The march to 2019:
- The bad news budget in the first/second year.
- Disavowal of the extremist elements.
- Deals for pipelines.
- and now coming out strong for oil.
To come:
- Some populist social program that really irks the right, to which WR/PC’s overreact.
- Tax reductions.
- Urban directed programs.
- Amendments to Bill 6, softening it up considerably.
- A very public fight with some union, nurses and/or teachers probably.
- Another very public fight with a big hated corp.
- Oil price recovery.
The right in Alberta better get their act together or they’re going to lose again. I can lie and say I have high hopes, but given current trends in politics, die hards will dictate direction and the perfect will be the undoing.
At least we’ll still be able to laugh at the commies in Alberta.
You’re suggesting that the socialists have discovered that possession of power is more important than ideology?
They’ll soon be competing with the Liberals for grubby electioneering.
You’re suggesting that the socialists have discovered that possession of power is more important than ideology?
They’ll soon be competing with the Liberals for grubby electioneering.
I don’t think the right is in any danger. Most people in Alberta know the NDP is brain dead and is starting to wake up to reality. The problem for the NDP, of course, is that it is going to tear itself to pieces in the meantime as reality invades SOME of them and evades the others.
Gosh almighty when the Liberal Subterererean Trolls take over the N.D.P. it will all become clear.
Just in will become the North American Figure Head for the Golobull warming scheme. Probably He will alternate His New York City Gym Picture Ops with similar Gigs at the U.N
Possibly it will become BIG enough there will be opportunities for “Selfies” with Just in with a Fee which can be used for Charitable needs at the U.N. or maybe Liberal Party Fund raising.
On the bright side the Progressives might finally leave the PC party, leaving a husk that is visibly not ready for prime time. That would be a great result for Wildrose.
This scenario is not that far fetched.
At one time the ndp was so driven by ideology that they preferred to win arguments instead of elections. Conservatives tend to do the same. This bunch in AB is showing strains of pragmatism. Not sure if there are any real ideologues in caucus that could hold sway but the group that does hold sway over the elected MLA’s are the unions. They delivered their vote and they will be heard. Maybe Mrs Notley will be able to hold them at bay but she sleeps with a union boss who might just whisper an ultimatum.
The right in AB such as it is has a short time to get united. I can’t see it happening in time for the next election and besides that AB in the last 40 years is way more Progressive than it ever was Conservative. If the voters get comfortable with the dippers it’ll be 4 more years.
If the right in Alberta is uniting, it will have to be under Wildrose. We are not going back to the PCs even if they somehow manage to draft Harper.
This is not at the level of discourse this site usually rises to, but is Notley not slowly turning into Emperor Palpatine?
While I don’t know if she has Prime Ministerial aspirations, I’d like to see the WR courting Rona Ambrose as party leader. She’s a hottie and I’d love to see her go after the sea hag Nutley.
Notley is just coming to grips with the reality that hits all socialists. Sooner or later you run out of other people’s money. It is coming sooner because of the slump in oil prices and Notley has realized there is nowhere near enough money coming in to implement her agenda. That’s why she is suddenly in favour of any pipeline she can get.
And her budget won’t really be implemented for another 2 years. The carbon tax takes effect in 2017 and increases again in 2018. The minimum wage increase won’t fully take effect until 2018. After that, I really don’t think she will be able to turn around Alberta’s economy in time for the next election. And the rural folks have long memories and won’t forget Bill 6 no matter how she tries to soften it up.
Yet to come. Boondoggles over green energy.
Come on people, Alberta is a socialist state that has run low on oil & gas revenue. It will only vote conservative (what does that even mean in Alberta) if they are offered more stuff.
Look at government expenditure by year, or provincial salaries by province, or money spent per capita on education, hospitals, etc.
Alberta is off the charts.
As long as there is oil & gas revenue the government will never run out of other people’s money. It may run low on other people’s money but that’s a different story.
On balance of things, you are on to something.
You may remember that when Prentice told people to look in the mirror in regards of government spending, they did not like it, or rather the “journalists” instructed plebeians to get angry because of that.
Robert, it does bear repeating.
TimR, “Notley is just coming to grips with the reality that hits all socialists. Sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.”
At least Albertans are not lining up for toilet paper and beer, yet.
Whatever the make up of the conservative movement in Alberta is for the next election is, it does not need to be perfect. It just can’t have any progressives tainting it. At all.
take something away then give a little back. Canadians are dumb. they will always vote for someone who says they will give something to someone that they will have to take from someone else. what’s with that mindset?
Swap our electricity for pipelines there is a winning ticket. 50 billion in debt also another barn burnner. Pretending to support oil while implementing the leap document will have the voters lining up. Sounds like real smart people you are impressed with. You are not to brieght are you lance. But then Cruz suppotrers generally are not. You make Bartinsky sound sane.
I just hope the Wildrose remains picky about who they merge with. Last thing they need is to carry the PCs baggage for them.
Unless Clarke starts to build a winning team in BC she will likely lose the coming provincial election in 2017 to the Dippers. Hopefully she does not use out of work CPC campaign gurus. IMHO she has to play the energy platform one more time and expedite energy export from Prince Rupert whether LNG or oil. Pump up the numbers in Tax revenue and jobs and blame the Dippers and their allies for why it has not happened yet. Throw in some hate for the feds and it might galvanize a campaign. The BC Libs have no grassroots in my area and that is probably the case across the province. There will be little help there. Media will win the campaign.
If Clarke pulls it out the Dippers in AB will be surrounded and their days numbered. They will say and do whatever it takes to BS the voters into another term. Take and spend on their constituency is all they can do.
Unless Clarke starts to build a winning team in BC she will likely lose the coming provincial election in 2017 to the Dippers. Hopefully she does not use out of work CPC campaign gurus. IMHO she has to play the energy platform one more time and expedite energy export from Prince Rupert whether LNG or oil. Pump up the numbers in Tax revenue and jobs and blame the Dippers and their allies for why it has not happened yet. Throw in some hate for the feds and it might galvanize a campaign. The BC Libs have no grassroots in my area and that is probably the case across the province. There will be little help there. Media will win the campaign.
If Clarke pulls it out the Dippers in AB will be surrounded and their days numbered. They will say and do whatever it takes to BS the voters into another term. Take and spend on their constituency is all they can do.
I will repeat this cautionary story until the next Alberta general election:
When Manitobans elected their first NDP government in 1969, it didn’t take long for the voters to say the NDP would be out the next election. In the 1973 election, the NDP gained three seats!
Once in power. Dippers grip like leeches. You have to work hard to pull them off of the public teat.
The socialists definitely have the knack of staying in power once they attain it. They are able to accomplish this through a number of unscrupulous methods. Increasing the size of the civil service, rewarding public service unions with lucrative contracts, making promises they have no intention of keeping, spending well beyond their means and, of course, the old tried and true method of instilling fear in the liv (“hidden agenda” bogeyman).
They can be eventually dislodged of course but any right of centre government elected will be faced with a complete financial mess which it will be expected to clean up in one term without enacting too many austerity measures. No easy task.
Ya mean like the mess chretien inherited from the conservatives in 93?
“The Perfect will be the undoing of the good”?
Geezus, Lance, lookit you. All Donald Trump hater in favour of who exactly? Hitlery the Crook and big bonus Goldman Sachs speaker? Cruz the neo-con sock puppet, married to the Goldman Sachs director? Bernie the amiable idiot?
Yes, Trump’s not perfect. Who among us is? But he’s a damn sight better than any of the other three, and your continued denunciation of him, especially in light of your critique of Alberta’s right above, is just baffling.
from the Notley takes aim at ‘Leap Manifesto’ article:
“There are voices in our party who want to wave all this away and give those Conservatives … exactly what they need to return to office and to carry on with their agenda,” she(Rachel Notley) said. “Progressive parties of government don’t let that happen.”
To those here who think the right should be united I want to say, “IT IS, ALREADY.”
It’s called the WildRose Party of Alberta.
The Progressives are not the right, the are the Left.
They got the Alberta government deep into debt borrowing money to grow and BUY the Public Union Sector vote.
By what twisted measure do you people who support them even dare to call them conservative in any way?
“carry on with their agenda”
And what agenda might that be? The infamous “hidden agenda” that non-socialist parties always seem poised and ready to spring on an unsuspecting electorate? The same “hidden agenda” that Stephen Harper and Brad Wall had been waiting 8 years to implement? It must be one helluva agenda or else it’s really well hidden.
I wish these socialists would get some new material.
Progressive conservatives abtrapper, progressive through and through.
The number of actual non socialists in Alberta couldn’t fill one of the Jubilee auditoriums. Your choices are between a populist happy-faced socialist Party (WRP), a corrupt, over-spent, happy-faced socialist Party of cronyism (PCs) and the dour-faced, green-theocracy, sophomoric socialists of the zombie-left currently in power. The pampered, unionized public sector bureaucrats now run the province regardless of who is in power.
Alberta is as degraded a culture as anywhere else in the country. The existence of energy and a legacy of happy-faced (more or less pro-business) socialists in power that managed not to kill the golden goose while spending like crazy on a pampered populace brought it to the present. That culture won’t change with the party in power therefore if you want the dour-faced socialist party out of power look to BC or Saskatchewan and unite under some banner of happy-faced socialism. It won’t take you in the right direction but it will slow the decline and in Canada that’s as good as it gets.
WRP has consistently stood on the platform of MLA recall.
I think that’s different. I think that alone is a new level of accountability that is unique and sets them apart.
I completely agree with Oz. The Alberta PCs have no right to the C as they are not Conservatives at all!! They are progressives or Liberals or someone NDP even but they are NOT conservatives. Wild Rose are the only Conservative party in Alberta and if they merge, it would still be better than the PCs but not as good as just blowing up the PC party and having wild rose as it is.