Alberta. Something is Broken

Let me run through the last two months of scandals to you, dearest reader.

• 45 illegal donations from universities, public institutions, and municipalities to the PC party may or may not be paid back. Daveberta says the PCs are confused and sending out mixed messages.
• There has been no pay back on Jordan Katz’s $450,000 donation to the PC war chest. The person who allegedly organized the donation is, guess what, has now been named to the Alberta Economic Development Authority.
• Tory-tied bigwigs were also tied to the Helios clinic that provided them sped up access and queue-jumping at a University of Calgary facility.
• And the-decision-that-wasn’t-her-decision-or-were-involved-in-the-decision-while-making-an-impact-on-the-decision by Ms. Redford on awarding her ex-husband’s law firm to collect hundreds of millions from the province is described as cold, legalistic, and ignores the actual problem that the Tories have brought upon themselves: the wrecking ball they’ve taken to the trust they’ve somehow gotten from Albertans.

It’s not their fault, the governing party cries. It’s never their fault.

It’s the economy — it collapsed, there’s bitumen bubble, it’s this or that. Rod Love (Ralph Klein’s campaign manager and powerful Progressive Conservative backroomer) takes a hammer to smash the idea that it’s a failure on the part of the government that infrastructure has been lagging behind all these years — and does it gleefully. And the current budgetary situation? A firm over-estimation of revenues from oil, that many saw a year in advance of not being even remotely close to reality, and a severe underestimation of the differential between what the world oil price is and what Albertans sell it for.

In the end, it’s not the Tories fault, they exclaim. It’s not their fault, even though these issues has been showcased again and again for decades. And they’ll find a legal way out — like the legalistic squirming from accountability in Tobaccogate — or push the blame onto doctors and teachers.

At one point this broken party, with a broken message, and a set of broken people with broken principles, will have to break down. And it will happen sooner rather than later.

Vincent St Pierre

Vincent St. Pierre is a fifth generation Albertan and Calgarian blogger. (Read more.)