Metro column: Wrap your head around this equation
If a day is an eternity in politics then the past week at the Alberta legislature requires a quantum physics degree to wrap your head around.
First Dave Taylor gives the Alberta Party their first MLA, then the premier announces he’ll step down, then the finance minister quits 24 hours later, and finally this week the leader of the opposition does the same.
I may not have that quantum physics degree — and I doubt most of you do either — but that shouldn’t stop us from trying to make sense of all of this and figure out what might happen this summer.
First, we now find ourselves with three of the five parties with sitting MLAs missing a leader. This is unprecedented uncertainty that opens up a lot of possibilities for a lot of people.
Alberta Liberal MLA Laurie Blakeman has indicated she is being wooed to run for the leadership of both the Liberals and the Alberta Party. Rural MLA Doug Griffiths is receiving a push to run for the Progressive Conservatives as well as the Alberta Party too.
I’m confident they are not the only ones being pulled in two directions at the same time. With this kind of potential major player shakeup, my guess is the craziest things possible at the legislature haven’t even happened yet.
So what is the craziest thing that could happen?
Ted Morton to this point is the only person to declare he is running for the leadership of the PCs. In 2006 when he ran he had the support of hundreds of people who are now members of the Wildrose Alliance — a group who know opportunity when it knocks.
It is not outside the realm of possibility that Wildrose members could join the PC party again to “hedge their bets” by making sure Morton becomes leader. This is something that makes a lot of sense for them to do.
This would be the best possible news to Liberal, NDP and Alberta Party supporters. With Morton as leader, half the PC party membership would be without an ideological home — after all, they didn’t vote for him the first time and they didn’t join the Wildrose when were asked to.
Without a home supporters would no doubt look to these parties (especially the more centrist Alberta Party) as their new banner.
Just like the Wildrose members joining the PC party, we could see other opposition party members join as well to also vote for Morton in the leadership race and thus destroy the 40-year-old party from within.
Without a strong Progressive Conservative party running in the next election you would be guaranteed to see some new blood and major change happening. Which as ever party knows, is exactly what the majority of voters are crying out for.
If this scenario ends up coming true, you read it here first. If it doesn’t, well I did say it was “crazy.” But as the past week has shown, Alberta politics does crazy very well.
Calgary original: http://www.metronews.ca/calgary/local/article/762974–wrap-your-head-around-this-equation
Edmonton original: http://www.metronews.ca/edmonton/local/article/762974–wrap-your-head-around-this-equation
Metro column: Griffiths right man at right time?
It looks like Stelmach made the decision for us.
There’s no need for an election to make it happen. There will be a new premier by next year. And in the wake of Premier Stelmach’s resignation the long list of potential replacements is starting to pile up.
Ted Morton has to be the front-runner at this point — if not for the caucus budget brouhaha we’ve been reading about, then at least for the number of Wildrose Alliance members who could very well purchase a PC Party membership to install him as the next premier. (Consider this a hedging-your-bets play by more conservative-minded politicos.)
But behind the obvious choice of Morton, the pack starts getting very confusing. The other contenders may include Dave Hancock and Doug Horner, as well as “outsiders” Jim Dinning and Jim Prentice.
But it is 2011 now. The upcoming election campaign will be unlike any the Progressive Conservatives have faced in their 40-year run. It will take a different kind of leader to pull off another win over the upstart Wildrose Alliance and Alberta Party.
It’s going to be someone like Lindsay Blackett, Jonathan Denis, Thomas Lukaszuk, Alison Redford and their like who will have to lead the party forward. But sadly, the majority in this group have ended up in their seat by playing the “old” game well and don’t really represent a “new,” less partisan way forward.
The only man I can see in a position to be the right person at the right time is a little-known MLA from Hardisty: Doug Griffiths.
To begin with, he is Alberta. He fits in everywhere and everyone has an immense amount of respect for the man — north, south; rural, urban; conservative, liberal; the energy sector, farmers. He gets Alberta as a whole, and is the only person, regardless of party, who bridges all these traditional opposites.
Griffiths has tough decisions to make, too. The PCs have barely embraced him, let alone recognized him as the golden boy who could lead them into the next century by transcending the type of election every other party is going to run. Sources tell me that at this point, he’s just as likely to not run in 2012 and be closer to his young family, who will no doubt show him more appreciation.
The Alberta Party, which is entering into a leadership race of its own, sees Griffiths’s value.
Before Stelmach’s announcement, Griffiths was no doubt being pursued to run in the Alberta Party contest for the reasons I list and more.
I don’t want to put too fine a point on it, but the future of Alberta’s government could hinge on Griffiths’s decision. If he were to run, I think he would have a very good chance as a dark-horse candidate to put aside all the PC baggage others will inadvertently carry and win.
Because during leadership conventions the best candidate to lead the party into an election isn’t always the one who comes out on top (Stelmach?), I should stop short of saying Griffiths will be our next premier. But he would offer the Progressive Conservatives, and Albertans in general, a great choice.
Calgary Original: “Griffiths right man at right time?” http://www.metronews.ca/calgary/local/article/756489–dark-horse-griffiths-the-man-to-lead-tories
Edmonton Original: “Dark-horse Griffiths the man to lead Tories” http://www.metronews.ca/edmonton/local/article/756489–dark-horse-griffiths-the-man-to-lead-tories
CBC Radio column: Stelmach’s resignation, courts’ banning Twitter, and Egypt
Filed under: Alberta, CBC Radio Column, Politics, Technology
In this alberta@noon column on CBC Radio One with host Donna McElligott I talk about the online reaction to the resignation of Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach and what it might mean to opposition parties. I also discuss the suggestion by the lawyers of Russell Williams that the tweets of journalists were harming the public and that Twitter perhaps should be banned from the courtroom, as well as the Calgary judge’s ruling banning Twitter from the trial of Dustin Paxton for fear that it may it may limit his right to a fair trial and what this may mean for the question “what is a journalist?”. (Yes, I even squeeze in a reference to Walter Lippman.) We also touch on the role social media is playing in the Tunisian and Egyptian protests and what potential reactions are available to their governments, and what the results of that may be.
Stelmach’s resignation: Why he did it
While the timing of today’s announcement by Premier Ed Stelmach may be a surprise, his resignation itself should not be. For months there have been grumblings about how the Progressive Conservative party will handle the next election.
The Wildrose Party has positioned itself as an heir apparent making room for all Alberta conservatives. Meanwhile disenfranchised progressives – mainly, but not exclusively PC members – have been toying with what the Alberta Party could be for them. In short, the party that’s been in power for 40 years was being torn in two with only the most ardent supporters who have fought tooth and nail to get where they were inside the party remaining loyal.
Observers and every PC insider knew something had to give. Polls, predictions and even gut feelings all were showing that with Stelmach leading the party into an election they were going to take a beating on all fronts. My prediction was a minority PC government being the outcome. To many, this was a best case scenario.
PC members aren’t stupid however. They could see the future coming too. With so much outsider anger (and even insider for that matter) directed at Stelmach’s seeming inability to gain enough traction with Albertans his fate was sealed. It was just a question whether he stepped aside before or after the next election. Obviously he’d prefer to wait to do it on his own terms, but as things got more and more dim for his party’s future, more and more of his own caucus mates began pondering how to speed things up to save the entire party. And their own seats.
Given all this there was a small movement afoot within caucus to push Stelmach out. However things hadn’t gotten dire enough for it to be a full blown organized coup yet. But if things did get worse, it would be. And for the internal politics of the party to blow up so close to an election would have all but handed the premier’s seat to Danielle Smith. Stelmach, a 25 year veteran, must have seen this too. And so he decided to do what was best for him and his entire party. Today he swallowed his pride and jumped on the grenade.
The table is clear now. The future is whatever the PCs make of it. The Stelmach baggage is gone and there is still enough time for a new leader to set a new tone to rival the other parties and win voter support. The party has had its biggest burden lifted. They still have lots of baggage, but it’s now at least more similar in size to that of it’s competitors.
Next in part 2: what the resignation means for opposition parties.
Metro column: If you don’t know how to do it, hire someone who does
This week, the City of Calgary made an announcement that I think deserves more recognition than it got.
It was announced the city has selected a public-engagement firm to talk with us — the citizens — about what we want to see in the upcoming 2012-2014 budget.
It may seem like a no-brainer that the city would actually take time to ask us what services we would like and how much we would be willing to pay for them, but strangely enough it’s not something that’s done often, if ever.
I think the administration and council deserve a huge round of applause for thinking far enough ahead to ensure that this time, they involve the public right from the beginning.
However, my round of applause may look like a standing ovation to some and an ironic slow clap to others.
In hiring a firm — and according to the request for proposals, paying them $250,000 — to “engage the public,” the city is effectively admitting that it doesn’t don’t know how to do this itself.
Which, of course, begs the question: If 14,000 municipal employees don’t have the skills to engage the public, then what they heck are they doing? If there was one thing they were good at, shouldn’t this be that one thing?
To even the untrained eye, however, this has become reality. “Public engagement” has been twisted into “informing the public about a decision that’s already been made,” which obviously is exactly the opposite of what public-engagement processes are meant to be.
This leads us to another question: Whose job is public engagement anyway? I would argue asking us what we want and then making sure it happens is entirely the point of elected officials. After all, if they didn’t do this, then what purpose do they serve?
But if public engagement is the job of our elected officials, I have to ask: When was the last time your councillor asked your opinion on something coming up at city hall?
If it’s the job of the alderman to know what the public wants, we’re in bad shape. Aside from Ald. Gian-Carlo Carra, who is very familiar with the planning charette process, I can’t think of any other alderman with previous experience in this field.
That could be forgiven by each of them hiring a constituency assistant with these skills. But if any of those assistants have these skills, you wouldn’t know it. Aside from Bob Hawkesworth in 2008 and 2009, no alderman has held a big public priority-setting event.
Ald. Shane Keating gives us some hope, however. Next week, he’s holding an event to gather information about the future of motorsports in Calgary. Granted, the event is not open to the public, but so long as it’s not a town hall-style meeting — a confrontational event format that can’t disappear from use quickly enough — this is at least a baby step forward.
There are infinitely better ways to find out what the public wants. Hopefully the professionals will show them how it’s done, and the city will be able to follow their lead.
Original: http://www.metronews.ca/calgary/local/article/749834
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