Tag Archives: Danielle Smith

Resignation Bingo!

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I was planning to put this game together sometime near the beginning of the legislative session. Alas, the Wildrose Party jumped the gun on me with their demanding the firing/resignation of Fred Horne in mid-summer so I decided I had better get on this as who knows how many stamps may be gained before the legislature even manages to sit for a full session.

There are few opposition tactics that are as shallow, abused, over-used and lazy as that of demanding the resignation of a government minister or member over an issue. Perhaps Horne’s firing is warranted but I tell you what; now that Smith has demanded he be fired there is practically no way that Horne will be shuffled or fired anytime soon. All the same, this is the first demand for a resignation/firing by the Wildrose since the election so let’s give them the benefit of the doubt in that this is just something of a one-off or that Horne really needs to go that badly.

It can be argued that one of Canada’s most fiscally conservative governments in recent memory was under Jean Chretien with a Reform Party opposition. A strong and responsible opposition can have a great influence upon a sitting government. The only way an opposition party can wield power though is to truly threaten the sitting government’s position in power. That position will not be attained if the opposition simply consists of demanding the resignation of ministers every time something happens under their watch.

Once an opposition party demands the resignation/firing of a government member, unless that member has done something huge, possibly criminal and totally unforgivable, that member will become even more deeply entrenched in government. Pride and political points come into play once a resignation is demanded. If a member is performing terribly and the opposition keeps hammering on and exposing those actions, that member may indeed eventually step down or be shuffled soon. Once a resignation/firing is demanded however, the chance of getting rid of that member goes from being simply unlikely to that of an icecube’s hope in hell.

Public cynicism with politics  in general is growing. The indignant howlings by parties on all sides in legislatures both federally and provincially are adding to that growing disconnection between citizens and elected officials. Few actions can aid in that better than a frivolous call for a resignation/firing of a member. I am not suggesting that the legislature try to emulate the rainbow and lollipop approach to debate that the Alberta Party proposed (leading to their utter electoral slaughter). A heated and emotional debate in the legislature can be engaging and productive. That debate needs to be carefully crafted though and opposition will have to work carefully to guide that.

In coming to this legislative session the Wildrose Party can choose between two potential roles; it can accept that it has replaced the Alberta Liberals in a position of permanent opposition, or it can act as a true government in waiting that is currently serving in opposition. The second option will not be achieved if frivolous calls for the resignation of government members remain common.

I am looking forward to what I hope is one of the best legislative sessions that we have seen in a decade.

The card I modelled has the current cabinet along with a few backbench wildcards. I will continue to update and mark it as calls for firings/resignations from opposition members add up. The color of the stamp will represent which opposition party demanded the firing/resignation.

Lets hope that the card does not fill up with stamps quickly. I don’t really want this bingo card to be a blackout winner.

How about a date?

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In my last posting I covered how the Wildrose Party needs to earn the trust of Albertans and how the party could make great strides in that regard if they acted more openly and trustworthy with their own affairs.

That posting was inspired by the growing controversy and discussion happening around an interview that Danielle Smith had a little while ago where it appeared that Smith may be taking some liberties in statements on policy positions and policies without prior member input.

Danielle Smith’s musings in that interview led to concerns being expressed from some socially conservative members within the party as well as those who (like myself) are very committed to maintaining a member driven and controlled means of policy formulation. Danielle is indeed most entitled to her views but when speaking for the party she  is indeed obligated to speak for the party, not herself.

Now what most people have agreed upon is that there certainly will be some rousing and important discussion at the Wildrose Party’s next AGM. It has been a pivotal election year and many things have been learned. Now it is time for the Wildrose Party to gather it’s membership and to discuss as a whole how we plan to move forward as a party that is both serving in official opposition and aspiring to form government down the road.

I like to think I am generally pretty tapped into many inside sources with the party and have heard multiple rumors about where the date and the venue of the party’s next AGM ranging from October 2012-April 2013 and at locations from Red Deer to Edmonton to even Canmore for crying out loud.

The Wildrose Party website is devoid of information and nobody is officially speaking up. This should be a simple thing should it not? You schedule a meeting and you hold the damn thing. The word “annual” in the name should ease the stress of wondering how often one should hold these sorts of things.

The date and location of an Annual General Meeting is hardly any sort of proprietary secret and there is no real good reason (on the surface) that such information should be withheld from members. It has been about 14 months since the last AGM as of this posting by the way.

This made me dig yet a little more deeply. According to the constitution of the Wildrose Party, despite being named an AGM, an annual general meeting needs only to be held every two years.  Unfortunately this leads to quite a conundrum as technically the Wildrose Party is a society bound by the rules of the Alberta Societies Act which states that an Annual General Meeting is (wait for it…….) an annual obligation under section 25.  The constitution of the party is trumped by the societies act here.

Now some hair splitting may be done here and the meeting potentially can wait until the 18 month period. That does mean according to the Party Constitution that notice must be given to members 120 days before the date of the AGM if policies and constitutional changes are to be contemplated.  Now I know that I as a member have not gotten this notice nor have I heard of any other members getting it. The clock is ticking rather quickly on this one.

Another oddball clause with the Party AGMs covers the nominations for the executive. I will quote the whole thing below:

7.2 Not less than 90 days prior to any annual general meeting of the Party, the Executive Committee shall create the Nominating Committee consisting of three members. It shall be the duty of this committee to nominate candidates for the officer positions to be filled at the Annual General Meeting. Candidates for officer positions and all officers must be members in good standing of the Party. The nominating committee shall report to the Executive Committee prior to the notice of the Annual General Meeting being sent to all members and such report shall be included in the notice of the Annual General Meeting. Nominations may be made by any member up to 65 days prior to the date of the annual general meeting and will be included in the notice of the Annual General Meeting.

That statement is quite a mouthful. Now what is really concerning here is that one can’t be nominated past 65 days before the meeting yet the notice of the Annual General Meeting can be as little as 60 days if there is not to be policy discussion. This sort of makes it difficult for people to know if, how or when people may consider nominations for the board. This complexity is no mistake.

It may be noted that no directions for the pursuit of executive positions are available on the website and I assure you not everybody reads the entire constitution of political parties. It is conceivable that a 60 day notice could be issued and nobody of course aside from those personally chosen or somehow discovered by the committee (no information on how to reach this hypothetical committee) will be able to run for executive spots.

At last year’s AGM, only one person from the prior executive ran for re-election. The rest including myself gave up on the party board and did not run again. That should ring alarm bells to many in itself. Why would none of the executive members want to run for the position again when the party was growing so strongly at the time? That issue in itself is worthy of another likely long blog posting soon as it is part of another problem within the Wildrose Party at the management level. Now this led to a pile of acclaimed and weakly contested positions for top executive positions within the party as nobody even knew how to even find the committee in charge. On top of it all; the few contested executive positions that there were actually had asterisks indicating party endorsement for certain people next to their names!! The party committee actually took sides and made endorsements for the executive positions. This is reprehensible and completely contrary to grassroots principles. Still sadly, we let it slide. Nobody wanted to rock the boat on the way to a potential election.

Now with all of the above issues, what the Wildrose Party gained in the last AGM was an executive board that was handpicked and proved itself to be ineffective and neutered. No longer did the powers that be have to contend with an uppity board as the prior one was which gave up and did not run again. Executive meetings since the last election have been rare and essentially pointless as the party executive has allowed (or been built) to marginalize itself.

We have less than four years here people and if the Wildrose Party is going to get it’s crap together it needs to start now. People have been engaged by the populist appearance and apparent principles of the party. For the most part those principles and goals exist among the membership. The main means of empowerment for the membership is the election of the party executive. This is how the members may participate and retain control of the party and policy direction even if some staffers and the odd MLA feel that the membership is a hindrance.

The constitution empowers the members of the Wildrose Party and for good reason.

In order for the members to participate though, we need a mandate and a date for a general meeting at the least.

Should it be this hard to find out when an AGM is and what will be on the agenda? It has been over a year since the last one and months have passed since the election.

If the members of the Wildrose Party can’t control the direction of the party, then the party is indeed no better than the PCs. The Wildrose will simply be another facade of populism with an autocratic reality.

The Wildrose Party has stridently demanded fixed election dates in Alberta. Pretty sad that the party can’t set even it’s own AGM dates.

What the Wildrose Party needs to do is build trust.

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People can point to all sorts of individual things in the last provincial election and blame them for the Wildrose Party’s failure to convince Albertans to elect them to government. The conscience rights policy made many people uncomfortable and Edmonton candidate Alan Hunsperger’s candid thoughts from an old blog post were outright offensive to most people upon hearing them. Any party that has 87 candidates, tens of thousands of members and hundreds of policies will have some questionable people speaking up now and then and will have some policies that simply stink. If a party has gained the trust of the electorate in general that party can withstand hiccups caused by some individuals within it and from poor policies.

With enough digging, we can rest assured that every major party has some crackpots within it’s ranks and some policies on their books that simply do not do them any favors. The PCs had a Calgary candidate who’s comments on ethnic issues paled in comparison to Leech’s awkward musings. The NDP had a candidate who was one of the main organizers of the Olympic Plaza illegal squatting last fall. The Liberals had to rush to fill candidate vacancies and it is a safe bet that a few of those names they used on ballots were less than rational. The reason that these things did not damage the other parties as they did the Wildrose Party is that Albertans know the other parties and can feel comfortable in writing off the actions of a few individuals and ignoring some outlying policies.

People in Alberta were clearly ready for change in the last election and it showed in the first three weeks of the campaign. Albertan’s can and will embrace grassroots populism as we saw with Reform throughout the 90s. Still though, the Wildrose Party was a relative unknown to the majority of Albertans and this made the popular support from the electorate very fragile. When the oddball people and policies popped up, voters got uncomfortable and retreated back to the devil they knew in the final days of the election. Polls can’t measure floating trust and comfort levels thus they completely dropped the ball in the last election.

Unfortunately the temptation is strong to further centralize actions and decision making within a party when things like this happen. Some people feel that the nominations should be more tightly controlled by the central party and candidates gagged even further. The Wildrose Party shamelessly messed with many nominations prior to the election. That offensive meddling with constituency choice caused great strain between constituency associations and the central party. When there is mistrust between the members themselves and the central party, you can rest assured that this discomfort spreads to the electorate at campaign time.

The Wildrose needs to strengthen it’s constituency associations and empower them further rather than meddle further with their choices of candidates. Will the constituencies make some poor choices in candidates at times? Yes they sure will. We can rest assured though that the central party can pick some dogs too. If they constituencies truly choose their candidates though in an open process, it makes it clear that each candidate is simply one of 87. It is much more difficult to label the entire party based on the actions of individuals when it is clear that the individual only represents one portion. When the central party takes direct part in candidate selection, than the party indeed will wear the actions of those candidates as a whole. In building trust we need people working in communities on the ground, not further centralization.

Party policy is of course another huge issue. Rick Bell with the Calgary Sun  just reported on an interview that Danielle Smith recently did on a lesbian website called “I dig your girlfriend”.

Some quotes and attitudes that came from Danielle in that interview are somewhat disturbing. It is clear as day that the Wildrose needs to revisit and reform some of it’s policies and of course there is nothing wrong with a leader saying that. It is the tone of Smith speaking as if these policy changes are a done deal and she will essentially tell us as members what we will be choosing as a stance or policy in the future with statements like: “Now that the decision has been made I’ll leave it at that,” and then following with “I’ll indicate that to my party as well.” (in regards to the funding of elective procedures such as gender reassignment in the public health system).

Ms. Smith, I do hope that you understand that the party indicates their policy wishes to you and not the other way around. I understand that a leader has to make some tough stances on issues and can’t consult with the membership every time an issue surfaces. The tone and attitude here though suggests that some areas are simply closed to member discussion and her word is final. I do hope that I am mistaken in this.

Year after year we have seen our party AGMs focus more on video and light displays with less attention being paid to policy. At our last AGM the video screens were fantastic but only a scant few hours were dedicated to member policy discussion over the entire weekend. That AGM lost nearly $90,000 as the $250 per ticket cost discouraged grassroots members from attending something that was more akin to a rock concert than a political party deliberating on important issues such as policy. Turnout was embarrassingly dismal for a party that was seen as a growing force. Perhaps has a couple more hours been dedicated to policy discussion, the membership may have taken more time to consider whether conscience rights were a viable policy option. As it was, policy discussions were rushed through with little meditation on the part of the collected membership.

Effort has been made to centralize control within the Wildrose Party in the last few years and this has led to a growing sense of discomfort and distrust within the party membership. I saw that mistrust starkly in the campaign that I worked with as the candidate did not even want to share his polling results with the party for fear that the list would be abused for central fundraising. It is tough to build a sense of unity and optimism among a campaign team in that atmosphere and even tougher for that team to spread that to the electorate in 28 days.

Leading and managing a grassroots party is damn tough. The headaches are endless as CAs go rogue, infighting happens and mixed messages get out. Despite those challenges, the way to earn that precious trust that the party so dearly needs will be by opening up rather than introverting. We need well attended public policy meetings that are open and take time in their deliberations. We need early nominations so candidates can get to know their constituents personally in years leading to an election. We essentially need to stick to our party bylaws which clearly lay all that out anyway and speak out every time somebody wants to try and bypass the will of the members.

Leading also means standing up for the party policies when they come under fire. When a leader begins to sound like they will say or do anything for a vote and is willing to throw their founding principles to the wind, trust is lost. The Wildrose lost a great deal of trust that way in the election when the party promoted the vapid and ill-conceived royalty rebate plan. It wasn’t that voters did not like the idea of a few bucks in their pockets, it was that the policy was a clear vote-buy that was in total contradiction of a party that claims fiscal responsibility. It felt disingenous

With 17 great MLAs in opposition and a little less than four years to work on it, the Wildrose Party is very well placed to earn that much needed trust among the electorate before the next election. If the party continues to ignore and sideline the membership however, the Wildrose could turn into a flash in the pan. Alison Redford is already presenting Alberta with a top-down centralized party. Why should that be replicated?

I’m sorry!

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Did my blog heading make you feel better? Sure, I haven’t stated what I am apologizing for but the words alone should make a person feel better upon receiving them right? The reason for the apology means nothing and the sincerity of the apology really doesn’t matter if one is to believe those chronically aggrieved people who’s thin-skin gets ruptured at the slightest hint of being exposed to something offensive. Those aforementioned people will invariably howl and yelp whenever they feel that their feelings (or the feelings of somebody else) have been hurt and will demand that the offender be forced to apologize.

Really people, what is a forced apology worth to you? The muttered “I’m sorry” dropped out by a person who clearly is not sorry in the least really means absolutely nothing so people should quit demanding these damned apologies at the drop of a hat. When those kangaroo courts that we call “human rights commissions” add forced apologies to the other punishments that they have laid upon a person who they have deemed offensive, does the forced apology reverse the damage? Is the person who was made to say the words of apology under duress any less likely to harbor offensive feelings?

Here is a recent situation that is stupid on many many levels. While in California a couple members of the Australian Olympic swimming team dared to visit a gun shop and have pictures taken of themselves while holding some perfectly legal firearms in a non-threatening way. Now not only will these guys be forced to leave the Olympic games in London early and not only are they banned from social media use, the swimmers were forced to apologize. Do you really think for a second that those two young men are sorry that they somehow offended some pant-pissing fanatical anti-gun zealots by doing something totally legal and non-offensive to the sane world? Do you think that these guys really feel badly for the hypersenstive assholes who have managed to ruin the once in a lifetime Olympic appearance that the swimmers have been training for for years? These poor athletes are not sorry in the least and their having being forced to apologize is simply a last humiliating punitive action taken by an overly empowered group of the politically correct.

Australia has an Olympic shooting team by the way. Lets hope that none of their team members is photographed while training or something.

Here in Alberta, we still have the blessed CBC harping on about how Danielle Smith still refuses to apologize for a blog posting made by a former Wildrose Party candidate years ago. I think Hunpserger’s blog posting was offensive myself but I don’t think it is Smith’s job to apologize for it. Danielle Smith’s apology would not make Hunsperger’s blog posting any less offensive and we damn well know it would not sooth any of the feelings that Hunsperger hurt so why is the CBC still on this post electoral witchhunt anyway? The only one who should apologize for the views held by Alan Hunsperger is Alan Hunsperger and here is the part that is so important yet apparently lost on so many: Alan Hunsperger should only apologize if he sincerly is sorry for having held that view! There is simply no point in forcing Hunsperger to state words of apology if he doesn’t mean it.

Last year Ezra Levant dared to utter the Spanish expletive: “Chinga tu madre” on his show on the Sun News Network. Apparently this offended some people like English speaking, union-employed blogger David Climenhaga who sent a complaint to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. No Spanish speaking folks have been found prostrate and sobbing in offense to Ezra’s statement but the CBSC feels that a forced apology by Levant and the network is called for. Thankfully Ezra is not taking this quietly (as usual) and in his beligerant response to the CBSC he is proving excellently just how worthless forced apologies are. Would Levant’s actual uttering of the words “I’m sorry” make the hurt go away for anybody (assuming somebody was found to have been hurt)?

Apologies have merit and value in many situations. An apology will only be worth something though if the person making the apology is genuinely sorry. If anything, forced apologies cheapen sincere ones and bring the merit of them into question. Our society needs a thicker skin, an ability to change a channel and needs to lose this idiotic obsession of demanding apologies from people who simply are not sorry.

Perhaps down the road some pendejo is going to take offense to something I say or write. Perhaps that flake will actually manage to find some government body that could force an apology from me as HRCs often do in their kangaroo courts. Should that day come to pass, I do hope that the fool demanding my apology sees this blog post to truly understand just how heartfelt my hypothetical apology would be.

Laugh a little people.

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Well this morning began in a pretty typical way. I was walking around in the bush checking on some survey while peripherally checking twitter in case some issue demanded my attention and input. I noted a couple tweets regarding the Wildrose Campaign bus from some people. I knew that the bus was being unveiled today so didn’t think much of it. I just assumed that the usual suspects were adding their critique on the shade of the color or something. Still tweets kept popping up on the bus so I knew something was up. I paused and had a look at a picture of the bus and saw what is pictured below:

  Yes. In an epic failure of graphic design Danielle Smith’s torso was pictured on top of a pair of bus wheels which caused some rather unintentional imagery.

  As an unabashed partisan supporter of, founding member of and multiple term member of the provincial executive of  the Wildrose Party, how was I to respond to a twelve foot depiction of our leader like this?

 As a socially liberal man married to a strong political woman (aka @Jaanikka) how was I supposed to respond to this image?

Well I will tell you: I laughed my head off!

I am not talking the obligatory LOL that I give on twitter when somebody says something moderately amusing. This was a deep, rich and real outright laughing fit in the middle of the trees. I then jumped in on some of the growing laughs and jokes about the whole thing on Twitter.

Face it people. The picture is hilarious and there is nothing wrong with laughing about it or making good natured jokes about it.

I understand that elections and politics are serious business by their very nature and importance. That is why distractions and laughs like this are indeed so important. I take politics very seriously. I have put thousands of hours and dollars into politics over the years. Rest assured I don’t take the issues and policies lightly. I still however can laugh at myself and the party I support when the situation calls for it.

 In past election campaigns my fondest memories are not of the knockout punch delivered in a church basement all candidates forum. I remember the fun/funny things. I remember a car chase with a black Saab driven by a supporter of an opposing candidate while I drove a mobile billboard though the suburbs of Calgary (it was a low speed chase). I remember asking for Mr. Korea at a door due to poor walking papers only to be told by a young lady in perfect English with excellent sarcasm “We are Korean but nobody named Korea lives here.” (awkward but I still got a sign placement). I remember 3am stakeouts to try and catch a serial sign vandal (and we did catch him).

 Campaigning and campaigns can be fun. They have to be. It is tough and important work being on a campaign. A person can wear themselves physically and emotionally out very quickly if they will not let themselves relax and have some fun at times. To do so a person has to lighten up and be able to laugh at themselves first and foremost.

 I see that some people immediately labelled all of the banter about the bus as being sexist. I say with all sincerity: Kiss my butt. It is not. Geeze. People can make jokes about Obama without being racist and people can make jokes about female politicians without being sexist. I despise people trying to shut down humour and discussion by claiming sexism or racism when it is not really there.

I have seen many who keep saying that this would not have gone viral like this had it been a male candidate. I say BS people. Below is a picture that somebody tweeted. It is funny too. Now, had that bus had a male political candidate pictured, I assure you that the banter and the jokes would have taken off and been just the same.

 

 

 Look, sexism does exist and women in politics get terribly abused unfairly in public life. There is a double standard when it comes to critique of their appearances, their attitudes and even their voices. We saw it in a recent repugnant headline about the Alberta election in the Huffington Post, we saw it when people commented on Clark’s cleavage in BC and we saw it in the utter character assassination of Palin. I hope that we can grow out of it as many great women are indeed staying out of politics due to not wanting to endure that scrutiny and abuse.

 The above being said, that has nothing to do with the current Wildrose bus affair. There are some individuals who went too far in their comments such as Progressive Conservative campaign manager Piotr Pilarski tweeting about tassels and such but that is to be expected by nuts like him. He would have been just as offensive on something else had this issue not popped up. The majority of the banter was good natured and it was fun.

 Danielle responded excellently. I can only guess that she was not immediately amused by the error. It is expensive and certainly distracts from the campaign.

 All the same, Danielle put out a tweet saying:

 “Glad to see everyone is so interested in our bus. 😉 Guess we’ll have to make a couple of changes huh?”

Nothing more needs to be said. This is a passing issue. Some embarrassment was had as well as some fun. Hopefully some lessons were learned and there is likely now a better system of checking on things being implemented by the campaign team.

 Some people have complained about all of the joking being childish. Well nobody knows how to relax and have some fun better than a child do they?

Pull the stick out of your arses and laugh a little people. Be a child for a moment. It is going to be a long campaign.

 

Video time.

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Ahh it has been a frantic week (but in a great way). I am now posting video of the Wildrose Alliance Party’s leadership forum from Wednesday night at the Blackfoot Inn.

 I was sorely tempted to edit out my repeated brainfarts as the forum moderator when I referred to a candidate by the wrong name a couple times. Perhaps posting that portion will help inspire me not to do such again.

 Last night’s forum in Lethbridge had a packed house again and I got the names correct the entire evening.

 A great thank you to Jamie Buchan who thought he was simply attending a forum and found himself handed a video camera and was voluntold to tape the proceedings.

 The processing and uploading takes forever so I will be adding links throughout the day as they get up on the site.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10

Part 11

Part 12

Part 13 (last one)

Running Scared.

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 Ahh I have been due for a good laugh. Today while on the road I was listening to Charles Adler on the radio (national show). National Post journalist Kevin Libin was being interviewed and the subject was Libin’s trip to Alberta where he investigated and then wrote about the stunning growth of the Wildrose Alliance Party in Alberta. His article is here. The article was great and the interview was better. Libin sees the growing discontent with Stelmach in Alberta.

 What got my funny bone going however was the next guest on the show. Adler had leadership candidate Danielle Smith on the show and announced that leadership candidate Mark Dyrholm will be a guest on his show next week.

 One of the first callers was Mark Norris. You see Norris is a failed leadership candidate for Ed’s job. Mark left government as a sore loser and is now pouting on the sidelines. It is clear that Norris still has aspirations though and hopes to replace Stelmach in the future. The fear was clear as day in Mark’s voice as he attacked and spouted the usual diatribes of “redneck” and such and really made a pathetic defence of the Stelmach regime.

 We doubtless will be seeing more of this in the months and years to come. The self-entitled Alberta PCs are finding themselves losing funding and members on every front as their inept governance works towards ending their nearly 40 year dynasty in Alberta. These folks are in panic and it is showing.

 If the defense of the PCs made by Norris is the best they can do, the Wildrose Alliance may very well be in majority government in a few years.

 http://www.am770chqr.com/Station/AudioVault.aspx

 Again Norris, thanks for the chuckle.

A very productive weekend.

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 Last Friday and Saturday the Wildrose Alliance Party held it’s AGM and policy conference at the Bearspaw Lifestyle Center in Calgary. As (now former) VP of policy for the party, the task of organizing the affair landed on me. I can now add event-planning to my resume though I will try to avoid such tasks in the future. Our main challenge was that we filled the house to the rafters with enthusiastic attendees and keeping everybody comfortable and fed in such tight quarters can be quite a challenge. Thanks to a small army of excellent volunteers, we pulled it off. I can’t thank those who rolled up their sleeves and helped keep things moving along enough. The lineups for food were rather long, but people were patient and their attitudes were great. We all realized that having challenges with too many people coming out beats the heck out of having too few.

 Getting to the meat and potatoes of the gathering, the party has clearly passed some milestones and is approaching some more. It was reported to the room that our membership has tripled since last January and continues to grow. The party is at an all time high in membership numbers and doubtless those numbers will explode as our leadership hopefuls pound the pavement in their campaigns.

 In our financial reporting, it was re-confirmed that we are completely debt free (unlike the rest of the opposition parties) and funds continue to come to the party at an unprecedented rate from both corporate and individual donors. Concerned Albertans are putting their money where their mouths are and investing in Alberta’s future by supporting our future government. Money isn’t everything, but it certainly is essential when going against the withering but still entrenched PC party of Alberta.

 Paul Hinman while leaving his post as leader (though remaining as interim) clearly still is held in high regard and respected by the membership. It is great to see somebody like Paul stepping back for the sake of growth of the party yet still remaining involved and enthusiastic. Assuming Paul wins the upcoming nomination for the Calgary Glenmore by-election, Paul will continue to be an incredible asset to the party as he is a very skilled campaigner. While Paul lost his seat by 39 votes in the last election, his even taking that seat in an upset victory in 2004 demonstrated that underestimating Paul Hinman is a poor course of action. The fence-straddling Alderman running for the PCs down there had best not take that seat for granted.

 The policy discussions were excellent and very telling of the direction of the membership. One of the more difficult tasks in front of us was the presentation of a greatly streamlined and completely updated version of our policy set. Our past set was somewhat convoluted, outdated and clearly suffered from a case of the bloat. Part of grassroots policy development means that it can be much easier to get policies added than it can be to remove them. A periodic housecleaning of the policies is required and that can be sticky. We managed that and I expect that people will be impressed when our new version is added to the party website.

 Another reality of grassroots policy development is that some members will submit some let’s say less than rational proposals at times. Opponents try to paint the party as radical when they get wind of such things at times. What really counts is how well those oddball policy proposals are received when presented to the membership at an AGM. The policy calling for an immediate referendum on separation from Canada was dropped by it’s proponent after the membership resoundingly rejected her other proposal to have the party principle speaking to working within a unified Canada dropped. This should put to rest those trying to paint the Wildrose Alliance as being a separatist party. Somebody tried to move the party into that direction of political suicide and the attempt was rejected en-masse by the gathered members. Those who want to pursue a separatist mandate should join the Separation Party of Alberta and share in the 1% showing that they had in the one constituency that they contested in the last general election.

 There was another rather odd policy submission that called for the government to assume the management of professional associations and such. That one did go to a vote. Two people voted in favor while the other two-hundred and some in attendance rejected it. Collective wisdom won and we had a wise and moderate minded crowd.

 With the elections to party executive things went well. We retained many excellent board members and gained some new and very skilled people. It was commented that we really should have more board seats as all of the candidates were excellent and it was a shame that they did not get on the board simply due to lack of space. That being said, there certainly was no hard feelings on the part of those who did not get on and they will be still contributing their skills and efforts to the party. The unity and enthusiasm within the room was excellent. As a side note, while I did leave the posting of VP policy, the members did select me to serve as a Southern director so I will still be on the board. The details and bios of the new board should be on the party website soon so I will not go into more detail in what is already a long-winded summary of the AGM.

 One of the main items of interest to many was the formal introduction of two candidates for the leadership of the party. Danielle Smith and Mark Dyrholm both gave well received speeches and began making their rounds among the membership. This will be a strongly contended leadership race with two bright and rational candidates campaigning. The nomination cutoff is September 1st so we may see some more faces added to the mix. It is going to make for an interesting and busy summer for the party to say the least.

 Finishing the event we had Tom Flanagan speak to the group where he announced his purchasing of a membership with us and gave some wise advice. Having been so critical in the development of Reform/CA/CPC Flanagan has learned a thing or two. We were reminded that factionalism is one of the main factors that can lead to the demise of an up and coming party and it is to be avoided at all costs. With the clear unity and enthusiasm of those who attended we are not challenged with factionalism right now. That being said, with a leadership race and continued growth that is a very real risk and we will be well served to watch out for that.

 In looking at comments on articles posted about our AGM and the leadership race I am more heartened than ever. PC supporters and other lefties have quickly moved into attack mode and are trying their hardest to discredit the party and leadership contenders. The dwindling status-quo supporters are seeing the threat of the Wildrose Alliance Party to their parties of choice and are beginning to lash out. I expect it will only get worse as we continue to gain steam.

 I have been in provincial politics since the 90s working on libertarian style alternatives to the tired out PC party of Alberta. Never has the light shone more brightly on the future for such an alternative as now.