Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

Challenge Number One: Her Caucus is Divided

This problem is just a problem in terms of unity and cohesiveness of messaging: As premier Redford can buy the support of several individuals who are leaders in the party. This is why Liepert and Horne are in cabinet, along with Morton and others, who would have split otherwise. This problem can lead into bigger and larger threats against her premiership.

This becomes an issue if she doesn’t balance the next budget (likely by cutting infrastructure spending), touches royalty rates without proper consultation, or the Progressive Conservatives mess up in some way, shape, or form. This added pressure will cause problems in cabinet that’ll likely split the party.

Also, the balance of her cabinet is not good: she has cut the amount of women down demonstrably (down to three, including herself!) and there’s a noticeably weight given to Calgary MLAs and Northern Albeta MLA. One of the noticeable trends in Albertan politics is the regionalism of blocs into Edmonton, Calgary, southern Alberta, and northern Alberta; And the way she has shifted her cabinet to represent these blocks are imbalanced. She has nine cabinet ministers in northern Alberta, four in southern Alberta, and four between Calgary and Edmonton. This is a rural-northern biased cabinet. The new Chief of Staff, Stephen Carter, is showing a hand here with Redford’s cabinet choice: he’s focusing on shoring up northern Alberta and trying to balance the interests of Calgary and Edmonton.

This is a weakness in that it leaves southern Alberta open for the Wildrose, and the attempt to establish a status quo in the cities will prove difficult for her as the Liberals in Alberta start to get into election mode again.

Challenge Number Two: Her Promises

As Daveberta notes on his blog what Redford has essentially done with her cabinet is fill it with Gary Mar’s picks. With Liepert in charge of finance, Horne in charge of healthcare, and Morton in charge of energy, her attempts for investigations into the medical scandals of the last two years, the royalty debacle, and other issues she ran on a lot of her promises will likely go unfulfilled.

This means that the people she appealed to during her campaign for the leadership will be turned off quite quickly. This harms her personal base,

While she has brought back the promised $107 million back to the education budget it is too late because the staff assistants, lab techs, and support workers wont be brought back 6 weeks into the school year. Also, those funds are likely to be tossed into the reserves of the boards and other groups in the education system to buffer against more cuts from an uncertain government and uncertain party.

This is completely ignoring how Horne had been a prior advocate for Klein’s third way approach to healthcare. Privatization of healthcare was something that Redford spoke openly against in her campaign: but now we have one of the chief advocates for it in charge of health care.

Her ability to fulfill her promises will likely be demonstrably harmed by her cabinet and the party around her. It is likely going to take a miracle or a lot of political maneuvring on her part to get her agenda put through the legislature and by the government.

 Challenge Number Three: The Joint Wildrose-Liberal Threat

While the Wildrose are panicking right now (releasing schizophrenic videos like this) and the Liberals are beginning to earnestly prepare for an election, there is a threat on the periphery for Redford’s election plans.

As she goes into the next six to nine months she will have to define herself and, in reaction, these two other parties will respond. The Wildrose will appeal to conservatives and what Redford is not–a Conservative–and pull people away from her to build up their party. The Liberals will speak truth to power, as they have done quite well with Raj Sherman as leader, and pull in the people who voted her into the premiership into the Liberal party and rekindle their affection for the Liberals.

The inevitability is that the Liberals will showcase her and her party to be a fraud, with her going back on her policies and ongoing scandals (royalty reviews, etcetera), and the Wildrose pelting her with conservative communications, pulling away that core conservative group of fundraisers and organizers. As the above two challenges illustrates she has tried to balance the Conservative cohort with her centrist/left policies, but what will eventually happen is that she’ll be picked apart by both sides. And, little by little, the Redford government, incapable of a vision of either left or right or centrist, will be whittled down to what has become the fear and domination party of Alberta.

More on this in challenge number four…

Challenge Number Four: Forty Years Of History to Fight

There are bitter feuds, angry factions, and down-right illegal practices done by the natural governing party of Alberta, the Progressive Conservatives. And the most recent example? St. Paul, Alberta. It’s pork barrel politics, partisanship bleeding into running of government, and the threats and intimidation that comes from being in power for so many decades. University of Alberta professor Jim Lightbody says it is the norm in Alberta politics, too.

There are scandals in every corner, ready to be sprung on her and the Tory government. Scandals that have been created by Tory ineptitude and graft in many cases.

And the terrible thing about this institutionalized angst and interior-focused anger is that if one person chooses not to pursue a tactic another will without a second thought. It’s bitter, it’s angry, and it’s no holds barred. Even if Redford wants to change the system it’s too far gone: it’s been forty years of the same old thing, with the same people, and with the same practices. Redford, as  a minister for Ed Stelmach and long time Tory, is mired in the same mucky institution that has brought her the premiership. It doesn’t look like she’ll be able to beat back the four decades of Tory misrule and

There is a need for something new and a need to innovate in the legislature. The Progressive Conservatives don’t have the means, the people, or the willingness to do so. Redford isn’t a break with this history and there is no person in the Progressive Conservatives who are.

The Sunny Way?

This is, of course, one of Aesop’s fables and a favorite story of Wilfred Laurier. It’s a story about persuasion being superior to force, to working with others being superior to shutting down debate, and for strength of kindness over the intolerant attacks on others. I’ve written the story out below.

One day the West Wind and the Sun argued which of them was the most powerful. Soon an unfortunate student with a large overcoat was passing through the area where the two were debating. When the West Wind saw the passing student he saw a way to win the argument. He said to the Sun that whomever could take off that student’s coat would be the most powerful.

They agreed and soon the West Wind blew in earnest, knocking the student clear over a park bench. Knowing full well of the harsh wind that had knocked her over the student clung tightly to her coat and struggled to be on her way. The West Wind saw this. “How could he take away the student’s coat?”, he asked himself. After a moment he thought of a solution and began to blow hard, much harder, and aimed to rip off the student’s coat with more strength and power. The unfortunate student clutched her coat and found herself shelter to weather the storm of wind that the West had unleashed. More time passed after this, with the West Wind pushing himself to his full extent to tear away the shelter and the coat.

Yet, nothing.

The Sun asked the Wind to stop, and he did, and then the Sun allowed it heat to fall down onto the student. Now quite warm, the student removed her overcoat and walked away tweeting about the weirdest of weather.

The Hon. Laurier used this fable to describe what the federal Conservatives were doing against Manitoba in 1895 during its languages and schools debates. The Conservatives, then in government as is now, is and was dictating to a province that it should destroy its policies and be subservient to the federal government. Laurier saw it differently: he wanted to go forward “with the sunny way of patriotism, asking him to be just and to be fair, asking him to be generous to the minority, in order that we may have peace among all the creeds and races.”

Why I’m a Liberal

This tradition in the Liberal Party and this way of conceiving of solutions is why I am a Liberal. I’ve asked this question to many, and have received as many answers. There is a way to go about government that is strong yet fair, focused yet lenient, visionary yet accommodating, and that is forward and firm without being forgetful or negligent. It’s the sunny way, as first articulated by Aesop, interpreted by Laurier, and that is ever as important now.

What Does It Mean For Us Now, Anyway?

The way the Canadian justice system should operate is through kindness and not simply blind, arrogant punishment searching to scare others away from doing acts. Vengeance, while initially servicing an immediate emotional urge, doesn’t do anything afterwards. Those who commit crimes rarely even conceive of its punishments if caught. Vindictiveness serves no one after an act has been committed: it’s healing, it’s changing, and rehabilitating that sets individuals back onto the right track. Note that’s this for both the victim and the perpetrator–both need to be involved in healing.

The better way to to focus the system on handling people and the individuals needs of each, rather than dolling out punishments from up on high with no common sense or thought to the context. The federal Conservatives have opted to restrict judges, enact mandatory minimums to do away with the common sense and expertise of people in the justice system, and thoroughly undermine the thinking, breathing, and growing nature of our thousand year tradition of laws and protections.

The justice system also needs to be integrated with the health care system. The kindness inborn of the Sunny Way should focus us on using proper techniques, like Insite and other programs, to develop an branch to those weakest in our society to give them firstly safe haven and then a path out. This means bringing back the prison farms, that let prisoners ply their strength to the soil and build something–a first in many of their lives and a track that they can follow after leaving prison. This is based on kindness and knowledge that people will generally act in such a manner.

It also comes into play with Senate Reform. Stephan Dion has been championing the Sunny Way on this front for a long time: the Conservative are running over the provinces to put into effect a scheme that is against the constitution, doesn’t allow federal parties to partake in those races officially, and force the provinces to pay for a federal set of elections that would usurp their own democratic authority on the national level. Mr. Dion even made a speech on this subject last week (which you can find at Open Parliament). A better way that Dion quite well highlights is the same as Laurier’s: bring the people for a full and forthright discussion. Bring the provinces into the discussion. British Columbia has already voiced its willingness to discuss senate reform. So has Ontario.

Another example of this is Ms. Redford’s move to shut down the legislature, just like Harper did (twice!). The shut down of debate, the destruction of the ability of parliamentarians to talk, and the subversion of the democratic process, is a hideous prospect. And something that is the antithesis of the values she has tried to run on in her recent campaign for the leadership of the Progressive Conservatives.

The Sunny Way is about fighting for what’s right, the right process, and to bring out a call to inclusion across all people. Redford, the Wildrose, the Conservatives, and the NDP don’t do this. It’s the Liberal tradition that does this and the Liberal tradition that should be brought to the fore again.

So.. I’m not a Liberal now?

Every single time someone takes a potshot at Raj Sherman for his political past it’s an affront to me. He was a federal Liberal first in his political career… as was I. When I was in high school I was an engaged youth helping out in Calgary Centre-North, fought the Liberal cause, and soon started this blog. I was engaged first federally as a Liberal and then came over to the provincial Liberals two years later.

Let me make this clear: if there’s no room for Liberals like Raj Sherman then there’s no room for guys like me.

Every time someone says there’s been a coup or that someone can’t join this party I am personally undermined. I am hurt by this. I feel unwanted by those chattering folks and I feel that I am not valued as a contributor or as a person involved in the party. It’s poisonous and hurts the party.

Never mind its cooling effect on people looking to join a party. It’s hard enough finding people who want to join a party but these folks must, simply must, erect more barriers for good, earnest people from joining the movement.

This makes me angry to no end.

I want an open party that includes as many people as possible from all across Alberta. I am a Liberal and so are many Albertans in this province. We just need to be open enough to ask them to come to us and join us in replacing the Progressive Conservative government in Edmonton.

Like Raj I want to get into government, change Alberta for the better, and show Albertans that there is a better way. Just like Raj I am Liberal, and I am loving it.