My faith in humanity is restored

Wow. Sigh of relief. Never in a million years would I have thought I'd be clapping/singing/dancing happy over a PC majority. But I am. My faith in humanity is restored, particularly my faith in Albertans.

It's not all good news. The barbarians are past the gate, and they have 17 seats in the legislature now.  I'll be watching one in particular, our old nemesis Link Byfield. I'm thinking of implementing a Missing Link Watch on the site, (knuckle dragging graphics TBA) but I also threatened to do that once with anti-choice MP Trost and nothing came of it. Too boring.

My most sincere and heartfelt thanks to all the bloggers out there who exposed the truth. Also, my most sincere and heartfelt thanks to all the readers who know that social media is independent media.

I'm going to go have my first good night's sleep in weeks. Tomorrow, I'll be blogging about M-312. Stay tuned for What to Expect When You're Expecting M-312.

Until then, breathe easy Alberta.

Yours,
Some Blogger.

Alberta's Choice

Let's face it. Wildrose, a party billing itself as "change" in Alberta, does not represent change at all. With the most regressive members of the Progressive Conservatives among its ranks (with the notable exception of Ted Morton, who remains an albatross for the PCs) they can hardly make the claim that they will bring change. This is a place for Conservatives who don't think the Progressive Conservatives are conservative enough. The PCs, on the other hand, are also looking to capture the change narrative with the new Alison Redford broom sweeping clean. But they are still the PCs. As a new website points out through the use of a fun quiz (I do love a good quiz)they really are not that much different than their disaffected country cousins in the Wildrose. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, as my mother always says.

Or are the PCs and Wildrose incredibly different? Can Alison Redford lead the party to a truly progressive vision of conservatism? If anyone can, it is probably her. One thing we do know is how the PCs have dealt with their own members who make the kinds of crazy statements noted in the quiz above. They've never let them get the upper hand. That's something. Not much, but something. Redford has specifically reached out to a more progressive voter, both in her leadership campaign and now in the election campaign. I don't think it's purely a crass grab at power. I think she knows she needs progressives on the inside to sway her party. Wildrose, on the other hand, is reaching out to the least progressive voters. That is a significant difference.

But having said that, I think it is naive for the progressive voter to expect that because we voted PC that the party will suddenly reflect our core values. Change like that doesn't happen in an election period or a year or even a term. 


I just saw this video urging for strategic voting that kind of made me laugh and kind of made me sad. To be fair, Smith doesn't think the Flintstones is real, (I don't think) but the fact that this kind of rhetoric is part of our election makes me so disheartened I want to crawl under my bed. This is where the Wildrose perspective has brought us.  And I understand the point the strategic voters are making.

So, how to vote? Look at your local candidate? Good idea. What does she or he believe? Is he or she a Hunsperger or a Leech? Try not to make eye contact and back away. You have to do some asking around, some digging. There is still time.

How about looking at the leaders? Good idea too. The leaders in this day and age really do set the agenda. Once in power, unfortunately, our local representatives are expected to tow the party line. That's the price of being in a party. We've seen enough of the leaders in this campaign to help us decide.

Here are two different takes on strategic voting, one from Daveberta who points out that we are also voting for the opposition in the upcoming election. Do we want a right wing party as opposition to a righter wing party? Or do we want a progressive counter balance? Good question, Dave. And then there is the other Dave, Dave Climenhaga, an unabashed ND calling for an ND vote. He makes some good points. Don't forget to visit Change Alberta too, and see what their take on your riding is.

I'm still on the anybody but Wildrose bandwagon. Hope to see you there on the 23rd.

I just noticed a charming blogger misnamed my blog on her charming post about Alberta Politics and called this space "The Alberta Monologues." And oh, so it has become. Sorry to my regular readers. I'll get on track again soon.


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Progressive Conservative Party on Abortion

For the Record, the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada has not answered my three questions on abortion. (Neither have the Liberals or New Democrats.) I doubt they will, and really, who can blame them. But they are speaking about it in the media. But since I started this storm, I feel compelled to at least try to get information from other parties out there. Right now, all I can do is glean from the media and report.

This is what Alison Redford had to say about abortion and conscience rights this morning on CBC’s the Current.

Anna Maria Tremonti asked Redford about the Wildrose stance on abortion and conscience rights. (Start at 7:17 if you are listening to the clip above)

Redford: “I think Albertans are shocked to hear that that’s come back into the discussion. You know these are issues that were decided in Canada twenty years ago and I think Albertans are very proud of who we are as a community. It was very unsettling for me to hear this come up last week from that party as a legitimate policy position and I was just as disappointed to hear that the party itself would go further with respect to citizen referenda which really, I think, is something that concerns Albertans. It’s not where we, I don’t believe, should go. My sense from speaking to Albertans is that these are discussions that are incredibly divisive. Of course people should have their own personal beliefs, but when you start to talk about conscience rights it’s a very slippery slope. It upsets me that we seem to think, or that they seem to think,  that this is something Albertans want to talk about and quite frankly I think for a lot of Albertans it’s a little embarrassing for people in the rest of Canada to think that Albertans are still debating these as serious issues.

Tremonti:  You have spent years working in human rights and constitutional law. Does the concept of conscience rights even have a chance of going anywhere? Is it a red herring?

Redford: What I see this as is a legal construct that is brought forward by people with certain political beliefs when they don’t like the decisions that the courts have made.  Now, that’s a fairly technical legal argument, and I don’t think that we get very far by turning this into a debate between lawyers. But we’ve certainly seen in Alberta in the last couple of days commentary from legal scholars from our own University of Calgary saying that this stuff just doesn’t make sense.  It doesn’t reflect the reality of the law in Canada, of the Courts in Canada, of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Okey dokey. Or is that okie dokie? 

I still want to know what you'll do to improve access to abortion services in the north and rural Alberta, but I'm feeling pretty confident you have no plans to de-list or to pose any fundamental challenge to a woman's right to choose or to make access to services worse. Also, in comparison to Wildrose and Danielle Smith's approach to this is in the media, this is very sane. No narrative of persecution here. I point this out to support my own contention that abortion only becomes an issue when you say something dumb about it.

I don't want to be a bummer or anything, but I feel compelled to mention that PC party is the party that brought in Bill 44. Would someone please ask whether or not they plan to repeal this? A watchful eye is definitely necessary here too.

I'm not going to get into health care funding generally and various positions on privatizing delivery. That wouldn't be fair because I didn't do it with the other parties. But if you're interested, it's something to find out about.

As a final note, I just want to point out that at the end of the interview, Tremonti notes that Danielle Smith had been invited to the interview but declined.

I'll try to find something just as concise from the Liberals and New Democrats too, and get that posted sometime soon. They're not getting as much media, so it's a little more difficult. So much for the liberal media bias claimed by Ms Smith.