Alberta Greens Nominate More Candidates Than Wildrose Alliance But Are Cut Out of the TV Debate! What a Dumb Move!

Congratulations to George Read and the Alberta Greens for nominating 79 candidates this election. That exceeds significantly the Wildrose Alliance Party 61 candidate nominations. The WAP would have had access to a larger and better oiled political machine, plus, I presume, assiatance from federal Conservatives who are sympathetic to them. Good for the Alberta Greens. Talk about grassroots.

GREENS COULD DO WELL THIS ELECTION:

I am on the verge of predicting that the Alberta Greens will be the most successful party this election based on increased popular vote. I see a number of trends happening that benefit the Greens. I will wait for a week or so before I actually stick my neck out on this prediction - but I see a trend forming.

The world is run by those who show up and as a result nobody ever wasted a vote. Only no shows on Election Day are a waste. So the disenchanted and disgruntled Albertan who are not happy with any main line party can have a choice. If they want to show up they can either spoil their ballot – but that does no good because they don’t realy get counted. Or they can park their ballot with the Greens.

Disenchanted supporters of the Tories, Liberals and NDP, who don’t think staying home on Election Day is very effective at sending a message have a choice. Those who are not so ticked off with their party as to abandon ship and switch to another party may decide to park their votes with the Greens as a means to show their own party they are not happy.

Previously disengaged non-partisan citizens, and those who are engaged but undecided, and a big chunk of them are women and youth, can comfortable park ballot or even chose the Greens as a preference.

I think the Green popular vote is about to blossom this election and could be 10 -12% of total votes cast if voters get ticked enough to get actively engaged and not just sit back and be quietly enraged. Will the Alberta Greens elect anyone? Not likely because their resources and support is too thinly spread out to make an concentrated impact at the polls.

I do think there are a few Green candidates to watch on election night. One is Joe Anglin in Lacombe Ponoka who rose to prominence in the EUB spy scandal incidents and was very effective for Alberta farmers in thier plight. The other Green with a chance, I am told, is Edwin Erickson in Drayton Valley Calmar who came in second last time. He has a much more formidable PC candidate this time in Dianne McQueen, the popular Mayor of Drayton Valley. Dianne defeated the incumbent PC candidate in a nomination fight and is a formidible campaigner.

GREENS CUT OUT OF THE TV DEBATE - NOT GOOD!

The Alberta Greens have been cut out of the TV Debate this Thursday by the MSM television people. That decision is presumably based on the fact they don’t have any seats. That is a bad and wrong-headed decision. Pam Barrett as NDP leader got to debate in the 1997 when they were shut out of seats. There is precedent.

There is a danger here for the television people due to this desision. Content control of the election campains is no longer absolute perview of televisoin networks and print media. Albertans now have the internet as an alternative interactive information source - and boy are they are using it. The power and reach of the internet strikes at the very heart of traditional institutionalized one-way message control of the MSM.

GREENS USE THE INTERNET TO GET DEBATE ANSWERS OUT - A BETTER SOLUTION:

George Read, the Alberta Green leader, is going to use the internet to respond to all the televised debate questions on YouTube and get the Alberta Green message out that way. Read’s on-line debate answers will be there on-line for the rest of the campaign and beyond. His content will be available long after the MSM televised debate content is gone and forgotten. Anyone who wants to see and hear his comments can do so when, where and how ever they wish, and as often as they wish. His audience will also be able to link, post and redistribute the Read YouTube videos to further expand his reach.

Cutting the Alberta Greens out of the television debate may be one of the biggest blunders the Alberta television networks ever did. Because this decision to cut the Greens is unfair and unjustified, it will drive more and more citizen away from conventional media and on to the Web for political content.

Election Campaigns are changing and so is the media coverage changing because of new media and Web 2.0 techniques. There are now real alternatives to get content and real conversations going about politics and public policy. Too bad our traditional television stations are out of touch with the new realities.

What Question Do You Want to Ask Alberta's Party Leaders in the Debate?

Kim Trynacity of the CBC will be one of the media panellists for the Alberta Election Debates to be televised on all networks this Thursday at 6:30 pm. On the CBC website she asked Albertans to suggest questions she should ask the leaders in the debate. The suggestions started rolling in on the Comments part of her Reporter’s Notebook on the CBC site.

Daveberta, Aaron Braaten and I will be blogging on the debate for the CBC website on Thursday night. I will be doing some commentary for the CBC on the debate and on-line commentary for the CBC on election night as well.

Reading the submitted questions on Kim's Notebook, I as struck by the range, complexity and context of the question suggestions in 2 days show me just how tough the life as a politician can be. We need to attract our best and brightest into public life. We need to quit degrading and debasing all politicians in gratuitous ways…but hold them strictly accountable and insist on performance. I know my cynical readers will be rolling their eyes by now. They will take the same stance towards politicians as the old lawyer joke that said it was 99% of lawyers that gave the rest a bad name.

If we continue devalue democracy by not participating in the political life of our province, and if we continue to debase our political representatives by cheap personal affronts we all suffer in the end.

For the most part this campaign has been more on issues than personalities. The critics who liken politics to a hardball blood sport are suggesting the issues are getting attention because of the “uninspiring personalities” of the political leaders in Alberta. I am OK with that because I think charisma-based populists politics is over rated. And before you ask, no Obama is not a charisma-based populist politician. He is much more than that – he is a transformative force of nature.

Alberta's Election is Half Over - Not Much Has Happened - Yet!

The Alberta election exits Week 2 and it moves lethargically into week three. The missteps by the mainstream parties of the opening day are done and nothing can be done about them. The "big" stories last week were very weak to say the least. The PCs seem to be always on defence punching from their back foot. The Liberals are showing lots fancy footwork and jumping around a lot but not punching a lot. The NDs are pretty much out of the ring but they running around the outside apron trying to stir up the crowd. The Wildrose Alliance candidates are busy in their livingrooms crafting home made lawn signs. Midweek, the Greens were just 4 seats short of mounting a full slate of candidates...impressive.

The last week saw the headlines preoccupied with stories about partisan appointments of Deputy Returning Officers. The media coverage and the attention getting machinery of the various political parties obligingly “engaged” on the "issue." Bottom line – this is something that should have and could have been fixed before the election. FIXING THIS IS A NO BRAINER.

Political parties should be far removed from the suggestion and selection of DROs. There is a need for absolute - not relative - independence of those who run the election machinery on the ground. That choice of DRO staffers must be the sole and absolute discretion of the Chief Returning Officer. Nothing more. Nothing less. It is not a good enough response to say that there has not been a problem in the past so why is this an issue because there is no problem now.

Doing the right thing, in the right way, all the time...even when no one is looking...is what citizens ought to reasonably expect from political parties and their election procedures. Whose election is it anyway? Elections belong to citizens, not the political parties.

The current “recommendation” model for DROs is old style arcane power/patronage politics that is unacceptable and must go. We PCs have been way to slow to catch up to this issue and put it to bed. I can’t figure out why we are so far behind on it and so slow on getting past it. There are some really big ticket issues of long term significance that deserve attention in this election.

Why are we getting knocked off the puck and appering to be trying to sustain this past stupidity? Stelmach's move to establish all party legislative policy committees last year was a democratic reform that hard to do - and he did it. To cease and desist on appearances of political interference in the election procedures is an easy democratic reform. Get it done Ed!

This past week saw the union sponsored attack ads, under the pseudonym “Albertans for Change, get a big boost in the bucks. AUPE, the GOA staff union, ponies up a cool $300K to keep the campaign alive. I hear lots of grumbling in some labour circles that their unions have been pretty useless at representing the membership’s interests as of late. I wonder if the motivation behind this TV advertising spending against the PCs is as much about showing the union membership that their unions are actually doing something “for them.” Do the boys running the Alberta Building Trades Council think that playing politics with membership dues at election time is going to appease their membership for what many see as a lack of their union's effective performance? Not all union members vote against the PC Party so I can imagine this use of union dues for political attack ads will not be receiving unanimous membership support. At the polls nor in the union halls.

Can you imagine what the union friendly NDP and Brian Mason could have done with all that money being spent on an Ontario advertising agency and for the cost of the TV time too? It would have at least paid out the NDP debt, if nothing else. Brian Mason would likely have had to refuse it anyway because it would have been BIG money running politics again. That is something he has been on about last week in criticizing the big corporate money behind the PCs and the Alberta Liberals.

Week three is coming and I wonder what we will see. There are lots of surveys being circulated to candidates. I have seen those sent to PC candidates so far and I presume all parties are getting them. My post tomorrow will be on the good, the bad and the ugly about survey’s that have come in to date. I will comment on examples in each category. The source of the bad one so far is a surprise.

Yes We Can

This is a video that will grab your spirit...and lift it - enjoy!

Stelmach Gets Tough on Crime and in an Enlightened Way.

I like the PC platform on Crime. I have been involved for awhile in the revitalization of “Alberta Avenue” (118 Ave in Edmonton) and have seen first hand the positive impact on a community that results from sustained, concentrated and effective police work. Thanks to Chief Boyd, the members Edmonton Police Service and the Edmonton Police Commission for their terrific work on 118 Ave. This is a perfect example of what can be done - if the necessary resources were made available for the police to do their job.

This 118 Ave area was mostly about drug deals and prostitution. It was where many of the mortgaged frauds took place and where great police work resulted in guilty pleas by the perpetrators of the frauds. Expanding powers of municipalities to tackle crime like shutting down drug houses will provide an enormous payback towards safer communities all over Alberta.

Now 118 Ave is emerging as a revitalized neighbourhood full of artists, festivals and new businesses. New facilities are in progress in the area, there are new neighbours restoring and rebuilding properties. There are new accessible housing developments that are on the verge of becoming reality. Saying you are tough on crime and having the necessary sustained resources to actually be tough on crime is a big difference. Tough action on crime in 118 Ave area has made a big difference to the renewal of life and has added to quality of living on 118 Ave.

I am told that there are chronic criminals who commit the majority of the crimes in Edmonton. This fact is recognized in the Stelmach plan for getting tough on crime as he commits to target repeat offenders. Good idea.

The plan is big on catching bad guys but there is so much more to it. It is very progressive too in that it acknowledges and sets out to deal with some of the major root causes of crime like drugs and mental health issues. More funds for treatment and revised specialized courts are part of the PC plan to better deal with these kinds of “criminals.” These are a meaningful and enlightened approaches to making our communities safer and more liveable – for everyone!

The focus on exploitation of children is already in process but it needs more resources to be effective. The Stelmach plan on crime is on to addressing that concern too. A continued focus on family violence and Fetal Alcohol consequences are examples of more progressive steps in the right direction.

The challenge is proper allocation of resources and that means more money has to be dedicated to properly pay the people who work on these concerns in our communities. We need to show how much we value those community based staffers. They are the folks who deal with these problems involving children, spouses, elders, addicts and the developmentally disabled day in and day out. They are the real keys to any successful outcomes in these policy areas.

Good job Ed and Co. This is the kind of policy announcement I have been waiting for. I think it is a great move in the right direction for all of Alberta.