Your guide to the Alberta election
FIND OUT WHERE CANDIDATES STAND ON THE ISSUES, WHO’S RUNNING IN YOUR RIDING AND HOW THE CAMPAIGN HAS UNFOLDED
For Albertans accustomed to sleepwalking through their provincial elections, the last four weeks of the 2012 campaign has provided a sudden, jarring wake-up call.
Voters have been exposed to a “bust” bus, Dani-dollars, Twitter tiffs, bigotry claims, robocall controversy, the best political debate in years, multibillion-dollar election promises and enough intrigue for a John le Carre novel.
Even Rip Van Winkle couldn’t snooze through this ruckus.
And the most critical piece of this drama has yet to play out.
On Monday, voters will determine the course of the province and the fate of the 41-year Progressive Conservative dynasty.
Will Albertans choose a new party in the Wildrose, or re-elect the long-ruling Tories? What crucial role could the Liberals and NDP play — particularly if voters elect the first minority government in its history?
For the first time in many years, it seems nothing is guaranteed.
Yet commentators believe one thing is certain: the outcome will rattle Alberta’s political bedrock.
“Whatever happens on Monday, politics in Alberta have fundamentally changed, whether Wildrose forms the government or not,” said Duane Bratt, a political scientist at Mount Royal University in Calgary.
“We’ll have a real competitive electoral system. It won’t end. It won’t be the way things were on Tuesday if the Tories scratch out a majority government. And if they don’t scratch out a majority government, then we’re in unseen territory.”
It was always going to be a historic election contest. The two front-running parties are headed by women — Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith and PC Leader Alison Redford — and Alberta has never elected a female premier in its 107 years.
Smith, 41, is a former journalist, small business lobbyist and landowners’ rights advocate who won the leadership of her party
WHATEVER HAPPENS ON MONDAY, POLITICS IN ALBERTA HAVE FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGED, WHETHER WILDROSE FORMS THE GOVERNMENT OR NOT DUANE BRATT, POLITICAL SCIENTIST, MOUNT ROYAL UNIVERSITY
in 2009 when it was called the Wildrose Alliance.
Redford, 47, is a former provincial justice minister and human rights lawyer, who captured a surprise victory to become the PC party leader and the premier last October.
The campaign has been a contrast in styles.
Smith — whether posing with a lamb or pulling on cowboy boots — appears like a folksy populist, though she is a libertarian.
Redford has appeared much as she did as premier, sporting a conservative style even as she tried her hand at skateboarding for a photo op in Medicine Hat. She is from the “progressive” wing of the PC party.
The contest between the two sides has been bitter at times, exposing the rifts that divide Alberta conservatives. Some call the rivalry an uncivil war.
The Wildrose has branded the Tories as tired, corrupt and entitled. PCS have portrayed the Wildrose as untested, intolerant and even frightening.
While much of the race has focused on the contest between the PCS and Wildrose, it’s no less important for the Liberals or NDP.
Liberal Leader Raj Sherman, a 45-year-old emergency room doctor and a former Tory MLA, has been hammering away at the PCS as he tries to keep his party’s base from melting away in strategic voting on April 23.
NDP Leader Brian Mason, 58, who has often called for civility during the rough-and-tumble contest, will be looking to scoop up enough seats — especially in Edmonton — that his party could play a pivotal part in swinging the balance of power in a minority government.
Together, all four leaders have given Albertans one of the most important, interesting, fiery and unpredictable campaigns in decades — even if it’s been overwhelming at times.
“This is four-way pingpong every day,” said longtime political analyst David Taras of Mount Royal University.
“It’s difficult for the public to keep up because there are so many players and there are so many side games. And there are so many issues that it’s difficult for the average citizen to keep up with just how fast and hard and brutal this game has been.”
Indeed, it’s been a turbulent, 28-day contest.
But for all of its recent nastiness, the campaign began in bizarre — nearly comical — fashion with the rollout of the Wildrose tour bus.
The positioning of Smith’s photo above a set of tires caused a stir on Twitter that became fodder for American chat shows like Jimmy Kimmel, Jay Leno and Ellen Degeneres.
Smith also laughed off the “bust” bus incident, with the tires more appropriately positioned in time for Redford to drop the writ on March 26.
Although some pundits saw the gaff as an early stumble for Wildrose, it was the Tories that observers say struggled the most out of the gate.
In the run-up to the election call, Redford’s PCS were hit by a string of political migraines — limiting the terms of a public healthcare inquiry, news of a “bullying” letter sent by Tory MLA Hector Goudreau to a northern school board and Gary Mar’s startling suspension as Alberta’s envoy to Asia.
But the controversy that raised the greatest furor was the revelation in January that almost a quarter of all MLAS had been paid at least $1,000 a month for serving on an all-party committee that hadn’t met since 2008.
In the weeks that followed, MLAS from the Liberal and Wildrose parties pledged to give back their pay, with Redford calling the move a political “stunt.”
But under heavy fire from opposition parties, she asked Tory MLAS to return six months of committee pay — the period she’d been premier.
Then, after the PCS dropped more than a dozen points in pre-election polls, Redford told her MLAS to refund every penny or be kicked out of the party — although it’s uncertain how many have done so yet.
The ruckus hasn’t died down and remains one of the campaign’s biggest issues, Taras said.
“This became the symbol of public anger, of old ways, of old boys, of everything that people had come to distrust about government,” Taras added.
Just as the Tories were hoping to get some traction heading into the second week of the race, a PC staffer knocked them off track by using Twitter to question why Smith doesn’t have kids.
The Wildrose leader later explained she and her husband wanted to have children but could not. The staffer resigned.
Redford has since made a number of key campaign pledges, including 50 new schools and 140 family care health centres. But those promises have also met with spending criticism — even from the Liberals and NDP.
“It looked like a campaign without discipline, without a message,” Taras observed.
“You never knew what was coming next.”
The Tories — and the question of whether they should be re-elected — was the focus of the campaign right into the first televised debate, Bratt said.
For the most part, the rhetorical slugfest saw the three opposition parties gang up on Redford, with no apparent winner.
While Redford held her own, commentators said she didn’t deliver the knockout blow that the PC party needed.
Smith didn’t land any haymakers, either, but she looked competent and credible, Bratt added.
“One of the reasons that Smith did so well is that they ganged up on Redford,” he said. “But that was clearly a defining moment because this was (Albertans’) first real long look at Smith ... and she didn’t look scary.”
Sherman also impressed observers by showing he wasn’t a one-issue candidate focused on health; Mason delivered the kind of solid performance NDP supporters have come to expect from their leader.
But with Smith’s performance and her party ahead in opinion polls, the big question of the campaign seemed to suddenly switch from whether the Tories should be re-elected to whether Wildrose is ready to govern.
And in the final week of the contest, that discussion focused on some of Wildrose’s more controversial policies and candidates.
Previously, some of the biggest criticism facing Wildrose was its plans to give Albertans a slice of future surpluses in an energy dividend that pundits labelled “Dani-dollars.”
Opponents also charged the party was planning to inject more private care into the health system, though Smith said Wildrose is committed to making changes under the umbrella of the Canada Health Act.
In the last week, however, there’s been greater scrutiny of what critics call Wildrose’s insular “firewall” policies, such as its aggressive stance on equalization and plans to study the feasibility of a provincial police force and an Alberta Pension Plan.
But the biggest headache for the Wildrose in recent days has been headlinemaking comments by two of its candidates, which has focused even more attention on the party’s position on “conscience rights.”
Smith has faced a backlash over issues concerning racial identity and gay rights, thanks to Calgary candidate Ron Leech saying religious minorities couldn’t represent the community as well as Caucasians could, and Edmonton candidate Allan Hunsperger who blogged that homosexuals would end up in a “lake of fire.”
The PCS and NDP jumped at the comments, but the sharpest rebuke came from Sherman, who went so far as to call the party “bigots.”
Smith, who’d already declared herself pro-choice and pro-gay marriage, fired back at critics. A Wildrose government would not tolerate discrimination against any individual regardless of ethnicity, religion or background, Smith said.
But after a long campaign and a tough finish, Bratt says the question in the minds of voters Monday may be what’s going to drive them more: “Your anger at the PCS or your fear of Wildrose?”
The Liberals and NDP — or even Evergreen and the Alberta Party — will hope enough people will look at the front-runners and opt for something different.
Nothing is determined just yet.
With roughly one in five voters still undecided in the final week of the campaign, there’s still lots of room for surprise.
“Monday is going to be very, very interesting and what I predict more than anything is there will be a lot of very, very close races,” said pollster Ian Large of Leger Marketing.
“At this point, it’s all in the hands of the voters.”