The executive of the Wildrose party is holding a teleconference Tuesday night after Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith met with her caucus to discuss uniting with Premier Jim Prentice’s Progressive Conservatives.
And that’s all she wrote.
The executive of the Wildrose party is holding a teleconference Tuesday night after Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith met with her caucus to discuss uniting with Premier Jim Prentice’s Progressive Conservatives.
And that’s all she wrote.
This is sad. Alberta has a liberal party, a Liberal Party, and a socialist party. The rise and fall of the WR was meteoric. I can’t believe it fell apart so quickly.
http://theconservativeman.wordpress.com/2014/12/15/danielle-smith-the-pc-pretender/
Hard to say if this is a win for the WR or not. If I understand it correctly, the Wild Rose party was formed because in large part the Progressive Conservatives in Alberta were more progressive than conservative. If Prentice can really get back to core values then it is a win-win. If, on the other hand, Prentice is only a talking head then Alberta is screwed.
You should see Rachel Notley preening for the “real progressive” government they allegedly voted for and “promising to deliver it”. Her FB post after the meeting is just … ugh. And her supporters are typical NDP scum.
Maybe next time I should pay more attention. I thought it was fungi growing on the cow pie and not flowers.
Prentice is obviously a tougher opponent than The Red Queen.
But . . .
When the going gets tough – Danielle Smith names her price.
There is no way I’m voting PC. The party has been in power for far too long and the corruption runs waaay too deep to be stamped out simply by playing musical chairs around the public trough. I held great hope for the Wildrose Party, but if they’re willing to jump into bed with the PC’s at the first golden opportunity then obviously they will be a great fit with the old guard.
Time to bone up on my local libtard and dipper candidates. Hopefully one of them has principles – even if they’re misguided.
Once upon a time the Wild Rose Party had a lot of promise. Then they picked Danielle as leader. Having lost the general election to the most corrupt premier in Alberta’s history by refusing to defend her candidates and then adopting every leftist cause she could dream up I’m not sure she wasn’t a PC plant.
What can one say about Wild Rose?
At the last election they were the favorites, they came second. Nobody knows why and what happened.
Maybe the pollsters played a game on WR and oversold.
Anyway, about a year ago, sent an email to ask about the position of the local representative that I voted for. It was about AWG.
Got a replay that was sort of like form letter without any direct reply, on what’s the local MLA’s position on the subject.
So, sent another email. In the email, explained the position that I don’t care what the lawyers came up with, want his position.
Also explained or pointed out that he is responding to a real person that does not suffer demagoguery well. If the MLA will not reply personal opinion, will not vote for him.
All the demagogue could come up with, was “sorry to lose your vote”, end of story.
Just recently the Wild Rose or rather the leadership went socialist, not unlike Redford.
Prentice adopted most of the Wild Rose positions, they were left without a thing to talk about.
Smart on Prentices part.
It is not clear yet what is the prevailing wind of the PC’s at this time, though it sound somewhat promising.
Smith, as of now is looking out for number one. That’s all there is to it.
The Wild Rose Party, if they want to matter, they need to continue the program just after the election. They need a leader that has ideas, can communicate well and gains respect.
Other than that, they are toast.
Alberta: old Blackfoot word meaning “land of sensitive cowboys”.
I really, really don’t get this. Although her climate change beliefs had me wondering about her.
yeah, no other party to challenge the PC’s.
when all you can do is oppose then there’s nothing left.
enuf BS from government.
When Nenshi’s crew can’t find savings in a $4B annual budget, doesn’t bode well for provincial hopes.
Can’t we all do with a little less (BS)?
how many new schools Jim-eh? Really? who is going to build them all? not enough construction workers here.
oh right and not enough $$ to build and staff em all either.
total B.S.
that’s why wildrose failed. can’t smell the roses from the B.S. whale I’ll beef hooked.
“If Prentice can really get back to core values then it is a win-win.”
below is an e-mail I got from Jim Prentice, my name is still on the PB membership rolls although I haven’t given them a cent since 2006.
……………………………………………………….
Bill 10 paused for further consultation with Albertans
Premier Jim Prentice issued the following statement today:
Ladies and Gentlemen, as you are aware I(Jim Prentice) returned to the province last evening, following meeting with the Premiers of Ontario and Quebec and a meeting this morning with Governor Christie of New Jersey.
I am here this afternoon to speak to Bill 10 and to respond to your questions.
Bill 10 is intended to strike a balance on important issues involving:
– the rights of LGBQT youth
– the rights of parents to be involved in the education of their children
– the autonomy of school boards
– the constitutional rights of separate school boards
None of this is easy. Rights are difficult and the conflict between competing rights is difficult for all of us. The debate surrounding Bill 10 proves this.
Such debates are clearly divisive. One cannot have rights without respecting the rights of others. The rights of no citizen are absolute over the rights of another.
Moreover, conflict between religious freedoms and the rights of LGBQT students involve deeply held views of personal belief.
The introduction of Bill 10 as a solution to the divisiveness created by Bill 202 has clearly not been helpful.
I(Jim Prentice) accept personal responsibility for the introduction of Bill 10.
I felt that the Bill struck an appropriate balance and that it achieved signature advances for the rights of LGBQT students.
I would point, in particular, to the fact that Bill 10 proposes to explicitly enshrine the right not to be discriminated against on the basis of sexual orientation in the Alberta Bill of Rights. To my knowledge no one else in Canada has done this.
The Bill also proposes to repeal Section 11.1 of the Human Rights Act which the advocates of Alberta’s LGBQT community have argued is one of the most discriminatory pieces of legislation in Canada.
The Bill attempts to respect religious freedoms and also enshrines parental rights in the Alberta Bill of Rights.
No one else in Canada has done the latter.
Unfortunately, Bill 10 has added to, rather than resolved these divisions.
I accept personal responsibility for this as I am the Premier.
I am most disturbed that our LGBQT youth, are caught in the middle of a divisive debate. This they didn’t ask for. And most are simply young people trying to find their way in life and in the life of our Province.
As Premier, I am Premier for all Albertans which means representing and protecting our religious minorities, and our all of children, including those who are LGBQT.
At present, there is clearly no consensus in Alberta on either the constitutionality or indeed the wisdom of the provincial government mandating Gay Straight Alliances in schools.
The issue was polarizing to begin with and has become even more so over the past several days.
So where to from here?
Both I and my caucus have heard, loudly and clearly, that Albertans wish there to be further consultation on the substance of Bill 10.
Bill 10 clearly does not make Gay Straight Alliances mandatory.
The Bill creates a legislated framework within which students who wish to create Gay Straight Alliances can take such a request forward to the school authority elected to make such decisions.
In my view, the school boards who are elected to administer schools have the legal responsibility to do so and that includes the obligation to respect the Charter rights of their student bodies.
There have been few voices supportive of this approach and many opposed. More importantly, many Albertans have expressed the view that this should not be done with haste.
Accordingly, I have met with my caucus, have heard their concerns and have instructed the Government House Leader to place the third reading of Bill 10 on hold, pending further consultation with Albertans.
I would thank the members of my caucus who have advocated for the balance that Bill 10 attempts to strike. I want, in particular to acknowledge the leadership, hard work and personal courage of Sandra Jansen who has been responsible for the carriage of Bill 10 in the Legislative Assembly.
I don’t intend to be specific today on immediate next steps. Given the emotion on all sides of this discussion, I think that everyone will benefit from a pause. Thank you.”
…………………………………………………….
As anyone can see, the new Alberta Premier has NOT gotten back to core values, especially conservative core values. This province is $billions in debt and the new Premier’s first concern is to make sexual deviants feel comfortable.
I picked a fine time to go senile.
/whatmeworry
Sad. At least by avoiding a merger the PCs don’t get that Wildrose cash coffer. I’ll console myself with that the Wildrose managed to chase off Stelmach and Redford. Prentice is an infinitely better manager than those two.
Saying that, if the PCs head in the (right) direction, watch all the whining from people who switched their vote from Libs and NDP to PC in the last election to the PC to avoid a Wildrose victory.
Read all about it.
Document details conditions for Wildrose to join Progressive Conservatives (Calgary Sun)
Pretty clear if Alberta can’t put together a conservative choice BC is hooped.
These Vichy Conservative traitors are a total disgrace. There is a dirty underhanded reason why these collaborators and saboteurs are attempting to destroy (AKA : merge)the Wildrose Party rather than just leave it. They need to destroy all evidence of what they themselves have been up to and they also need to destroy all the evidence of corruption that they have on their new overlords.
I wonder who Danielle Smith was.
The sorry truth is, that, if there are no differences between A and B – then they are the same.
I’m baffled and left just a little bit more cynical after thinking i was all full up.
It’s over. Turn out the lights. The WR is done. And it was done in the same way that Trudeau kept the Dippers irrelevant in the 1970s, namely by taking over all their policies and making them his own. Prentice has done much the same thing with WR. Quite literally, the WR was reduced to little more than “We’re not them”.
Alberta has a history of this. Political parties emerge suddenly, seize a substantial part of the legislature in an election and then either wipe out one of the mainstream parties or vanish utterly within a decade. It was exactly that with United Farmers of Alberta in the 1920s, Social Credit in the 1930s. Along with a host of smaller parties like Dominion Labour, Alberta Alliance, Representative Party and a number of others too small to mention.
And clearly something had to be done. This year has been a disaster for the WR. Three of its caucus members have already gone with more threatening to leave. So yes, there’s going to be lots of whining from some around here about the impending demise of WR. But if it drags the Alberta Tories back to the right, it will have succeeded at least in part.
In a lot of wars Danielle reminds me of Obama. The WRP adopted her despite the fact that she had no real experience other than making a hash of the Calgary school board. Like the US and their ‘first black’ Danielle was selected as ‘first female’. Both are/were spectacularly unqualified and ultimately disastrous for their electorate.
Better now than later. At least we don’t have to carry hope that something fresh and even honest was sweeping Alberta politics and same old same old was on its way out after the next election. The options just went back to pre wildrose days. Personally, Danielle lost me when she fell for the global warming bullshit . Perhaps she lost too many that felt the same way I did. We already have far too many brainwashed politicians.
The urban Alberta electorate doesn’t have an appetite for a social conservative rump party claiming pseudo-conservative bona fides. Prentice has, as inferred by cgh and by offering a centre-left and potentially less corrupt (as opposed to centre-hard-left a la Redford) progressive government, executed a reverse takeover of WRP.
For principled voters, nothing is worse than the Party system. A slate of independents expressing their platforms unhindered by a Party structure would do wonders to the Parliamentary system. WRP was mostly populism with a typically confused notion of what it stood for, much like the so-called BC Conservatives.
Today, Party names are best described as adverbs as in how do we cede liberty? conservatively, liberally, or full-on (old-left) New Democratically.
“and the new Premier’s first concern is to make sexual deviants feel comfortable”
What a horrible, shameful thing to say about children!
Why can we not give some comfort to those who are hurting by accepting them and not rejecting them irrespective of what is in some legislation?
If a merger is to happen the key thing is not policy – its constitution. The WRP and the SASK party and the CPC have almost word for word the same constitution – one that enables the grassroots to run the party – as was drafted by preston manning, stephen harper et al for the reform party. If the merged party gets that right then the conservative grassroots will drive the policy and thus the leader in the correct direction.
Any floor crossers should be put in the back benches and made to go to open nominations in their ridings. This is the BS that is ruining democracy and contributing to voter apathy. This goofy woman like Joe said, has demolished a schoolboard with her dirty notes and childish behaviour, she is the last thing the PC boardroom needs while trying to steer a 45 billion dollar a year corporation. She made her bed and needs to enjoy the fleas and ticks she has surrounded and tucked herself in with, there was a small window where she made a little sense when there was no sense across the asile. That time is long past, and now she is just another parisite looking for a new host.
Prentice is was chased out of politics by Harper. He was dead ended. So he quit.
Harper saw him for the progressive he was (I doubt there is a conservative bone in his body.)
When Redford melted down prentice was called back into action.
Make no mistake. The only reason he was installed was to implement a hard core AGW agenda in Alberta. He will do everything he can to undermine Harper.
If Prentice was remotely conservative you would see negative press on him.
“What a horrible, shameful thing to say about children!”
LGBQT is a horrible shameful thing. Not something to be proud of, it’s something to guide children away from, not accommodate them in it and force acceptance on the rest of the population.
“…her climate change beliefs had me wondering …”
Well, maybe Prentice will create a dual portfolio for her: Minister of Climate and Colour Change.
Oz, you are correct.
With the orchestrated collapse of the only political opposition to globalist control of Alberta’s resources, you can see the fix is truly “in”.
If this “merger” takes place you will see Agenda 21 implemented at a faster (more clandestine)pace in Alberta under the Prentice globalists. There is large foreign money backing the “taming” of the last free enterprise enclave of the commonwealth and harnessing its resource powers.
The first thing Redford did (as an appointed Premier) was change the nature and control of land title in the province, giving carte blanche to future agenda 21 legislating. Prentice avoids revisiting land ownership law like the plague – the fix is definitely in.
Just as I remarked earlier, what a lot of whining. Not to mention a load of nonsense.
“Prentice is (sic) was chased out of politics by Harper.”
Let’s start with this gem. The reverse is the case. Everyone in Ottawa, from the party brass to the presstitutes in the Ottawa Press Gallery knew that Prentice was by far the front runner to succeed in the federal Tory leadership. Very popular within cabinet and caucus, his would have been a coronation. But Prentice quit for two reasons: 1. he knew that by the time Harper retires the party may be looking for a generation change; and 2. that if he was going on to bigger things he needed some work in the real world, particularly finance. Which is why he went to CIBC. Prentice’s departure created a succession issue for the Tories where none existed before. Harper was reluctant to see Prentice go, because he was by far the most effective communicator in Cabinet, and he dealt skillfully with the government’s most problematic ministry at the time, Environment.
It’s also worth noting that he was called in to be Minister of Industry Canada after Maxime Bernier made a shambles of the place. Prentice was Harper’s “Mr. Fixit”, called in to fix ministries where the previous ministers had screwed up. And Harper asked Prentice to take on the most difficult ministry for the Tories, Environment, which was in enormous crisis and outright leaking sensitive information to the press and to the opposition. Now he’s doing it again in Alberta where the previous Premier (and probably the one before her) was such a disaster.
Then there’s this stupidity.
“The only reason he was installed was to implement a hard core AGW agenda in Alberta.”
It’s maybe escaped your notice, Ward, that Prentice canceled Alberta’s carbon sequestration project, something Saskatchewan has yet to do. I’ve said it for years in this forum, buckwheat, actions speak louder than words. Watch what people do, not what they say.
“For principled voters, nothing is worse than the Party system.” yadda, yadda, yadda.
That’s been the political system in every democracy in the world for the past two and a half centuries. Even in ancient Athens there were political parties. Thucydides provides the evidence. The Roman Republic certainly had political parties; that was what eventually ruined the republic, making Caesar’s overthrow of the diehard conservatives necessary. Political parties have always existed in some fashion in every form of government throughout history. That’s real life; deal with it.
I am travelling today cgh but will respond more fully tomorrow. How about we start with whether you believe that AGW is a complete fraud, or that we need to listen to cede the control of the worlds life blood to the UN?
Your missive reads like a Jim Prentice press release.
Earlier this year (before the by-election disaster) I went to a fundraiser in downtown Calgary for the WRP. All I saw there was a pack of former Tory hacks circling like ravenous pigs awaiting their turn at the trough. More than one person there made the comment to me that if they didn’t win the next election the party would be done because most of the key players would scurry back to the Tories. That was enough to stop me from donating to the party or wasting more of my time.
Maybe at some point the WRP was a true movement, grassroots party but this certainly confirms my worst fears about them.
Now that the price of oil is plunging, Danielle Smith saw the light once her sponsorship money from the Calgary-based oil industry dried up.
Heck, watch for massive oilpatch layoffs in the new year.
If there’s no money for its workers, how can there be any money for political activity?
Good to see there are still posters like cgh who have some reasonable analytical ability.
Given a choice between Redford and Smith, Smith wins hands down.
Given a choice between Smith and Prentice, to me Prentice is the true professional and has the best demeanour since Peter Lougheed.
Ralph Klein was effective, but had his flaws … mainly not keeping up with needed infrastructure.
Truth be told, Prentice is somewhere on the libertarian spectrum, a fiscal conservative and social liberal, which is where most Albertans reside.
Also, the Wildrose (one word as far as I can determine) candidate in my constituency is somebody I would never vote for.
That would be a different Wildrose candidate that I voted for against Redford in the last election.
Time to move on.
set you free >
“Heck, watch for massive oilpatch layoffs in the new year.”
Yes, but will Alberta see Redfrauds massive Third World labor force she imported for the “boom” finally go home?
I think not.
Now we can enjoy tens of thousands of unemployed Third World welfare dregs.
We’ll have to wait and see what happens on that issue.
In the past two years, 60,000 people have moved in to the Edmonton area.
Not sure how many of them are temporary foreign workers, but I’d guess a pretty small percentage.
Just the nature of the oil business. There’s been booms and busts in Alberta before.
Not sure if you recall, but banks owned a good percentage of Alberta real estate at one point after people walked away from their homes.
Set you free: prentices demeanor is not what is important. It’s what his agenda is. I don’t think it is that different than any other progressive be it Stelmach or Redford. It’s just going to packaged a little more carefully.
He is going to work with Wynne to try to hijack climate change policy away from Harper.
Binding climate agreement is the golden chalice for progressives and Prentice is going to work very hard to make sure it happens.
Yep, and after he’s finished doing that, I’m sure he’ll legalize sex with mountain goats.
set you free >
“We’ll have to wait and see what happens on that issue”
Don’t know why, it’s pretty obvious that none of these unskilled, illiterate dregs are going anywhere from here.
2015 will see a largely unemployed Alberta supporting Alison Redfrauds UN agenda of supporting the Third World. i.e. “Sharing the Wealth” through the Socialist backdoor.
I assume, then, that you’re of aboriginal ancestry.
An obviously hard-working aboriginal.
Exactly. Danielle Smith has now become Danielle Quisling.
Ward @ 1:58, exactly. A smoother Joe Clarke. Prentice may be an able administrator but I do not trust him, as I think he has bought into the Agenda 21 and AGW frauds. However this Wildrose capitulation to the PCs turns out I expect that we know Prentice’s true colours within a year.
” a fiscal conservative and social liberal”
Conservative fiscal practice flows naturally from conservative social policy.
Social liberal policy has ramping costs which eats up conservative fiscal intention and leads to deficits and revenue shortfalls.
One cannot have both, only a fool thinks that it’s possible.
set you free >
“I assume, then, that you’re of aboriginal ancestry.”
You got it pal, my great grandparents lived in a sod hut on the Alberta plains and were instrumental in building the province into the civilized society that it is today. No welfare included.
I am 3rd generation Alberta oilfield, my children 4th. The rest have successfully farmed from one end of the province to the next since Alberta’s inception as a province.
That’s as aboriginal as it gets.
I think in the long run this defection may be a good thing.
What remains of the Wildrose may very well grow into the morally and fiscally strong conservative party they were meant to be,
now that all the pseudo conservative deadwood is shunted out, especially Danielle Smith.
If this is so then what remains of the Wildrose deserve all the support we can give them.
Nonsense.
There is an entire wing of the Republican party in the USA that is socially conservative and dedicated to massive government (see, George Bush, Karl Rove, Rick Santorum, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Paul Ryan, John Boehner, Mitch Mcconnell, etc.). The list goes on and on and on.
Being socially conservative does lead to ‘conservative fiscal policy’. Unless by that you mean massive deficit spending on the military, seniors, corporate welfare and the hobby-horses of the right. If you mean that, then you correct.
Truth is, syf, I’ve almost given up on this place. Hysterical ranting and little in the way of coherent thought. Nothing more here in this thread than mourning for the WR they imagined rather than the WR as it actually exists this time this year.
And twits like Ward want to debate me over global warming. If the idiot had even slightly followed my posts on SDA over the past couple of years he’d know exactly what my position on it is.
In the end, none of this wailing matters in the slightest. WR is dead as last week’s fish, and that’s all there is to it. For those who don’t get this, please consult with John Cleese and his expertise in dead parrots. Smith gets at least some credit for recognizing the end is coming rather than doing a Bloq Quebecois and going down with the sinking ship. Conditions for amalgamation with the Tories will only get worse as time goes on, so you’d best get the best deal you can now. Later the only offer on the table will be abject surrender. Which is where most of the political geniuses in this thread seem to want to head.
What most people here don’t understand, syf, is two things: 1. what people do is vastly more important that what people say; and 2. politics is the art of the possible, not of pixie dust and unicorn farts.
Lorne Gunter has a good analysis on why the Wildrose was first formed ie response to ill-timed royalty rate increase by Stelmach.
That’s followed by a concise history of the short-lived party.
Once Prentice agreed with some of Wildrose’s points and effectively neutralized their strategy of running against Redford, they had nothing left to run ON.
Wildrose members are, in fact, former oilpatch Tories who disagreed with the method Stelmach used to raise more money for infrastructure. Stelmach’s timing was way off and he paid the price and it was Wildrose’s good fortune that Redford became prominent.
Wildrose had the right message to win the last election on its economic platform, but lost because Albertans mistrusted a couple of social conservative candidates because they are moral control freaks as much as lefties are economic control freaks.
In the end, Alberta voters decided that the issues articulated by social conservatives are no business of the state, so since there was no differences in economic vision between the two parties, that was not an issue Wildrose just proved it could not win on.
For the record, the ultimate answer has always been about self-control, not controlling the behavior of others.