CalgaryLiberal

Take one of their polices as an example: MLA pay.

They just want to toss the subject to an independent committee. Huh. Well, err, that’s nice and all, but shouldn’t it be up to the people of Alberta rather than a bunch of people that the common Albertan doesn’t even know?

The ALP provided for this at their policy convention last month–in fact, they made it so that all pay increases for MLA required that those increases would not take place until after an election.

So Albertans would chose whether or not their tax monies were being used well. They can toss out the bugger if they don’t think so, or they can increase his pay if they believe that he/she did well by their book.

And their other policies? Mindless, center of the road, never-insult-any-one-else, say nothing, and low key stuff. There’s nothing new here.

A provincial police force? Not going to happen. Klein ruled it out for a reason.

An Albertan constitution “Within the framework of Canada”? Well, err, so they’re adding rights that have been enshrined for a solid 1,000 years via common law and property rights. And the emphasis on adding “Free Speech” to the human rights code is strange, since it’s already included in the now 20 year old Albertan Bill of Rights.

And bringing up gun control? It’s a say nothing resolution. It panders to everyone by saying the party doesn’t want to stop people from owning guns but tosses “arbitrary reason” as a clarifying phrase so that, in fact, a WAP policy would be that they would remove the rights of gun owners for non-arbitrary reasons… Which is, essentially, saying that that they accept gun control, but they don’t accept gun control, but they do accept gun control. The writer of the resolution is playing both sides.

The support of nuclear power resolution is interesting. In fact, that’s quite a draw for me. The thing that’s troubling with it though is that it wont pass–the libertarian faction of the WAP wont let it pass, the climate change denialists will vote against it out of principle,  and fearful folks will vote it down out of being ill-informed on the subject.

It’s just lame. And it’s the same old game. It’s just a smorgasbord of old Reform and Progressive Conservative policy points, with old tired ideas, and not an ounce of sense. The Wildrose Alliance in their policy conference is playing it safe and saying nothing, essentially.

Personally, I think they’re scared of their 15% “solid” support in the polls. It’s down quite a bit from their leadership vote last year. And they’re scared of the drop in people thinking Alberta is heading in the wrong direction:

The results show that 64% of Albertans believe the government is on the right track more or less, and only 31% believe it is on the wrong track more or less.

The WAP are acting conservatively. They’re making small policy on big issues. It’s lame and it is simply more of the same.

As I wrote before on another post, the WAP is in trouble in more ways than one. They’re just not tough enough.

2 Responses to “Not too impressed with the WAP policy book. It’s lame and more of the same.”