, Wildrose is up almost 15 points to 42.7 per cent, well ahead of the Tories, who stand at 34.2 per cent. Here the division of seats is more even, with Wildrose projected to win 18 and the Tories 13.

But Wildrose is also making inroads in Edmonton, the provincial capital that is traditionally where most of the Liberal and NDP opposition has been elected. Though the Progressive Conservatives still lead with a projected 34.5 per cent of the vote and 17 seats, Wildrose is nipping at their heels with 26.9 per cent support. If Wildrose can hold these votes until Apr. 23, they could win five seats in the capital.

The Liberals and New Democrats, however, would combine for a larger representation in Edmonton. Provincewide, the Liberals under Raj Sherman are projected to take 14.1 per cent of the vote, a gain of less than a point since February but still down more than 12 points since the last provincial election. They are on track to win three seats, all of them in Edmonton where the Liberals are third with 18.5 per cent support.

The New Democrats are projected to have the support of 11.1 per cent of Albertans, enough to double their representation in the legislature and give them four seats. All of them would also be elected in Edmonton, where the NDP stands at 16.5 per cent support.

But the polls are not in complete agreement. Three surveys, all taken after the writ dropped last Monday, have placed Wildrose ahead of the Tories by a significant margin. However, three polls conducted just before the election campaign began put the PCs narrowly up on Wildrose. The three post-writ polls all used the interactive voice response method, while the three pre-writ polls were conducted either by telephone with live callers or online. A wider methodological post-writ spread would help confirm Wildrose’s lead.

This degree of uncertainty suggests that, if an election were held today, a wide range of outcomes are conceivable. Indeed, there is enough volatility in the polls that the Tories could win anywhere between 12 and 64 seats and Wildrose between 20 and 70. The Liberals could be shut out entirely or win 10 seats, while the NDP could win as many as eight. Nevertheless, the projected outcome, or something very close to it, is most likely.

Has Wildrose peaked too soon? Changes in government in Alberta are so rare (the current PC government is, in effect, only Alberta’s fourth since 1905) that there is little example upon which to draw. If Albertans have determined that the life of the Progressive Conservative government has come to a close, Wildrose could coast to victory between now and Apr. 23. On the other hand, if progressive voters become concerned that the right-wing Wildrose will form the next government, they could flock to the Progressive Conservatives and their more centrist leader.

Outside of the two main cities, the fight is clearly between the Tories and Wildrose. Support for the NDP and Liberals is in the single digits here. In Calgary, however, support for the Liberals stands at over 14 per cent, enough to play the spoiler in some of the closest contests. And the four parties are transforming Edmonton into a chaotic four-way race further complicated by the presence of the centrist Alberta Party. If the Progressive Conservatives can benefit from vote-splitting in the city, they may be able to survive on election night.

The campaign is only a week old, and already the race is the province’s most interesting – and perhaps its most important – in almost two decades. Danielle Smith and her Wildrose Party have started on the right foot, but maintaining this momentum for the next three weeks against furious opposition from Alison Redford’s Tories will be a challenge.

ThreeHundredEight.com’s projection model aggregates all publicly released polls, weighing them by sample size, date, and the polling firm’s accuracy record and adjusting them according to past discrepancies. The seat projection model makes individual projections for all 87 ridings in the province, based on the provincial and regional shifts in support since the 2008 election and including the application of factors unique to each riding, such as the effects of incumbency. Projections are subject to the margins of error of the opinion polls included in the model, as well as the unpredictable nature of politics at the riding level.


What i find interesting about this data and the shifts in BC (see the BC Election thread) is that they seem to confirm the rise of conservatism in Canada - as Stephen Harper has hoped.
 
More on the Alberta race, reproduced under the fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/wildrose-poised-for-majority-in-alberta-poll/article2391311/singlepage/#articlecontent
Wildrose poised for majority in Alberta: poll

JOSH WINGROVE AND DAWN WALTON

Lethbridge, Alta. AND Calgary— Globe and Mail Update
Published Tuesday, Apr. 03, 2012

A new poll has put Alberta's Wildrose Party firmly on track for a majority government, holding a 13-point lead over the incumbent Progressive Conservatives who just months ago were a shoo-in for victory.

The poll, conducted by ThinkHQ Public Affairs Inc. for CTV News, is the latest in a string showing clear patterns: the PCs are sinking, Wildrose is surging and people prefer the Wildrose leader Danielle Smith to PC leader Alison Redford.

“It just continues the trend and it sort of manifests the momentum they’ve had last week,” ThinkHQ pollster Marc Henry said, adding time is running out for Ms. Redford and the PCs. “They’ve got an awfully big hole dug for themselves.”

It leaves Alberta poised to elect a right-wing government in lock-step with the Reform wing of Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, one that will embrace its energy industry, slow spending growth and turn to tax credits and rebates to lower taxes in what is already Canada’s lowest-tax province.

The poll was conducted Monday and Tuesday through an online panel of 1,050 respondents and shows the right-wing Wildrose at 43 per cent of decided voters, the PCs at 30, the New Democrats at 12 and the Liberals at 11 per cent province-wide. Of those sampled, 19 per cent were undecided.

Critically, Wildrose leads in every region, including centrist Edmonton, but the libertarian party wasn't picking its cabinet yet, saying there's plenty of campaign left.

“There is strong support for Wildrose across Alberta; obviously there is an appetite for change. That said, the only poll that really counts is the one on April 23rd [election day],” Wildrose campaign spokeswoman Heather Hume said in an e-mail.

Ms. Redford was similarly dismissive, and has repeatedly refused to discuss poll results, which have gone from bad to worse for her party since showing them in a tie on the first day of the campaign. (Staff say she doesn’t actually look at most polls, but she’s asked regularly about their results.)

“I've never commented on polls except to say that election day will be the day when albertans decide,” she said during a campaign stop in Taber, Alta. “I think what we're going to see, and have seen, is there are ups and downs. It's certainly a volatile time. I think Albertans are quite engaged. I'm pleased to see Albertans are thinking about the long-term policy issues.”

Several issues have driven the poll numbers, but all can basically be traced back to this: Ms. Redford has been campaigning for cosmopolitan Alberta, speaking about big-government issues and complex promises for healthcare, international trade and economic diversification, while Ms. Smith has been campaigning to traditional Alberta, relying on tangible, simple messaging and selling, essentially, a small-government, libertarian conservative option.

While the PCs have been on the defensive during the campaign’s gaffe-filled first week, the Wildrose campaign (run by former Harper advisor Tom Flanagan) has avoided trouble and struck a populist tone - publicly admonishing columnists who disagree with their platform and casting their campaign as an us-against-the-elites underdog for Alberta conservatives.

The PC problems date back to before the campaign, though.

The PCs have coped with a series of controversies, in particular an all-party, PC-led committee that hasn't met since 2008 but paid members $1,000 a month. That issue exploded last month. Since the last election, under the leadership of former premier Ed Stelmach, they quietly voted huge raises for cabinet and ran massive deficits. They were said to have “intimidated” doctors and interfered in the health system.

Ms. Redford, 47, won her party's leadership on Oct. 1 of last year, casting it in a centrist vision for the province in line with that of former Premier Peter Lougheed, who kicked off the PC dynasty in 1971. She has since refused to call a full health inquiry, which she had pledged to do, or set a fixed election date, choosing a three-month fixed election “season” instead. She also clashed with her caucus, and many MLAs decided not to run again with her as leader, leaving the party in a rebirth as it seeks a new mandate. Some MLAs dropped out days or weeks before the campaign began.

Wildrose's messages have been straight-forward - it would cap spending increases, defer major infrastructure projects, tuck money away into the provincial Heritage Trust Fund and explore more private delivery of public healthcare.

More broadly, it has cast itself as a true conservative alternative to Ms. Redford, who comes from the progressive flank of the PC party. Ms. Redford, in turn, has blasted Wildrose’s “simple” views, saying the province can’t be “fortress Alberta.”

Wedge issues have also played a role in recent weeks.

Ms. Redford (a human rights lawyer) refused to take a passing reference to the Human Rights Act out of her comprehensive education bill, which is backed by teachers and school boards. Wildrose would abolish the Alberta Human Rights Commission altogether and has attracted support from people (including religious groups and home schoolers) who don't want human rights act referenced in the education bill. (Other opposition parties, the NDP and Liberals, say referencing the act doesn't actually change the bill.)

Ms. Redford introduced stronger penalties for impaired driving beginning at 0.05 blood-alcohol level, including a three-day driving suspension (previously, police could briefly suspend your license if caught between 0.05 and 0.08, at which point criminal charges kick in). Other provinces have made similar moves - in Saskatchewan, penalties begin at 0.04 - but Wildrose called it a nanny state move that infringed on freedoms.

The party handed out coasters saying the province shouldn't penalize anything that isn't in the criminal code. That has won them support in rural areas, with Ms. Smith, 41, claiming hyperbolically last week and in her stump speech that: “You have a sip of wine these days, with this government, and they'll tow your car away.”

Another issue is land rights - the PCs were forced to overhaul a controversial land use bill. Some university law professors said it actually went too far in entrenching land rights; the PCs said it was just right; and Wildrose said it didn't go far enough, telling its supporters it was a land grab.

Those issues, however minor they may seem, are putting entire ridings out of reach. Ms. Redford on Tuesday made a stop in the sprawling rural riding of Little Bow. At one rally, the local campaign manager hoped for 40 PC supporters and got roughly half that - PC voters are afraid to let their neighbours know, amid the uproar over drunk driving laws and the Human Rights Commission, that they’re voting PC, she said.

That said, Ms. Redford hasn’t changed her approach.

“We’re going to stick to that plan,” she said Tuesday outside a pharmacy in Taber. “We're really very proud of this campaign. We're proud of our record as progressive conservatives. I’m certainly proud of what we've accomplished in the past six months,” she said.

If these polls hold up, six months will be all Ms. Redford had. She is, staff say, looking forward to next week’s televised debate, hoping she can defeat Ms. Smith - no debating slouch herself - to catch up.

Mr. Henry, the pollster, cautioned that the race isn’t yet over. “Keep in mind you still have half a campaign to go,” he said. His poll is considered accurate within three per cent.

In Calgary, Wildrose has 47 per cent, the PCs 29, Liberals 11, NDP 7 and the Alberta party 5, the poll showed. In Edmonton, Wildrose is at 31, PCs 30, Liberals 18, NDP 17 and Alberta Party 3. However, the margin of error is much higher in the cities, just over five per cent, because the sample sizes are just a few hundred.


Interesting times ... but Redford has nearly three weeks to turn the tide and Harold Wilson taught us that a week is a long time in politics.
 
Having just walked across much of Calgary-Varsity on my way home from Denny's, I thought I would give a campaign sign report. This is currently a liberal riding, but the incumbent is retiring. So far there are only two Liberal signs that I have seen, both on public land. The PCs have two (smaller) signs adjacent. As for the NDP, nada. The Wild Rose, on the other hand, also has two on public land - right next to each other. However, they currently hold a 4 - nothing lead over all other parties combined in terms of lawn signs on private property. The density of signage in the constituency is more than likely the result of the huge renter population (which includes myself and the seeming majority of my neighbours) - and indeed there are more "for rent" signs up than campaign signs. However, in addition to this, from canvassing my friends (who range from about 18-34), I found that the Liberals (ever a minority) are sticking with the Liberals, but the Tories are almost all siding with the Wild Rose. The one remaining PC supporter is on the fence...
 
Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, is an interesting article about how two 'outsiders' might reshape Canada:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/gary_mason/stephen-harpers-wildrose-soulmate/article2392299/
Stephen Harper’s Wildrose soulmate

GARY MASON

CALGARY— From Thursday's Globe and Mail (includes correction)
Published Thursday, Apr. 05, 2012

While he’d never admit it publicly, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is probably happy about what’s transpiring in his home province.

It seems Albertans are poised to dump the Progressive Conservative Party after 41 long years in power. If so, the Tories will have been punished for being too progressive and too little conservative. They’ll be replaced by a party that’s surely dearer to the Prime Minister’s ideological heart – Wildrose.

The Wildrose Party has waged a remarkable campaign under the charismatic leadership of 41-year-old Danielle Smith. She is someone Canada is going to hear much more from in the coming years. And if she sounds a lot like the man running the country, it’s no accident.

Like Mr. Harper, Ms. Smith is a graduate of the so-called Calgary School, the term ascribed to a group of neo-conservative economists and political scientists at the University of Calgary who have preached the wisdom of free markets and small government for years and who have helped nourish and guide conservatism in Western Canada for decades.

Ms. Smith has an economics degree from the school and studied under arch-conservative economist Frank Atkins, who was Mr. Harper’s thesis adviser. While there, she also got to know another of the school’s more prominent lecturers, political scientist Tom Flanagan, who would play a major role in Mr. Harper’s political ascension.

Mr. Flanagan is now running the Wildrose campaign.

It was Mr. Flanagan who helped a much younger Ms. Smith get a job at the Fraser Institute, the right-wing political think tank. Not long after that, she established the Canadian Property Rights Research Institute, an advocacy group for ranchers, farmers and rural landowners. It was another career move that could be traced back to the lecture halls at the University of Calgary, where professors preaching the rights of the individual over the state would have a deep influence on her.

The impact those seminars had on Ms. Smith is evident today, as she campaigns to become premier.

When she recently announced that a Wildrose government would use the province’s oil riches to cut $300 cheques for every Albertan, she said it was because her party believed the people “can spend their own money better than the government.” If that sounds like it was spoken by a true libertarian, it’s because it was. Or at least a version of one.

Ms. Smith has no problem with the label, even though the word “libertarian” outside of Alberta can conjure up images of eccentric ideologues who believe that the state is coercive and that we should all grab guns and resist authority. In an interview, the Wildrose Leader told me that a libertarian, in her mind, is someone who believes in the fundamental tenets of freedom – freedom of speech, religion, assembly and association. And, she’s quick to add, economic freedom.

“And property rights are really the foundation of economic freedom,” she says. “And without economic freedom, all our other freedoms are at risk. If you look up ‘libertarian’ on Wikipedia, there are about 12 different strands. Some have called me a moderate libertarian.”

And she seems comfortable with that. She is laissez-faire on matters of free enterprise and live and let live on social issues. She says her party is a coalition of fiscal and social conservatives, libertarians, democratic reformers, people worried about property rights and others concerned about the environment and conservation. Everything but progressives.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, the Wildrose campaign is full of backroom types who have links to both the old Reform Party, to which Mr. Harper once belonged, and the Conservative Party, which he now leads. Mr. Harper would endorse virtually the entire Wildrose election platform and embrace its “Alberta first” outlook.

It isn’t difficult to envisage a Premier Smith quickly becoming the Prime Minister’s philosophical soulmate and sounding board on a range of issues.

Like Mr. Harper, Ms. Smith is a political outsider who appears destined to defy long odds and assume an influential role in the political dynamic of this country. And if she does, Mr. Harper will welcome her with open arms.

Frank Atkins, an economist at the University of Calgary, taught Danielle Smith, the Wildrose Party Leader. An incorrect first name appeared in the original newspaper version and an earlier online version of the story.


 
A look at the Alberta mood in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/gary_mason/imagining-a-wildrose-led-alberta-getting-easier-all-the-time/article2394655/
Imagining a Wildrose-led Alberta getting easier all the time

GARY MASON

RED DEER, ALTA.— From Saturday's Globe and Mail
Last updated Saturday, Apr. 07, 2012

To understand why Danielle Smith and her Wildrose Party have surged to an apparently commanding lead in the Alberta election, let’s go back to an event she held early on in the campaign.

The scene is an indoor soccer field, in a beautiful recreational complex in the south part of this city, which sits amid rolling hills in the south-centre of the province. It’s a photo-op to help promote an earlier tax credit announcement for families. There are soccer moms, and a few dads, and little kids kicking balls.

And out of nowhere comes 57-year-old Siobhan MacGowan, dressed in jeans and a denim shirt and with full purpose in her eyes. She comes up behind Ms. Smith and grabs her hand.

“You have to win,” she begins telling the Wildrose Leader. “We have to get rid of those bandits. Us conservatives have been bamboozled by the PCs for too long now.”

Ms. Smith smiles and puts a gentle arm around her admirer. Ms. MacGowan keeps talking.

She tells the Wildrose Leader about how Progressive Conservative Leader Alison Redford is the “first NDP leader the province has ever had,” and how the best government Alberta ever had was led by Social Credit premier Ernest Manning, and how the province needs to be directed by a true, blue, honest-to-goodness conservative party, not the fake one it’s had.

And all the while she peers deep into Ms. Smith’s eyes, seemingly looking for assurance. She now has the Wildrose Leader’s hand in both of hers and is saying how she doesn’t know anybody who doesn’t feel exactly the same way she does.

“You have to save this province, Danielle,” says Ms. MacGowan. “You have to.”

Finally, and reluctantly, she releases the Wildrose Leader from her grasp.

As the election campaign nears its midway point, and a crucial juncture, Ms. Smith’s encounter with Siobhan MacGowan remains, for me, the best explanation of what is happening in Alberta. And by that I mean the increasing likelihood that the 41-year reign of the Progressive Conservative Party is coming to an end.

Of course, there are many reasons for the Tories’ decline; there have been scandals and all manner of gaffes and miscues in the last couple of years that have fed the Wildrose surge. And Wildrose’s near-flawless campaign is also a factor. But at its heart, this election is about betrayal, the betrayal true conservatives in the province have felt for years now at the hands of the provincial Tories.

For those true-blue conservatives, Ms. Smith has arrived as a saviour, one who is going to spare them any more time trapped in the purgatory of progressivism to which they feel Alberta has been subjected for too long.

Dave Rutherford, the popular conservative radio talk show host based in Calgary who often shapes political debate in the province, could sense this coming.

“You’ve heard the expression, ‘I didn’t leave the party, the party left me,’ ” says Mr. Rutherford, wolfing down a sandwich before heading off to a regular television appearance on Sun TV. “That’s what a lot of people were saying.”

And the hard-core conservative base in the Progressive Conservative Party now has an option it didn’t have before – one led by a telegenic, media-savvy leader who has even charmed some liberal-minded types into taking a look at what her party is offering. But now comes the hard part for Wildrose – withstanding the barrage of attacks it will face from an increasingly desperate Tory Party that can see the foundation of its dynasty crumbling.

It began earlier this week, when the Tories alerted the public to the “conscience rights” provision in Wildrose’s policy platform. This is the principle that says marriage commissioners and health professionals could refuse services based on their personal beliefs. And those beliefs could be opposition to gay marriage, for instance, or abortion.

Ms. Smith did her best to avoid the storm by saying judges would decide these thorny legal matters. She never did say where she personally stood on the issue, and I thought she got off the hook a bit on this one. So where does Ms. Redford and her party now go with their strategy to try to scare voters away from Wildrose?

Progressive bloggers in the province have begun to expose Wildrose candidates who have taken controversial stands in the past. One of those is Ron Leech, an evangelical pastor who wrote in the Calgary Herald in 2004 that “to affirm homosexuality is to distort the image of God, to insult the nature and being of God.”

Keith Brownsey, a political scientist at Mount Royal University in Calgary and a long-time observer of Alberta politics, believes it’s legitimate to ask what Alberta might look like under a Wildrose government.

“Look,” he says over the phone, “Wildrose aren’t conservatives by any proper definition; they’re reactionary modernists. They want to put the state back to something it looked like in 1920 but use modern technologies to do that.

“This is a party that talks about choice, which is a code for school vouchers in education, which in and of itself is code for privatization. There’s no doubt that they have this in their agenda.”

Mr. Rutherford, meantime, dismisses the idea that Wildrose is a party made up of extremists and kooks with closets full of potentially lethal dirty laundry. He says they’re the same people who once belonged to the Progressive Conservatives.

“Why all of a sudden are they scary when they were not scary when they were with the PCs?” he asks.

Ms. Smith’s next big test will be the leaders debate on April 12. If Ms. Redford is going to try to spook people from voting Wildrose, this may be the forum in which she chooses to do it. Then again, with many voters it may not matter.

Just ask Siobhan MacGowan.


The conscience rights issue is tricky. One should not apply for a job as a public servant unless one is 100% willing to provide all lawful services to all members of the public. But what happens if you are a public servant and they change the law in a way that does violate your conscience? Must you quit? Good question ... how do we deal with clashes of rights? Ms. Smith is right: we let the courts decide and we live with the outcomes, even, especially, when we disagree, and we don't bitch senselessly about "judicial activism" which is part and parcel of our Constitution and, therefore, the right and proper thing.
 
E.R. Campbell said:
The conscience rights issue is tricky. One should not apply for a job as a public servant unless one is 100% willing to provide all lawful services to all members of the public. ...

Can't this be handled by simply ensuring that the Government, the employer, does not discriminate in its hiring practices and consequently has a body of employees with varying opinions and ideologies?  As long as the Government collectively supplies the service is it necessary for each employee individually to be responsible for providing the service?

In the private sector, if you want to provide service year round you hire Jews to cover for Christians on Sunday, Muslims to cover for Jews on Saturday and Hindus to cover your Christmas holidays.  (And no jibes about the details on this one - I refer to the concept of accomodating conscience).
 
I suspect most ethical codes place principles of common sense and conscience above the letter of the law.  This one, for example:

1. Respect the dignity of all persons;
2. Serve Canada before self; and
3. Obey and support lawful authority.
 
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