Alberta is Changing - But for the Better?

There is a fascinating set of op-eds in today's Edmonton Journal that I recommend highly to every Albertan who wants a real change in the political culture and direction of this province.

BLACK DAYS FOR THE SWANN
Graham Thomson chronicles (and foreshadows?) the plight of David Swann and the Alberta Liberals.  They have turned into spectators not participants as the political ground shifts beneath them...and everyone else.  Given the ineptness of the Stelmach PCs and the unease of the real agenda of the Alliance, the Liberals should be soaring in the polls and the natural alternative for informed engaged and progressive thinking Albertans.  It has not happened.  Asking why this is the case is pointless now.  What to do about the rise of the right and the self-righteous is the key question now.

We have to do something about the ugly side of politics if good guys like Ed Stelmach and David Swann are politically  sand-bagged and personally crucified by dark forces of self interest and personal power aspirations.  Democracy needs am makeover in this province.

PRESTON MANNING IS WISE BUT TOO NARROW
Next up is a very well reasoned essay by former Reform leader Preston Manning saying the PCs best reinvigorate with a new leader of it is "game over."  Like so many on the enthocentric far right, they tend to drink too much of their own bathwater.  Manning does that in spades.  He only sees the Wildrose Alliance as a viable alternative.  Given his history and the pack he runs with, that narrow view is understandable, but he is a much wiser observer of the political scene to be so myopic.  

Take his commentary and replace Wildrose Alliance with Alberta Party each time.  Except for the name and a few other changes the story is the same one. (apologies to Neil Diamond - I stole that line from his song "I Am I Said").  The emergence and growth of the Alberta Party shows a citizen's movement morphing into a political party with spirit, energy and an attitude that the status quo nor a return to the 50s is not the preferred future for Alberta.  With our gifts, talents and skills Alberta should aspire beyond the "Alberta Advantage" attitude of being the best in the world.  We need a new "Alberta Aspiration" to be the best for the world.

Preston Manning has a clear understanding of the situation in Alberta but his solution lens is too narrow.  There are other political options emerging to the Wildrose Alliance...like the Alberta Party.  There are other forums emerging beyond his Centre for Democracy for the Citizen's Assembly to occur...like a refocused Reboot Alberta to become a think-tank to offset the Libertarian harshness of the Fraser Institute and the Fundamentalist framing of the Manning Centre.

I have a lot of time for Preston Manning but like the rest of us, he is captive of his own history and experiences.  Don't be fooled by the limited options he presents...there are others. But do reflect on his analysis and ideas...that is the value he provides to the future focus of the Next Alberta.

Manning Centre Event Offered Nothing New for Alberta Politics

I spent an enjoyable day at the Manning Centre for Democracy Future of Alberta wonkfest on Saturday.


Other bloggers have done some great analysis of the event. read Chris LaBossiere, DJKelly and Duncan Kinney for examples. I find myself agreeing with all of them. I have attended many such events and have designed and deployed dozens of them. The format was about as traditional as you could get and it served the purposes of the organizers. It was not conducive for any affective and reflective conversation because 15 minutes with pre-set tasks and pressure for a quick consensus really erodes any opportunity for a nuanced understanding of topics.

I would caution people who want to follow up on the reporting of the “results” of the event to take them with a grain of salt. The event had some non-conservatives in the room, including Linda Duncan, the NDP MP from Edmonton Strathcona. For an invitation only event, it was a pretty white, male and mostly my age group. There were some younger people, many of them from the Reboot Alberta movement and more than a token number of women too.

It was interesting to observe who did not show up. The absence of the PC Caucus was most notable. Ken Allred the PC MLA from St Albert was there all day Saturday and Kyle Fawcett was “debating” Daniele Smith on Friday night. Ken told me he was dismayed more of his colleges did not make the effort. The event was overtly designed to promote what Preston Manning calls “small c conservative principles” and it did just that. To presume a designed discussion by over what shade of blue the future of Alberta should be is helpful for the Wildrose Alliance and could have been good for the Progressive Conservative Party too…if they bothered to show up.

What happened yesterday was a conservative value set validation by conservatives for conservatives with a presumption that the outcomes would be a rough draft policy blueprint for Albertans to follow. I think that is how the results will be presented by the Manning Centre. The political shifts that are bubbling below the surface in the minds of Albertans are much more complex. That complexity inherent in the issues addressed will not be captured with the 15 minutes of time allowed for participants to express their opinions and ideas at the tables.

I really enjoyed the folks at my table and it was good to catch up with folks like John McDougall, recently retired head of the Alberta Research Council, Don Diduck from the Alberta Congress Board, Dr. Richard Plain, Health Economist and former Mayor of St Albert, Edwin Errickson the leader of the Alberta Party, Colin Jackson former head of the Epcor Centre in Calgary and WAP MLA Paul Hinman. Naheed Nenshi was there too and I got to congratulate my friend Shannon Stubbs on her new job as Danielle Smith's new Executive Assistant.

I especially enjoyed the presentations from the University of Lethbridge Political Scientist Peter McCormick on citizen participation, Marlo Raynolds of the Pembina Institute on conservative environmental approaches and Mike Percy’s excellent information on the future of the Alberta economy. The other presentations, not so much!

What I saw come out of this event was predictable and perpetuation of traditional conservative thinking. I did not see anything that made me think that there is something new and refreshing coming from the “small c conservative” approach to politics and policy. If the outcomes from this weekend are what the conservatives see as the future of Alberta, I have to say it looks more like a passion to repeat the past. I saw nothing about them being able to rethink, redesign and be able to adapt to the new economic, environmental, societal and political realities. I saw nothing new, nuanced or newsworthy except the same-old same-old stuff of personality based leadership driven politics.

I was glad I went and got to spend some time with old friends, meet some new people and many who said they wanted to come to Reboot2.0.  I also got to hear from a few smart speakers who came to share their knowledge. But was this a game-changing event? Maybe it was a positive event for the WAP and a less than tepid event for the PCs.  But it had little that was new to offer to help Alberta live up to its potential or to create the kind of the change Alberta needs to make in order to adapt to new realities.

So now it is time to focus on Reboot2.0 at the end of February.  That is where change will start as a wider range of concerned Albertans gather together to share their hopes and feeling about the future of our province.

Joe Clark's York University Convocation Address

I have never had a "guest blogger" on this Blog and this post is not technically that either. It is however the text of a recent Convocation Address given to the Graduating Class at York University and delivered by the Rt. Honourable Joe Clark.

I call myself a "Joe Clark Tory" and share his sense of what Canada is and can become. These days our politics are critically short of statesmen but Joe Clark, Peter Lougheed, Paul Martin and Preston Manning fit that discription to my mind. We could use a bunch more.

Here, for your reading pleasure, and with his permission, is what Joe recently said about Canada; a country still too good to lose.


YORK HONOURARY DEGREE

I am honoured to accept this degree, (I remember keenly that, a quarter century ago, when my political career took one of its sideways turns, York offered me a refuge at the Schulich School,) and I thank you all for inviting me to be part of a graduating class which has an unusual capacity to change and shape our world.

Fifty years ago, York University was born into an era dominated and traumatized by a Cold War between two superpowers who each had the will, and the nuclear weapons, to destroy the other. There was a name for that nuclear standoff. It was Mutual Assured Destruction. It had an acronym – M.A.D. – Mad.

Thirty years ago, this month, the promise of the steady evolution of China was shaken by the tanks in Tiananmen Square. Today, with some important lessons learned, China is one of the two most powerful nations in the world.

Short weeks ago, the caricature of Iran was of a vibrant society turned monolithic, controlled by its clerics. It is evidently not monolithic – and millions of its citizens, whatever their religious faith, are demonstrating a democratic faith which we can only envy.

Four days ago, a Canadian-led research team announced it has discovered where the AIDs virus hides in the human body. The team also announced it was moving its 25 scientists to the United States, because Canada has cut its science funding.

And, as soon as the weather allows, Julie Payette will be back in space.

This is a world changing faster than it ever did before. There is literally no predicting what you can do with your life – or what kind of world you can shape.

The American broadcaster Tom Brokaw coined a term for that cohort of his fellow citizens who survived a Depression, fought a world war, and built a superpower. He called them, modestly, “the greatest generation”.

We should not assume that our greatest generations are behind us.

And we genuinely modest Canadians should realize that some of the most promising capacities for future accomplishment are right here, in a Canada which combines wealth, and aspiration, and freedom, with a profound respect for the diversity that is the defining characteristic of the world that is emerging.

The transformations in this modern world can sharply increase Canada’s international influence and relevance. The Cold War was animated by ideology, and the post-Cold War by a faith in trade and economic growth. Now, the critical conflicts are rooted in culture, and stoked by poverty and inequality. In many cases, the causes have been latent a long time. Their catalyst is a general sense of shared grievance, or of holy mission. Those conflicts cannot be resolved by mere military power or “the magic of the market”. There is no real central command, no driving interest in economic growth.

So, where the roots of conflict are different, the remedies must be different. The issue now is bridging hostile cultures -- and the indispensable international attributes are the ability to draw differences together, to manage and respect diversity, and to earn and generate trust. Those are the traditional and genuine signature qualities of Canada, rooted not just in our history but in our behaviour, day to day. Our diversity, the growing equality of rights in Canada, and our example and success as a society are Canadian assets, as important, in this turbulent era, as our resource and material wealth.

And there is a warning. If we fail to invest our distinct international assets, our place in the world will decline. In the conventional terms of economic growth, there is a roster of countries which could overtake us. The Goldman Sachs projection of the world’s “largest economies by 2050” puts Canada 16th, a little smaller than Vietnam, a little larger than the Philippines.

But if we marry our economic strength with these new assets of international relevance, we can be a significant and positive influence in the world taking shape.

We have all learned to be suspicious of nationalism, and of the extremes and the violence to which it can lead. But a sense of nation can also be a motivating source of purpose and of pride, both an instrument and a guide to what we can become, as individuals, and as a community.

Beyond our wealth, our freedom, our ability to aspire: what distinguishes Canada?

I argue it is our tradition of diversity, which has characterized this large land literally for centuries.

Long before Europeans settled here, our Aboriginal peoples were as diverse as the geographies and climates which formed them – from the nations of the Plains, to the Woodland, to the Innu, to the art and seamanship of the Haida, to the caucus of the Algonquin, and the longhouse of the Iroquois and Huron.

And after Europeans settled, and disputed, and fought the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, the side which won that battle did not treat the side which lost as a vanquished people. On the contrary. We kept the French language and the English. We kept the civil code and the common law. We kept for almost a century the seigniorial system of land distribution – fly today over the Red River in Manitoba, and see as evidence the long strips of farm land stretching back from the water.

We deliberately respected the minority – and the minority culture – and that set the pattern which made it possible for wave upon wave of different cultures – from Europe, and Asia, and the Middle East, and Africa, and the Americas, and everywhere -- to come here, and co-operate here in relative harmony and respect.

Of course, there are tensions in Canada, and prejudice, and discrimination, and bursts of violence. There is the continuing scar of the conditions of life of our Aboriginal peoples. And there are other vibrant multicultural countries. But Canada may be the most successful country in the world at bridging cultural differences. Our own culture is to respect cultures.

These qualities are in our history and our nature, but they are not our birth-right. They have always to be earned.

This country was built against geography, against north-south economics, against the prejudice that cultural differences should set people permanently apart. Yet now, we are wealthy, lucky, increasingly self-absorbed. Without some sense of common purpose or vocation, we could become smaller than our whole, burrowing in to our regions, or our economic sectors, or our private lives and diversions.

Canada has always been an act of will. We didn’t come together naturally. We don’t stay together easily. Confederation was an act of will. So was Medicare. So was equalization. So was the Charter of rights. So was free trade.

As graduates today, you each have your own plans and hopes and aspirations. But remember this about this country, whether you are a Canadian, or an admirer of Canada. Our future will reflect your will.

You could not have a better place to prepare. For all its 50 years, York is a relatively young University – others are more deeply rooted in the Canadian past. York’s distinction is as the University of the Canada that is emerging – as diverse as the country is, urban, occasionally controversial, accomplished and outward-reaching.

I wish you well, I wish us well, and am honoured to be part of this community of graduates.



IT IS JUST ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF WHY HE WAS ONCE CALLED "CAPTAIN CANADA"