2012 Alberta election post-mortem

I ended up ordering special software to get around the Great Firewall of China such that I'm not blocked from blogging after all (at least for this week, not sure yet if I'll renew).

In my last post I had considered expressing my suspicion that Wildrose would skid in the end because they were taking the populist route to such an unprecedented degree I wondered whether they could really drive straight into the teeth of "elite" opinion and win. I hinted at this when I noted that the federal Conservatives are not always offside with the public policy establishment and but declined to make a prediction since I did not really understand why Wildrose was riding as high in the polls as they were and my on-the-ground experience as a candidate in 2008 taught me that it's very difficult to predict without polls, never mind with them. I also thought it was a strategic mistake for Redford to make an issue about the "conscience rights" the Wildrose platform calls for and I'd stand by that in terms of keeping many traditional PC party voters home but I neglected to consider how she might pick up traditional Liberal and NDP voters to more than make up for the PC voters that might well have been long gone anyway.

I recall reading somewhere that when it comes to Canadian elections, the safest bet is on the most boring outcome and that certainly seems to be true in Alberta. The PCs go into the election with 60-some seats and they go out with... 60-some seats. La plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...

First, the best and worst outcomes of the night in terms of riding wins and losses:

MOST DISAPPOINTING:

Paul Hinman's failure to get re-elected in Calgary Glenmore is surely disappointing but creates a very important thought point that might get the Wildrose braintrust to rethink the road they have gone down. We win Glenmore in 2009 even before Danielle became leader, never mind before Rob Anderson was brought in and Tom Flanagan put in charge of policy, and we lose it in 2012. Hello! By far the biggest story of the night is the way urban voters turned away from Wildrose at the last minute and aside from Heather Forsyth, who enjoyed the advantages of incumbency, the only riding inside Edmonton or Calgary city limits to go Wildrose was Calgary-Shaw. Paul's fate, and the fact that Link Byfield didn't win anyway despite the current Wildrose obsession with the land bills, ought to be cause for pause but given that the Globe is reporting that on election night "Ms. Smith said her first priority as Leader of the Opposition will be rural issues" (and, according to other sources, won't do interviews today) suggests to me that perhaps she's OK with the party's current stance and isn't going to make a serious bid for premier in 2016 after all. With an overwhelmingly rural caucus seeking its own re-election, Danielle will have to have the confidence to push back against the flow if she's going to position Wildrose as any more urban friendly going forward.

The greatest disappointment then, in my mind, is not Calgary Glenmore which might prove instructive but Todd Loewen's loss in Grande-Prairie-Smoky. Todd is no political opportunist. We both ran under the Wildrose Alliance banner in 2008 and I thought the party was very fortunate to have Todd leading the way as our organizer in the Peace Country. For a conviction politician he is still very sensible and a great guy to work with.

MOST ENCOURAGING:

Doug Griffiths is by far my favourite Progressive Conservative and I would like to be non-partisan enough to say his win, which makes him the southernmost rural PC MLA excluding Banff, best result but the fact he has helped put Redford the Red (or "Alison Redflag" as my mother says) back into the premier's office restrains me. So I'm going to go with Shayne Saskiw's election as most encouraging.

As the only Wildroser elected north of Ponoka, Shayne's going to have even more influence than he already has on the party. I've boosted Shayne on this blog in the past and I'll admit that a good part of my enthusiasm is based on his resume. I just happen to think the resume is very important since legislator is, after all, a job. I haven't met Shayne personally and have heard mixed things about his character. I do know that he's no Todd Loewen when it comes to commitment to the conservative cause since after calling me in 2008 to say he supported my campaign (he lived near the Edmonton Clareview LRT station at the time) he later indicated on his Facebook page that he was a supporter of the not-very-nice and not-very-effective PC candidate who ran over me in 2008, Tony Vandermeer. That said Shayne is highly qualified to be a MLA and defies the hillybilly stereotype.

What to say about the result generally? The political career of Ted Morton should have created more doubt about whether Wildrose would triumph once voters stopped telling pollsters the uptrending newish party was their choice and actually dwelt on whether they supported a party that chose to pick a fight with the Globe and Mail and the "elite". Look at today's G&M editorial and what do they express concern about? "... public-sector pay in Alberta rose by 119 per cent in the first decade of the 21st century, a rate almost double that of the rest of Canada." We heard very little about this issue from Rob Anderson and the Wildrose, and into the vacuum entered old comments by Wildrose candidates Ron Leech and Alan Hunsperger. I understand the gameplan did not call for a vacuum and Flanagan's Five Points were supposed to be the focus of attention but if the media doesn't do it the voters at least will try to set up the election as some sort of choice and there's minimal controversy in an "Accountability Act." Who is going to choose against that? If there were any back-and-forth on any of the Five Points, it would actually work against Wildrose because the media would start quoting pundits who were not keen on the economics of what was being proposed. Wildrose was thus left in the position of having to hope to just coast through the final week of the campaign. But a flare up will be invented if necessary and sure enough social issues hit the headlines. I believe the electorate may have still understood the Leech and Hunsperger remarks for what they are, which is of marginal relevance to how a Wildrose government would actually govern, if Danielle herself had not waded into the climate change issue like she did. It may well have galvanized voters into concluding that perhaps Wildrose truly intends to go to war against the "elite" and the foreigner which would in turn have consequences for Alberta's reputation if her party formed government. I have my own doubts about the climate change "issue" if not climate change itself but I look at the facts and don't put myself into the position of looking foolish should evidence emerge that was absolutely undeniable and unquestionable. Compare here again to the Harper Conservatives. Harper gets the votes of climate change deniers without standing up and explicitly denying himself.

Too many federal Conservative tactics and policies were imported into Wildrose without consideration of the fact that the feds have government experience and a corresponding familiarity with where the civil service stands and with where public policy experts are coming from. Vitor Marciano even admitted that the $1000 keep quiet bond was demanded of candidates for the simple reason that the federal Tories demanded the same thing. Fact is regional identification is a huge issue that drives Alberta's support for the Harper team and in turn has limited Wildrose to Alberta's rural south. Consider the fact that PC incumbent Hector Goudreau edged out the Alberta Alliance candidate 3670 to 3332 in Dunvegan-Central Peace in 2004 and in 2012 edged out the Wildrose candidate 3983 to 3756. You're not winning the rural north anyway, so why not go for the urban vote, which means enough with the dumping on anyone who might be at all cosmopolitan! Wildrose was crushed in Edmonton Whitemud, 12087 to 3381, but this is an area where the left wing would never have a chance. Edmonton's southwest happens to be one of the most educated areas in the province demographically. Last summer's HST referendum in British Columbia saw the most educated ridings vote "Yes"; more and more votes were coming over the the Yes side as the months went by such that a victory there was entirely possible had their been more time. Yet the current strategists in Alberta's Wildrose party would continue to scoff at any suggestion that the party take a chance by backing an expert supported policy like the HST. Be that way then but consider whether repeating your 2012 campaign in 2016 is going to get you any closer to government.

a Wildrose government?

I'm at Vancouver airport waiting for my flight to Shanghai to board and once I arrive there I'll lose easy access to Twitter and Blogspot so I'll seize my one and only chance to comment on the Alberta election.

The prospect of a party that I was heavily involved with in 2007, 2008, and 2009 forming the government is an exciting one, after all, I don't regularly see people I've met personally on several occasions like Danielle and Link Byfield on TV never mind in positions of power. But the reality is this isn't the same party that I ran as a candidate for in 2008 and I'm not along for the ride this time.

Did it have to be this way for me? I've reflected on the what's happened since the beginning of 2010 and have concluded that the January 2010 floor crossings were the most decisive event of Wildrose history. It's true that Link was playing a dominant role in the party since 2007 and Danielle assumed the leadership in 2009, but frankly I don't see how Danielle has taken the party in a direction that wasn't in notable ways foreshadowed by Link early on. Link once asked me about agricultural policy and who amongst my acquaintances in the U of A faculty might help develop policy that would appeal to rural voters. This isn't the starting point for policy development that I'm accustomed to, of course. At Finance Canada, although there were certainly exceptions (such as the GST cut and the tax credits for kids sports), we started with a policy problem (such the the fact the income trust form of business organization was on track to dominate the way businesses are organized in this country) and then looked for solutions. A fellow MBA student who worked at Ag Alberta at the time told me that the civil service is well acquainted with the fact the rural voter runs the show in this province. I'm supposed to figure out a way to out-pander the PC party regarding rural votes?

If Link still envisaged some sort of role for me in the party with respect to policy this seemed to be further put away when Tom Flanagan was invited to address a group of Wildrosers on November 28, 2009 at the Calgary Airport. Flanagan basically laid out the plan that Flanagan is now following closely in April 2012: 1) ignore the membership (or expert?) created policy platform as much as possible, which just gives more targets for the competition 2) lock down communications and 3) run on 4 or 5 policies developed by a couple people at the top of the party. I told Link at the time I wasn't keen on Flanagan's prescription and the most striking thing for me was the incongruency between this and Link's frequent calls for having the grassroots determine the policy. For a long time Link's theme was that the Alberta PCs were top-down and controlling while Wildrose will take its direction from the little guy. For an even longer time my concern was that there wasn't enough opportunity for expert input into the policy process, yet at the end of the day the mass participation policy conventions did not end up mattering a great deal. Belinda Stronach was guilty of "venal ambition" according to Link but not those that cross to Wildrose? Belinda makes the Wildrose eminence grise "gag" but a $20K payout to a floor crosser's constituency association to help ensure the crosser keeps his or her job is just the cost of doing business, apparently. Fact is, I might have been able to stomach the crossings had there been any transparency surrounding what the terms were.

But it was never clear that I could never work with Link. And I never had a problem with Danielle besides her never giving any evidence that she was prepared to pull rank on Link and Rob Anderson. A telling example was Danielle's conversation with iNews880 reporter Liza Yuzda about the floor crossings on January 5, 2010:

"You would be asking both Heather and Rob to step down for a period of as long as six months," [Danielle said, re why standing for byelections were not demanded of the floor crossers], "because the by-election would be called at the pleasure of the current sitting government and I can imagine they wouldn't make it all that easy for either of them to be without an income for six months." [Smith added that Wildrose] party policy had been to require a by-election for 'floor-crossers' but, when it came to reality, they had to make a decision that worked for everyone.

There, in a nutshell, you have Danielle essentially admitting to more than what she was compelled to. In a word, I trust Danielle. When I once scratched my head about why she hired Stephen Carter, someone with bad debts and who didn't seem especially committed to the (at least then) Wildrose philosophy of government, she gave me a personal explanation at that November 2009 event. She surely didn't have to, but cared about what I thought. Rob Anderson's first impulse, in contrast, is to deny. "I really can't remember ... who asked for what" concerning the terms of the floor crossing, says Anderson. Yet "the CBC has obtained an email sent by Anderson to the party. In it, Anderson states that there was an arrangement made with leader Danielle Smith for that money — an arrangement made prior to Anderson and Forsyth crossing the floor." Bottom line is that I don't believe Anderson does not remember. Anderson once told me, "I clearly support “right to a secret ballot.” In fact, that topic never even came up at the convention - there was never a resolution vote." I checked the facts and this simply was not true. A measure calling for replacing this clause with some meaningless generic verbiage calling for "fairness" was "PROPOSED BY CAUCUS" and since I don't believe for a minute that Paul Hinman, a conscientious true conservative advocate for individual freedom, would support this measure this was necessarily a floor crosser's initiative.

Link was prepared to at least humour some of my ideas, like the tax talk that PC MLA and PC leadership candidate Doug Griffiths was trying to advance. I would be cautious about trusting Link with provincial money, not least because of what I've heard from Link's former Alberta Report employees (and, I should say, the financial relationship between Link's "Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy" and at least the early Wildrose), but as difficult as it would be with Link, it'd be even harder with Rob, and Rob seems to have a interest in Finance such that I would somehow have to find a way to act as an advisor to Rob on the file or be his parliamentary secretary if I ran for office again myself or something of that sort.

Now I'll grant that a possible solution would have been for Rob to have to accommodate me instead of the other way around. But that just wasn't in the cards when he crossed the floor and become the party's Finance critic. He became the "caucus" whereas I was just another party member. I would have had to have been on an equal standing which in turn would've meant running for the PCs in 2008 and crossing the floor like he did. And run for the PCs in 2008 I could not have possibly done. Rob is the odds on favourite to become Alberta's next Minister of Finance and I believe when he sits down with his civil servants and looks at the deficit problem for what it is it'll be clear to him that the real origin of the current deficit is the natural gas royalty fueled spending of 2006-2008. It is far easier to limit spending increases than to actually cut, and missing the opportunity to exercise restraint with natural gas royalties (which won't be returning to anything like their former level) has put the province into the position of having to make decisions that I don't think Rob is prepared to make, other than cutting the easy targets like the infrastructure budget.

Which brings me to the Wildrose's 5 point campaign plan. As so ably noted by former Liberal leader Kevin Taft, Alberta's failure to save is a grave disservice to future generations, and infrastructure spending is the one form of spending that at least leaves a potentially enduring physical asset behind after the cheques have been cut. But buildings don't vote and the civil service unions, along with the ordinary guy promised a handout, do. The tax breaks for families that engage in government approved activities is a left wing spending program in conservative guise. The (largely) non-partisan economists over at TaxVox have been complaining about this fragmentation of the tax code in North America for a long time now and conservative economists understand this point. The promise to pay out energy revenue to Albertans means the Heritage Fund faces even longer odds of ever actually growing in a significant way. A tax cut would at least create incentives to add to the economy and lower royalties would at least leave more money in corporate hands that are in a position to invest in property, plant, and equipment that could ensure more and higher royalties in the future. An unconditional cheque paid for simply existing arguably reflects the ultimate entitlement mentality. Besides the fact this is pro-cyclical and may well just drive inflation across the province, the "only if not in deficit" condition is not an economically significant condition. Why? Because what matters is net asset position. Running down the province's assets to fund current consumption does not become a better idea by looking at periodic income statements as opposed to what's happening to the balance sheet. It was, after all, the "we're not in deficit" argument that justified the circa 2007 spending spree that has make it so difficult to get out of deficit now.

When Danielle slammed "the Globe and Mail and the elites" I could only shake my head (again). The fact is that if the party had even one headline plank that economists, even just conservative economists, would support the Globe, or at least the Globe's Economy Lab, would help sell it. Witness the federal Conservative plan to cut corporate taxes.

Now maybe it's just me. It may be worth noting I also fell out with the local riding association, some of whom accused me of being a carpet bagger from the north side, and I have to admit I never did close a deal for a home in Ambleside in the end. I note that Edmonton South-West has decided to run a controversial candidate in any case.

I fell off the wagon because of ideas that are, well, ideas. Perhaps I'm just too abstract a personality. But living in the world as if it were the world you believe it ought to be is perhaps the only way to live in the world as it is.

"He goes away from a living woman to celebrate his pitiless wedding with a shadowy ideal of conduct. Is he satisfied - quite, now, I wonder?"

- Joseph Conrad, "Lord Jim"

State of the Rose: Wildrose vs libertarians redux

A lot happened in Alberta politics during 2011 and had I not been in China for most of the year I would have felt compelled to comment on several occasions. To start by picking just one incident, I'll take note of former federal Libertarian Party leader Dennis Young's disqualification as a Wildrose candidate.

When Daveberta blogged about this on October 19 I could only shake my head. Think of the time and grief you could have saved yourself, Dennis, had you read my blogpost from October 2010 about libertarians' place in the party consequent to the expansion of the caucus in January 2010! At that time I noted that "the fact that Cosh, Johnston, Brock et al have all gone off about this [caucus statement re Ontario prostitution ruling] suggests that these critics are voicing a view that is generally held." Evidently Dennis didn't share this general view or he would have been more circumspect about whether party HQ would support his bid to run in Calgary Hays.

Now it's true that no one in the Wildrose caucus has been as straightforward as US Presidential candidate Rick Santorum (photo at right). In June 2011 Santorum stated that he would "fight very strongly against libertarian influence within the Republican party and the conservative movement." I highly doubt that MLAs Rob Anderson, Heather Forsyth, Paul Hinman, or Wildrose éminence grise Link Byfield would ever say such a thing, not least because of Byfield's view that fiscal and social conservatives need to cooperate in order to win elections. But that doesn't mean that advancing a libertarian agenda within Wildrose wouldn't be a Sisyphean task.

After the 2010 AGM I welcomed Chris Jones' becoming Edmonton director for the party, noting that Chris would be a good advocate for Edmonton on the provincial executive. Apparently, he was too good an advocate for views the party poohbahs aren't inclined to indulge since I've recently learned (not from Chris) that party HQ has stalled on Chris' application to run in Edmonton Millcreek. Evidently headquarters is too busy invoicing the constituency associations for money to be sent to party central. I have to shake my head at the complaint about Chris I heard in 2010 from someone drawing a full time salary from the party that the Edmonton volunteer was too controlling. Who is controlling who here?

Does Wildrose offer the fiscal conservatism libertarians would be interested in? When the party is promising more education spending etc it's doubtful whether the commitment is more than rhetorical. In today's Throne Speech, it seemed that Premier Redford might actually put some effort into honouring her leadership campaign pledge to only route the first $6 billion of natural resource revenue into current spending and have the remainder go into savings. Given that more than $8 billion of non-renewable resource revenue is being spent annually, this leaves a real gap that will have to be closed by either spending cuts or tax increases. Either route is going to be unpopular, and if Redford doesn't try to wriggle out of this one she deserves credit for following through on a deficit fighting promise.

The elephant in the room with regard to spending remains, as I've long argued, the public sector unions. A recent U of Calgary study noted that "since 2000, the province’s public sector wage bill has shot up by 119 percent — almost double the rate of growth in the rest of Canada." Futhermore,

In 2000-01 total provincial revenues were $25.5 billion. In 2010-11 revenues grew to $34.0 billion, an $8.5 billion dollar increase. [meanwhile...] we see an increase in wages of $8.1 billion. In other words, 95 percent of the increase in provincial revenues over the last decade has gone directly into the pockets of public sector employees. The total wage bill rose to nearly 45 percent of total expenditure in 2010 from just over a quarter in 2000.

This is what happens when the public sector unions have the whip hand. I continue to have little faith that the Wildrose party's current leadership has the stomach to take them on. The breaking point for me was when Wildrose Finance critic Rob Anderson claimed that he supported the right to a secret ballot for union certifications despite the fact that at the 2010 AGM, the "caucus" (read Anderson and Forsyth) wanted to delete the party plank calling for a secret ballot. No libertarian should tolerate this interference with the economic freedom of the individual. While Alberta politicians continue to universally avoid any direct criticism of either unions or the salaries and benefits going to front-line public servants, Iowa Governor Scott Walker has put his job on the line with respect to the issue.

the power of personality

I have wound down my blogging, in the short term because I have been on the road and don't expect to be back in Alberta for at least a month yet, and in the longer term because, at least with respect to Alberta politics, I had largely said what I wanted to say on the subject and didn't want to muddy the message (that Albertans need to turn more of their current incomes into assets, real or financial, that will grow into the future).

The new year's news from Canada's most fortunate province creates some interesting prospects for further shake-ups on the political and policy fronts, however.

The premier not running for re-election is the biggest news, although there is a limit to what the pundits can add to this headline. Albertans already know that Ed Stelmach (photo at right) was a charisma-challenged but nice guy. Whether it was his fault or not, it was on Ed's watch that a rival party emerged that, for the first time since at least 1993, seriously threatens the Progressive Conservative dynasty. It is nonetheless worth reflecting on the fact that Mr Stelmach's resignation announcement came less than 3 years after his winning an electoral landslide. What changed to compromise Steady Eddie's political security when he'd already proven that he can kick the Wildrose Alliance to the curb? Danielle Smith?

Which brings me to the main thesis of this post, which is that personality - and personalities - matter more, and ideology less, in politics than many observers appreciate. While it is generally recognized to matter with respect to the individual party leaders, consider the fact that the next tier of people below the leader are also, well, people, with personalities, and so on down.

Daveberta's blogpost on the resignation of Alberta Liberal David Swann (left) has attracted no less than 60 comments, and a comment by Calgary Grit, the most read (or perhaps just most readable) blogger on federal politics who (formerly) hails from Alberta is a representative example of the sort of punditry that gets a lot of thumbs up from those who have not been heavily involved in internal party politics and/or the machinery of government. CG contends that the Alberta Liberal Party and the fledgling Alberta Party occupy the same "centrist" ideological ground, while "[Wildrose leader Danielle] Smith and [PC leadership candidate Ted] Morton [are] splitting the right wing vote..." To a lot of people it makes perfect sense to look through an ideological prism like this and assume one is getting a reasonably complete view. While I have never really been a true political party "insider", based on what experience I do have, and especially upon my experience working within the machinery of government in a central agency, I would characterize this perspective as one that perhaps ought to be satisfactorily explanatory, but not one that is.

Consider how the cogs of government policy actually turn. Suppose you were to come into a position of real political power in a parliamentary democracy. This would generally involve being elected and then being assigned a cabinet position responsible for a ministry. The first thing one would be expected to look at after being sworn in would be the briefing books prepared by the civil servants in one's Department. A great many problems will be identified in these materials and solutions suggested, problems and solutions that never made it into the political campaign debates because 1) the issues are too dull to interest the electorate or 2) the solutions are generally unpopular with the electorate. When I first loaded up my 1982 Mazda RX-7 with my limited personal effects to drive from Edmonton to Ottawa nine years ago and begin work for what was then Paul Martin's Department of Finance, I was curious as to how the competing ideologies would play out in the policy discussions that occurred. Of course, at the end of day the elected Minister makes the final policy call, but what of the details? I was ultimately struck by how un-ideological the Department actually was and I came to appreciate how frequently "ideological differences" are just political campaign artifacts as opposed to seriously competing policy alternatives.

Having said that, I have to concede that the dominant culture is only non-ideological if one sees organizations like the IMF, OECD, World Bank, European Commission, etc as non-ideological. Some strong leftists would contend that there is an "anti-people" or "corporate" agenda dominating these entities and if that's true then this agenda dominates the culture in provincial finance ministries as well. But I don't believe it is, in fact, a left or right matter nearly so much as a matter of how populist one is in one's sensitivities. It's not the job of, say, an OECD economist to recommend what the "people" want. What the people want in the short term may be in full contradiction with what they want in the long term. Now, there are several "think tanks" that are clearly "ideological" in almost everyone's eyes and an organization like a Department of Finance or a Privy Council Office is somewhat analogous to a think tank, but neutralize the funding of these think tanks (e.g. take self-styled "progressive economist" Jim Stanford off the union payroll, or diversify the Frontier Centre's funding from former Alberta Report readers) and a remarkable consensus would emerge on most issues. As it is, I think the consensus is already there, one simply has people like Stanford trying to obscure the "expert" consensus on, say, the efficiency of corporate taxes at the one end while at the other end the Frontier Centre obscures it on, say, the efficiency of carbon taxes.

As a newly minted minister, one's first lesson would thus concern how one's ideas about what one is going to do in office have to be heavily modified based on the advice of one's ministry re what is feasible and just what the most pressing problems are. An example here would be how neither Jim Flaherty nor the federal Tories in general felt that income trust taxation was a problem in need of a solution before taking office. It was after being bombarded with memos from the civil service saying there was a problem that Flaherty eventually overruled his political staff to make a move on the file (as an aside, when I learned that Wildrose constituency operations manager Dave Shillington was part of Flaherty's political office at the time, although I suspected we would end up disagreeing on something significant in Wildrose it wasn't until Dave indicated to me that he was inclined to take a laissez-faire attitude towards how nominations were conducted that I saw a red flag for a disputed nomination at some point down the road and, more ominously, a party culture that sees loud self-promoters advance at the expense of quieter voices).

The decisions of real consequence cannot, or at least should not, be taken unilaterally by a minister, however, even if the decision is well-informed by consultations with one's Department, external experts, and industry. One still has to convince one's cabinet colleagues. Suppose I was elected as the sole Wildrose MLA from within Edmonton city limits. I might have to be made finance minister simply because, given the political realities, an Edmontonian would have to get a post that at least appears to be among the most important. Now of course I would be encouraging my cabinet colleagues running line departments to support cuts to or at least caps on their budgets, and especially cuts to line items are only indirectly related (as in the case of wages and benefits for current provincial workers) or not related at all (as in the case of benefits for retired provincial workers) to the quality and quantity of services delivered to the general public. But how much power I would actually have in this situation, at the top level of internal party politics and of the government machinery, is only very approximately suggested by what an external pundit like Calgary Grit reckons the ideological positioning of my party to be. The personalities of those around the cabinet table matter far more, and it matters more the higher one gets.

When I blogged here last year saying I should no longer be described as a current Wildrose supporter, I noticed a couple people wanting to explain my defection in terms of ideology. As someone who joined the Wildrose Party even before it merged with the Alberta Alliance, I'm easily perceived as a fiscal conservative ideologue who cannot tolerate the ideological compromises that a mature brokerage party must inevitably make. But in fact I believe I would have more influence and work more effectively as part of an Alberta Party cabinet than a Wildrose one, despite the fact the Alberta Party is universally seen as significantly to the left of Wildrose. If I wasn't a member of a the cabinet but a backbencher or even just a local constituency figure, the situation would be same but at a lower intensity. Now it's true that in a parliamentary system, it is the first minister who drives cabinet dynamics. If the party leader wants to shoot down a spending proposal originating from a line department, for example, he or she will typically ask the finance minister for his or her thoughts at the cabinet table. In the case of Wildrose, although Danielle Smith would make a good premier, if I demanded that we go to war with the public service unions, or cut back on all the programs that amount to subsidies to farmers and accordingly distort the provincial economy, I doubt that she would be keen to back me in a dispute with, say, Rob Anderson who would warn darkly of the political consequences of picking a fight with the unions, or Link Byfield who would be sensitive to the political consequences of alienating rural Alberta. This isn't to say that I'm concerned the leader would tell me to sit down and shut up. I can't even imagine Danielle telling someone to sit down and shut up. It's rather that she wouldn't tell anyone to sit down and shut up and as a consequence the voice of the professional policy community would be left to fend for itself against the self-promoters, opportunists, demagogues, and assorted lobbyists. It's the power of personalities. If people think my problem is that I'm upset about having ended up on the losing side of an ideological showdown, I can only say, "if only!" There was about as much of an ideological showdown as the one in the federal Tory party that led it to going on a spending spree when in government (which is to say, effectively none).

Which brings me to Doug Griffiths. Not only does Doug (at left with wife Sue, photo from Facebook) make time to hear out the professional policy community, he understands how these sorts of people get drowned out and pushed aside in the jungle of politics. He's a fiscal conservative, which of course I find salutary, but more important to his appeal to pundits across the spectrum is that he does not try to push a particular agenda per se so much as call for a framework that ensures that sober, serious, evidence-based agendas win out. If Doug were first minister, I believe he would be less interested in getting his way, like so many politicians who have a pre-conceived and rigid idea about what's wrong with world and how they are going to fix it, than in ensuring that those who are following the advice they are getting from their Departments and non-partisan experts get a full hearing despite the political risks, and, more importantly for democracy, ensuring that that hearing occurs in front of Albertans as opposed to behind closed doors. I don't just endorse Doug Griffiths for leader of the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta. Whether Alberta Party, PC Party, or Wildrose, if Griffiths were contending for the leadership I would be taking out a membership to support him. I admit that this seems to contradict my call for more ideology, or more precisely more ideas and consistency in those ideas, in what distinguishes and defines political parties, but that's because I think it generally needs to be made clear to campaign volunteers and donors that they are working for something larger, that they are a part of, than just a person who is not a part of their personal lives. I am not asking readers here to help advance someone's political career because he deserves it. I don't know Doug personally and I don't know what he deserves in terms of his personal fate. I support Doug Griffiths because what he stands for deserves support.

Liberal party? Whenever I think about joining the Alberta Liberals, which is never for more than an occasional nano-second, I ask myself how I would explain the move to friends and family. The politically active could potentially understand, but everyone else would think I've lost my compass completely. I could call attention to a selection of Kevin Taft speeches but Taft is no longer leader. Federally, besides the Liberals there is no other option to the Harper Conservatives that isn't fundamentally at odds with either the federation or the prosperity-creating business community. That's not the case in Alberta.

In any case, I'm not the only person who ran for election under the Wildrose Alliance banner in 2008 to now be mulling support (if not more) for the relatively legacy-free (dare I say, baggage-free) Alberta Party.

why I'm not a Wildrose member

My last post wasn't the first time I've talked about unions and what I thought was an accommodation of union interests by the Wildrose caucus members who joined the party back in January. Support for unions is an understandable stance for the NDP caucus but not, in my view, for a party that I had joined some three years ago on the understanding that its philosophy would be roughly consistent with that of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, namely, "free markets and free people."

When President Truman accused the WSJ of being the "Republican's Bible," the paper’s then editorial page editor responded that "our loyalties are to the economic and governmental principles in which we believe and not to any political party." In an editorial titled, "A Newspaper's Philosophy," William H. Grimes, who won the WSJ's first Pulitzer Prize for his editorial commentary on business, the economy and labour, wrote:

On our editorial page, we make no pretense of walking down the middle of the road. Our comments and interpretations are made from a definite point of view. We believe in the individual, his wisdom and his decency. We oppose all infringements on individual rights, whether they stem from attempts at private monopoly, labor union monopoly or from an overgrowing government.

I've returned to the issue of labour union monopoly on a regular basis this year in part because in the future it will be a critical driver of another problem Mr Grimes identifies, "overgrowing government." A growth in government is not necessarily objectionable in-and-of-itself: if starting from a sufficiently low base such that additional investment would not be subject to significantly diminishing returns, government investment in roads, schools, bridges, university laboratories, and other factors that generate positive externalities and may be bequeathed to the next generation may well be a net good. But with an aging and "what's-in-it-for-me" society, most government expenditures will be used to support non-workers' private consumption and a politically powerful non-business-owning middle class. In the case of private sector retirees, the promised entitlements may be appropriate. But for the public sector, there is a growing problem of sustainability and the biggest problem in my view is not how much will be going to the unionized public sector per se but the anti-competitive, unaccountable way the allocation decisions have been and apparently will continue to be made. This is not to say that corporate lobbyists don't also work the halls of legislatures in shadowy ways but rather to make an issue out of the fact that union lobbyists, unlike corporate ones, want to extend the reach of this tax-and-spend allocation system.

Each time I return to the issue, however, there is the tendency to make the point a little louder, such that there is increasing danger that I may be "crying wolf." And on the point, there is the possibility that I have mischaracterized the views of Wildrose caucus.

Rob Anderson has advised me that when Wildrose party leader Danielle Smith said in Red Deer in June that the passing of an AGM resolution suggested a maturation and "sophistication" of the membership's views, the Tweeter who associated that comment with the passing of a particular resolution that the teachers' union wanted passed was mistaken. When I stood as a candidate myself in 2008, amongst the lessons I learned is that, while the general public may be overestimating the magnitude of media bias, the public likely underestimates the frequency with which the media can get minor facts wrong. In this case, I don't recall the twitterer's view being confirmed by another source, hence I'll take at face value Rob's view that Danielle was referring to the gun rights resolutions(s) (there were two, an uncompromising one which failed to pass and a milder affirmation of gun rights which did) and stand corrected.

That doesn't mean I'm satisfied with what the party leader has said elsewhere, of course. While Education Minister Dave Hancock has defended the Provincial Achievement Tests against union interests that want them eliminated, Danielle has agreed with union interests that the PATs should go. She does say that the PATs should be replaced with "something", but apparently that something has to be "better for teachers" than the status quo and would be developed by "[w]ork[ing] with teachers" (who, if the unions are any guide, generally oppose all standardized testing). At the last Wildrose AGM, MLA Heather Forsyth used most of her microphone time on the floor to either speak out in favour of the P"C" government's free speech limiting legislation or against Wildrose policy planks opposed by the teachers' union. I might add that

• a motion that proposed eliminating the "School Choice" section from the Wildrose party platform in favour of language that made no reference to choice,
• a motion calling for replacing "[a] Wildrose Government will institute methods to hold educators accountable for performance" with "[a] Wildrose Government will promote innovation..." and
• a motion that wanted to delete the plank prohibiting closed shops and the plank preserving the right to a secret ballot

were all "PROPOSED BY CAUCUS" and that, as a caucus member, the MLA for Calgary Fish-Creek supported all these motions. I accordingly do not believe that I have been misleading readers in my characterization of Ms Forsyth.

With respect to the right to a secret ballot, Mr Anderson currently says,

I clearly support “right to a secret ballot.” In fact, that topic never even came up at the convention - there was never a resolution vote on it.

On May 5 Vitor Marciano issued "Executive Director's Memo #3" to the membership which included as an attachment some 85 policy resolutions that Vitor wanted whittled down to a more manageable 40. One of the resolutions concerned section II "Economy" Part G "Labour" and "Moved that II G 1 and 3 be deleted and replaced..." This motion was "PROPOSED BY CAUCUS".

What were the two planks that the "caucus" wanted "deleted"?

II G 1 read:

A Wildrose Government will allow individual workers the choice to determine their membership in labour organizations.

II G 3 read:

A Wildrose Government will extend to workers the democratic right to a secret ballot vote on labour organization certification under the Labour Code and ensure that the same rule apply for decertification as for certification.

These deleted planks were to be replaced with "[a] Wildrose Government will review labour laws to ensure fairness for all Alberta workers whether employed in union or non-union settings," a plank that is, of course, so vague as to be entirely equivalent to nothing for a MLA who does not want to be held to a policy resolution.

This motion, and all of the other union-related motions proposed by caucus, made their way into the green sheets that constituted the resolutions for debate at the AGM and I accordingly stand by my last blogpost. I was at the AGM and do not recall Mr Anderson saying that he wished to retract the part of the motion that called for deletion of II G 1 and/or II G 3. I might add that if it were necessary to do further "research and consultation" in this area, the results of the research and consultation could have been presented to the membership for the membership's review. As I recall the membership was instead advised at one point to "trust" the caucus with the party's policy platform.

As it was, the vote was very close, going to a count, and II G 1 and II G 3 survived, but I think this should be of limited comfort when the caucus has revealed its hand as not wanting to be held to the provisions. Relevant here is the history of Wildrose Executive Director Vitor Marciano. When controversial Calgary West MP and former professional heckler Rob When in doubt, pull the trigger" Anders told the Canadian Press, "I would fight shoulder to shoulder with [Marciano] in any battle," this apparently included a battle between himself as a caucus member against his own Conservative constituency membership. When the board of Calgary West EDA voted in favour of asking riding members if they wanted to hold a new nomination meeting, Marciano, who represented Alberta on the National Council, approved a top-down takeover of the local board. 19 members resigned from the disempowered board, leaving behind 7 a number of whom had not been elected at the board's previous AGM. This recent incident came after the candidacy of Walter Wakula for the Calgary West nomination was rejected in 2006 and Rob Anders acclaimed, an acclamation that was ultimately overturned via the intervention of a Court of Queen's Bench Justice, despite the objections of Andrew Constantinidis, Wildrose's recently nominated candidate for the provincial riding of Calgary West.

Wakula isn't the only Wildrose member to have a run in with the federal Tory machine. John Baloun, Wildrose Alliance candidate for Edmonton-Rutherford in 2008, found out how MP James Rajotte's board plays ball when he tried to challenge Rajotte for the Edmonton-Leduc nomination. I had my own encounter with Rajotte's people a year ago, when myself and someone who had served on David Kilgour's board were attempting to organize Wildrose members in Edmonton Whitemud. We both ended up resigning from the newly formed constituency board, realizing that Rajotte's people, who were backed by Eleanor Maroes who was in turn backed by a member of the provincial executive, didn't much want us (and I was going to be out of the country for a few months). It will be interesting to see how the nomination in the new Edmonton South West constituency will be managed given that, with popular incumbent Dave Hancock almost certain to run for re-election in the old Edmonton Whitemud, this very suburban open seat is likely the only riding within Edmonton city limits that Wildrose HQ would consider a realistic pick-up for the party.

Looking forward, there will likely be a great deal of pandering to the rural vote over the coming year that would not be to my taste and looking back I'm not interested in supporting a party that imports the Conservative Party of Canada's hardball culture into its operations or caucus members who want to delete a party plank allowing "individual workers the choice to determine their membership in labour organizations." Stop maneuvering and finessing and stand and fight for the plainly stated principle.

I don't mean military courage or civil courage, or any special kind of courage. I mean just that inborn ability to look temptation straight in the face - a readiness unintellectual enough, goodness knows, but without pose - a power of resistance, don't you see, ungracious if you like, but priceless - an unthinking and blessed stiffness before the outward and inward terrors, before the might of nature, and the seductive corruption of men - ...

- Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

Having said all this I would consider returning to involvement with the party if changes occurred and I should make it clear that I do not know Rob Anderson, Heather Forsyth, or Vitor Marciano personally. I met Rob for perhaps a minute at the Wildrose AGM but of course I was already rather prejudiced at that point based on my dissatisfaction with the "terms," or absence thereof, surrounding the floor crossing the January and the policy that the new caucus was proposing in May, policy I couldn't imagine Paul Hinman supporting. Anderson should be congratulated for the way he puts unmanipulated videos of himself speaking as an opposition member in the Legislature online and further makes his views on various matters available on his website. Our elected officials are generally well-meaning people trying to reconcile the contradictory policy wishes of the electorate and far too many people want to blame politicians for everything they see as wrong with society when, really, the enemy is us. Democracies generally get the government they deserve. At the PC AGM this past weekend, the results of a survey of Albertans were passed around. It found that "65% say the province should base spending decisions on the public’s need for services, not on the government’s ability to pay." No business or household could make spending decisions without reference to ability to pay but popular opinion, here in supposedly "conservative" Alberta, is what it is.

I just happen to think that politicians could deal with this in the way PC MLA Doug Griffiths has tried to deal with this. As Parliamentary Secretary to the Finance Minister, he has access to some information that the man in the street does not. Griffiths has been trying to communicate with the electorate, asking people to re-examine their assumptions. As I said on Sunday, it was the fact that Marciano reckoned Griffiths' party should be attacked for Griffiths' independent effort to start an adult conversation that was the last straw for me.

The fact is that no one party has a monopoly on the sort of politicians we need more of. During the 2008 provincial campaign there wasn't an all-candidates forum in my riding and when I tried to contact the other candidates to try and arrange one there wasn't any interest. So I did the next best thing and kept a look-out for any sort of city-wide forum that came up. I then ended up speaking at a forum hosted by a local Ukrainian group. A young Liberal candidate sparred with me on several issues and afterwards we agreed we should go for coffee sometime. In the audience were a few other Edmonton area candidates. John Baloun gave me some tips on public speaking. A distinguished older gentleman came up to me and quite impressed me although it might partly have been because he flattered me suggesting that I should consider joining his party. He was the PC candidate in Edmonton Gold Bar and during the recent mayoralty race I realized that he must have been David Dorward.

Alberta municipal elections review

CALGARY MAYOR

Calgary mayor-elect Naheed Nenshi has said he was interviewed by "the evangelical newspaper." Whatever Nenshi was referring to, his remarks - punctuated by giggles -suggest someone who sees evangelicals as an oddity to be humored. I doubt that his rendering of the questions that were put to him were word-for-word accurate; Nenshi's account is extremely plausible for a non-evangelical imagining what evangelicals are like, which is, in fact, what's somewhat concerning for an evangelical. The attitude seems to be, everyone is entitled to their place in the freak show: "they're people too;" evangelicals may be deviants, but let's not marginalize them any more than, say, the cross-dressing community because we're all God's, or Allah's, children.

A harsh hostility to secularism and "diversity" is, of course, not the only alternative to Nenshi's attitude. Instead of just promulgating Nenshi's facile "I'm everybody positive" line, one could try to acquire a knowledge level of the "Other" that approaches that of an "insider" such that one could say, for example, one was interviewed by someone with the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, or Focus on the Family Canada, or whoever it actually was as opposed to some depersonalized one of them. Fact is, a politician whose language suggested he or she had, for example, read the Purpose Driven Life (by pastor Rick Warren) would receive a lot more evangelical interest even if he or she said, "I don't agree with Rick Warren with respect to X and Y," than a politician like Nenshi, who, being agreeable, might say he agrees with someone like Warren but would never bring up Warren by name since the whole evangelical culture is terra incognita to him.

The situation south of the border is rather different. The PBS documentary God in America is not titled "God in North America." The race for the US Senate seat up for grabs in Kentucky got some increased national attention recently when Democrat Jack Conway (left in photo at right) attacked Tea Party-endorsed Rand Paul (right at right) for his youthful anti-Christian libertarianism in a TV advertisement Jon Chait called the "ugliest political ad of the year." Liberal pundits have jumped at the chance to follow Chait in condemning Conway, since it provides an opportunity to burnish their credentials as independent of the Democratic party. I have to agree with Harvard academic Theda Skocpol that the ad is nonetheless fair game. One would think with all the ads out there that fail basic fact checks, an ad that appears to be accurate with respect to its salient point would not be topping the list for most unacceptable. The Republican establishment advised James Dobson that Paul was a libertarian but Paul's people lobbied Dobson hard to change his endorsement from the GOP establishment candidate to Paul and were successful. Had Paul not done this and even accused his primary competitor of misleading Dobson, Paul's blasphemous college pranks - which Dobson would have taken very seriously had he known - would not be an issue. Ugly might thus better describe Rand's reaction: calling for Conway to be disqualified from standing for election and pandering by substituting the substantive knowledge I suggest above with a "pop culture" quote from scripture.

All this to say that Nenshi's election is indeed contrary to the stereotype of Calgary as Harperite heartland but Calgarians do not demand social conservatism out of their politicians like voters in the US South do. Albertans are not especially fiscally conservative either. Alberta has a far larger government than its personal and corporate tax revenues could possibly support. As MLA Doug Griffiths as pointed out, those revenues wouldn't even cover the Health budget, which is but one department. The province nonetheless enjoys a windfall of natural resource revenues that has fueled government expansion. It's true that "Conservative" candidates win easily across the province (aside from central Edmonton) at the federal level. But this is in large part due to regional alienation sentiments (and a taste for "patriotic" foreign policy that doesn't apply sub-nationally) that cannot be so easily inflamed at the provincial level, and even less so at the municipal level. So it is that candidates who would be "Liberal" provincially and/or federally routinely beat "Conservative" candidates in both Edmonton and Calgary municipal elections.

Nenshi's Masters in Public Policy from Harvard helps him in a race where the electorate is voting for an individual instead of a party, as it should, since the status of high school drop-out that one particularly famous former Calgary mayor held is not especially salutory when Alberta already has one of the highest dropout rates in the country. I should also acknowledge that I would have few Nenshi conversations to take issue with were Nenshi not open enough to not object to a guy following him around with a camera and releasing footage under a minimally restrictive Creative Commons license. While there appears to be some Obama-like hype around Nenshi, it is presently too early to dismiss Nenshi's election a "mistake," as Calgary government MLA Kyle Fawcett tweeted. The way Nenshi won, from relative obscurity to victory in just a few weeks despite not having held office before, should encourage quality candidates to get involved in municipal politics.

EDMONTON CITY COUNCIL

Paula Simons of the Edmonton Journal has, unsurprisingly, interpreted the re-election of Stephen Mandel (right) and the likes of Don Iveson as meaning the capital city has overcome its "fear of innovation" amongst other things. For someone who has supposedly been liberated to innovate, Simons' analysis is distinguished by its lack of originality. A continued small-l liberal conceit is that conservative finger-wagging about "responsibility" is ultimately reducible to a fear of moving forward. One of David Dorward's (at left, photo credit Ed Kaiser, Edm J) campaign themes was getting the funding for a massive LRT expansion well sorted before jumping into deficit financing and/or years of double-digit tax increases. This point is rather conveniently avoided by the thesis that the municipal vote is reducible to a referendum on the airport or some pie-in-the-sky notion of "how we see ourselves as a city." It's as if only narrow and small-minded people talk about prosaic details like the number of calories in a veggie plate relative to a chocolate sundae. "Think big" ergo "spend big," - tomorrow will take care itself if you see the glass as half full. At bottom it's the same tax-and-spend (non-)argument we've heard for years.

Graham Thomson, meanwhile, uses his column to draw a line from the municipal election to a future provincial crackdown on "freedom of the press." His logic

- the Wildrose Alliance supported Dorward for mayor

- Danielle Smith, Wildrose leader, is running in Okotoks-High River

- William "Bible Bill" Aberhart represented this area in the 1930s

- as premier, Aberhart tried to censor the press and was a hypocrite with respect to MLA recall.

That Thomson should manage to get this absurdity printed in Edmonton's paper of record is a testimony to his skills at sophistry. Perhaps conscious of the enormous chasms his "reasoning" is leaping, he says "readers took me to task" for not drawing links like this earlier and he's just innocently "making the connection as a reminder that sometimes Alberta politics takes dramatic and unexpected turns." Right.

St Albert pundit David Climenhaga muses about the implications of the "decisive defeat" of David Dorward. In fact had Calgary's mayor-elect received Dorward's 34% of the Edmonton vote, Calgary's mayor-elect would still be mayor-elect. In other words, Dorward beat both Ric McIver and Barb Higgins yet few are saying both of those two Calgary contenders went down to "decisive" defeat. Dorward's result was actually reasonably strong given how late his campaign got going and the fact he was on the minority side of the galvanizing airport issue. Incumbents are re-elected close to 90% of the time, such that had the election been at all close it ought to be interpreted as a wake-up call to the incumbent. On that count, Kim Krushell, the well-regarded Ward 2 incumbent, had such a squeaker of a win that it can hardly be said the airport issue didn't have any traction. This ward 2 race is far more suitable for being characterized as a referendum on the airport than the mayoralty race. Also of interest is the fact that former Alberta Alliance candidate Tony Caterina swamped Brendan van Alstine in Ward 7 despite the fact #toncat was only partially an incumbent and Ward 7 is prime NDP territory. Last, but not least, is Kerry Diotte's success in Ward 11. Perennial "almost but not quite" candidate Chinwe Okelu thought his gap behind Diotte would have been tighter that it ended up being. As someone who had some Wildrose support, Diotte's win is another counterpoint to the contention that the tea leaves of the municipal election suggest the Wildrose Alliance will find no purchase in the capital city.

State of the Rose: not addressing the problem

Since I blogged a few weeks ago about "the marshmellow test", I've looked for bloggers who have linked the concept with macroeconomics and I've come across a column by Christopher Meyer that puts the point rather succinctly:

The US doesn't need to match Vietnam's 42% of GDP invested. Just getting to the level of a Singapore (21%) or Switzerland (22%) would be a huge improvement. But it won't be easy. This quote, of disputed origin, expresses the problem:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits....

If you were running for office in a country of marshmallow addicts, what would you do?

A good question. In 2005 David Frum defined a "brokerage party" as "a political entity without fixed principles or policies that exploits the power of the central state to bribe or bully incompatible constituencies to join together to share the spoils of government." Perhaps a political party cannot grow large enough to form a government without becoming a brokerage party.

I believe a starting point on the way to a solution may be to first address policy matters that deal with the mix of national income components as opposed to the expenditure-side mix of consumption and investment. China's undervaluing of its currency, for example, is more than just a consumption versus investment issue: the undervaluation allows the Chinese government to extract a substantial slice of the value of China's exports without distorting the incentives that encourage its people to work so hard and make Chinese labour so productive. Does this remind anyone of the "tax what is inelastic" argument that has been advanced in support of land value taxation? It should.

Naturally-occurring goods such as water, air, soil, minerals, flora and fauna are used in the creation of products. Economists call the payments received by the owners of these primary factors of production, which can be generalized as "land", rent.

An unfortunate tendency of influential people in the Wildrose party is to prioritize protection of the interests of "land" owners under the rubric of protecting property rights. Prior to the 2009 AGM, the party platform included a plank that called for "deeded landowners to receive up to 1% of the provincial royalty income generated on their land." I spoke out against the plank, noting that the policy created a "windfall," with the key point being that any cheques written under this policy "would be totally unrelated to any work or capital contribution by the surface owner." Although the plank was deleted after a close vote, the sentiment remains, and we see it in things like Wildrose's obsession with bills 19, 36, and 50, a focus we've seen from candidates like Link Byfield in addition to the leader.

Granted the issue is not directly a taxation issue, but besides unhelpfully encouraging a NIMBY culture, there seems to be little appreciation for the fact that land owners make no contribution to the production process. They instead just prevent others from using that which would otherwise be useful.

National statistical agencies typically break down broad income and expenditure estimates in order to show how the various sectors of the economy interact in their transactions with one another to produce national output. These agencies (and economists) identify more income categories than just employee wages and business profits. As an economy generates wealth, the price of land and other natural resources increases. Because the gifts of nature cannot be produced by human effort and supply cannot be increased to meet demand, holders of land and natural resources are in a position to capture the surplus - economic rent - generated by labor and capital. This rental income is a distinguishable income category of its own, and there is little call to be especially concerned about protecting its share of national income on either a moral or economic basis given that it is a socially generated surplus that is being privately captured. Besides being bad economics to defend this externality-consuming profiteering, it creates a backlash against profit in general, making it that more politically difficult to provide policy relief to productive labour and industry.

I've gone on something of an extended tirade about the state of the Wildrose Alliance here with today's triple post but in fairness it is not clear that the party leadership is offside with the membership. One of the critical issues both in terms of economics and social justice that the province is facing concerns the far weaker pension benefits that private sector workers can expect relative to their public sector counterparts. The solution is not enriching the Canadian Pension Plan, which would mean public sector retirees with Cadillac pension plans get even more, but creation of a non-universal program that acts as a supplementary plan for private sector workers. The Alberta government, to its credit, has explored a "made in the west" solution along these lines in partnership with British Columbia. The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) has, no surprise, come out in favour of greater CPP benefits. Who supports CUPE's view? Apparently just as many Wildrosers as non-Wildrosers: "[t]wo-thirds of respondents who support Stelmach’s Conservative Party back an increase [in CPP benefits], as do a similar number of supporters of the Wildrose Alliance Party."

UPDATE Tuesday, October 12:

As if on cue, Wildrose leader Danielle Smith is meeting with the Warburg-Pembina Surface Rights Group tonight to speak about the "Wildrose vision" on "property rights issues" while the OECD has published a study that finds that "recurrent taxes on immovable property" are the "most growth friendly" taxes. Corporate income taxes, which Wildrose circa 2010 has been silent about (unlike Wildrose circa 2008), "have the most negative effect on GDP per capita."

Siding with rural landowners, many of whom simply inherited their land, may make a lot of political sense but on a policy front it is completely wrong-headed.

UPDATE Wednesday, October 13:

"Cancelled Power Plant boosts Oakville Real Estate" makes explicit the connection between the market value of privately held property and public policy. Adam Radwanski then makes explicit the connection to business investment: "In terms of energy policy, the Oakville decision raises all sorts of questions... to what extent will such a reactive decision scare off investment by an industry that sees fewer risks elsewhere?"

Earlier today someone tweeted me saying there isn't a parallel to Alberta's power lines debate, but several months ago Wildrose's leader reportedly said, "Landowners must be fully and fairly compensated for the loss of value in their property and nuisance these new lines will cause."

See MLA Doug Griffiths' remarks after 14:25 of this AlbertaVenture interview for why it's difficult to have a substantive discussion about Alberta's fiscal policy.

State of the Rose: Education

What's remarkable about the June AGM shots that Anderson and Forsyth took at selected party platform planks that predated their parachuting into the party is how their chosen targets match those of their PC caucus colleague Gene Leskiw (right). Go after the party's free speech plank calling for the repeal of Bill 44's section 3? check. Complain about the "allow individual workers the choice to determine their membership in labour organizations" plank? check. Leskiw's complaint that "[t]he only MLA in the party speaks of limiting teacher’s right to strike to weekends and holidays" is revealing in that this sole MLA was Paul Hinman, yet in the pre-AGM materials the motion to have this right to strike limit struck was attributed to "the caucus." This suggests that Hinman, the only caucus member to campaign for Wildrose in the last election and, later, be elected under the Wildrose banner, has either been co-opted or marginalized as a "caucus" member by Anderson and Forsyth. What about Leskiw's rant about Wildrose promising "standardized annual testing of students and teacher quality"? "This comes straight from George Bush’s American plans for school improvement," she protests. At the June AGM Anderson and Forsyth essentially spelled each other off as they went to the microphone to speak out against planks the teachers' unions don't like. Although I didn't recognize him at the time, teacher union lobbyists present at the AGM (the Provincial Executive Council of the ATA sent seven of their members) recognized another speaker who wanted to protect the teachers' union right to strike as social conservative John Carpay, now Wildrose's candidate for Calgary Lougheed

Perhaps Anderson and Forsyth would like to issue a press release that comments on this letter signed by more than a dozen US school district superintendents and supervisors, which complains of the "glacial process for removing an incompetent teacher". As an interviewee in Waiting for Superman, which is now showing in US theatres, observes, "[t]he teacher's unions are a menace and an impediment to reform." One can quibble with the film saying it oversimplifies, just as I would quibble with Wildrose's education policies by saying there should be more specificity with respect to using objective data in teacher assessment, such as a call for exploring value-added models (VAM). But the film's main thesis, that the effectiveness of the teacher is the major determinant of student academic progress, is supported by the evidence.

Jay Greene, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and head of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, is but one of several education scholars who have exposed the belief "that vouchers do little to help students while undermining our democracy" as a myth. According to scholar.google.com, a paper by Stanford economist and Hoover Institute fellow Caroline Hoxby that demonstrated that competition among public schools benefit students and taxpayers has been cited 689 times. Matthew Ladner has noted that "choice faces formidable political enemies," and indeed it does, when even a Wildrose MLA has called on supporters of this supposed pro-market party to treat vouchers as a "red flag." On top of this, there is a very simple retort to Gene Leskiw's remark about George Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, and that's that Barack Obama's Race to the Top program takes a page from the same "standards" playbook. Is Obama yet another right wing ideologue?

In any case, current Wildrose education policy as recently announced by the leader mentions testing only to say that current provincial achievement tests should be killed off. While an unspecified replacement is proposed, the replacement is to be developed by "working with teachers." To anyone inclined to interpret this as anything but a union accommodation, note that the process of acquiring insight into what politicians really believe (if anything) requires a certain hermeneutics. One must start with the realization that most political decisions involve some sort of trade-off between interest groups, and that politicians will try to minimize the reality of a trade-off as much as possible in order to be all things to all people. One thus needs to suss out who will get the actual concrete result they have lobbied for, and who will get the dog and pony show. In this case, terminating the PATs is a real substantive victory for the teachers union and the key member of their braintrust on the issue Alfie Kohn. Nowhere in the platform that Wildrose members had an opportunity to vote on is it asserted that the PATs are "outdated" or "inadequate", as current Wildrose policy declares. Indeed, for all the talk about how Wildrose is under the influence of right wing think tanks, axing the PATs is directly contrary to what Michael Zwaagstra has called for at the Frontier Centre. A nod is made towards the annual testing called for by the membership-reviewed party platform, but, again, when applying the principles of politi-speak hermeneutics one must look not for who is getting the "yes" (everybody gets the "yes" from a politician), but for who is getting the "no." In this case, it is clear that the party leadership is trying to give the "yes" to the union lobby to the maximal extent possible that continues to allow deniability that the other side is getting a "no". Where's our standardized testing (full disclosure here: throughout my education career standardized tests were a big boost to my academic record and/or reputation)? "Oh, the tests will remain, in fact the fox is in the henhouse right now developing them!" The proof in the pudding here is the fact that testing opponents actually get argued with instead of quietly accommodated in the remarks of red Tory and current Education minister Dave Hancock, with Hancock fingering anti-testing ringleader Kohn as "dogmatic."

In the photo (right) that Alberta Union of Public Employees' Committee on Political Action released of COPA's meeting with the "Wildrose caucus" on February 23, conspicuously missing is principled conservative Paul Hinman. Heather Forsyth featured in an AUPE press release to help make the union's case against the PC government and at about the same time Rob Anderson appeared in a United Nurses of Alberta release. In January, Danielle Smith had her own meeting with AUPE's president (photo left), with the AUPE subsequently asserting that the Wildrose leader "was receptive to union concerns." In order to advance his thesis that a Wildrose government would take a hard line on unions, AUPE communications person and St Albert-based blogger David Climenhaga was reduced to drawing on a statement by the loser of last year's Wildrose leadership vote, Mark Dyrholm. The result? Wildrose's rise having such a negligible impact on public policy that the union lobby declared victory after the government's February budget: "The budget is something of a victory for [our] coalition"

With respect to Wildrose's post-secondary education policy, it's more financial obligation on the government, less on those who consume a government-subsidized service, and fewer resources for the in-deficit provincial Treasury. The policy calls for mandated tuition caps, a philosophy rather at odds with the idea that the market should determine price levels. A consequence of the cap is that either our universities will have their funding reduced, or the Alberta taxpayer will have to contribute more. Increased tax breaks for private donations are also talked about, but donations of securities, for example, are already tax free.

Don't get me wrong here: there are problems with just demanding more standardized testing, amongst other things. But what's missing is any sign that the union lobbies, and more generally those with claims on the public purse, are going to be challenged.

State of the Rose: Wildrose vs libertarians

In mid-October 2009, the membership of Alberta's Wildrose Alliance Party elected Danielle Smith as its new leader. Since then the party, which was polling 7% in April 2009, has never polled below 25% across the province, while the official opposition Alberta Liberals have never polled above. Wildrose has so sidelined the Liberals as primary opposition to the governing PC party that a newspaper editorialist has contended that Wildrose is fighting a proxy war against the governing PC party in the upcoming municipal election in Edmonton. Ms Simons' opinion piece has to be taken with a grain of salt: her previous columns suggest that she would like nothing more than to see Wildrose humiliated in the capital city, and a possible route to that end would be to render as a verdict on the party the October 17 municipal vote, which should see the incumbent mayor Stephen Mandel win at a canter. The proxy war narrative also fits it rather too conveniently into Mandel's ranting about provincial politicians interfering in Edmonton's affairs. But whether the thesis that Wildrose has what military strategists call force projection capability to contest the most Wildrose-unfriendly territory in the province on a proxy basis is well-founded or not, there is no denying that Danielle Smith has a significantly higher profile both provincially and nationally than Official Opposition leader David Swann.

Writing about my view of the state of the party this weekend is going to be lengthy chronicle of woe, sad to say. As such, I'm dividing it into three parts: 1) the regrettable and unnecessary falling out between the party and libertarian pundits at the Western Standard and Macleans 2) Wildrose's education policies, which on at least one unsettling point are more teacher union friendly the PC government's policies, and 3) a broader view of the fundamental policy problem that North America in general faces and how the "conservative" parties are failing to address it.

Ms Smith' convincing victory in the race to become Wildrose leader was seen by many "libertarians" who supported her as the membership's endorsement of a libertarian positioning for the party. Danielle told the Edmonton Journal's Capital Notebook that she was "libertarian and pro-choice." Matthew Johnston, owner of the Western Standard, says that at his e-magazine "we aim to be fiercely and openly loyal to libertarian ideas" and in April 2009 Johnston described Danielle as close to the "perfect candidate". Johnston co-hosted a reception for Danielle with federal Libertarian Party leader Dennis Young in Calgary in June 2009, shortly after Danielle declared her candidacy for the party's leadership. The blogger "CalgaryLibertarian" volunteered to help the party win the Glenmore by-election later that summer. While organizing for Wildrose in Edmonton's south-west late last year, I tried to get a 20-year old Edmonton libertarian on to a constituency board in order to ensure that the voice of young people was heard and although this student had to decline because of school commitments, he said he was very interested in getting Danielle to speak to his local libertarian meet-up group.

I'm not a libertarian, I'm a paleo-con, but I nonetheless feel that, in general, libertarians are a valuable part of any conservative movement not least because their enthusiasm for what is largely an abstraction makes them less susceptible to partisanship on any particular issue. Earlier this summer Western Standard writer JJ McCullough noted an "important" fact that is "largely forgotten or unfashionable to recall in the present day," namely, that "[t]he 1993-2003 Liberal government of Jean Chretien embarked on a remarkable agenda of fiscal conservatism." Another Western Standard contributor, Mike Brock, uploaded to Youtube a video of Andrew Coyne blasting the Harper Conservatives.

By being frequently found outside established brokerage parties, Libertarian pundits serve as a conscience check of sorts, and so it was that I thought that Matt Johnston's view should have been given some consideration when early this year he warned against floor-crosser Heather Forsyth being "given prominence in the party that could put her in a position to shape policy." I, myself, was more concerned about Rob Anderson, writing to a Wildrose executive member on January 4 to warn that Anderson is "a communications risk for going off message on social issues." The idea of "prominence" that Johnston refers to is an important one: floor-crossings are not all created equal. If crossers are going to justify not running in a byelection with the argument that they were elected as individuals instead of as representatives of a party, if post-crossing those individuals are presented more as individuals than as party representatives, the hypocrisy is minimal. More than a year ago I had written to the same Wildrose executive member to express my concerns about floor-crossers in light of the then rumours, noting that accepting the crossers into the party is one issue and "[w]hether we want them to step into what would amount to commanding positions in the Wildrose Alliance is another issue."

So when, just a month after I blogged here that "the less we hear from caucus... the better," caucus puts out a "Wildrose statement" that provokes Matt Johnston to write, "I feel sick about this. I really thought Danielle would be different," I don't know whether to laugh or cry. It is, of course, not just Johnston that is upset. Mike Brock has waved the "I told you so," finger as well, saying "[a]s I predicted, the libertarians must compromise." My former high school classmate Colby Cosh, writing for Macleans, deemed the press release evidence of an anti-evidence-based social policy and perceived Forsyth's idiosyncratic policy concerns in the text. In my view, whether or not a politician makes "extreme" remarks is unrelated to how accountable that politician is. An elected politician who makes idiosyncratic policy announcements, however, is necessarily insensitive to accountability considerations to at least a degree because an accountable politician keeps in mind the fact that the people who volunteered their time and money to elect him or her did not do so in order to advance a particular person's ambitions and personal agenda, but to advance a general agenda. De-particularizing one's platform is correlated with removing one's particular self such that getting elected becomes a team effort. The fact that Cosh, Johnston, Brock et al have all gone off about this incident suggests that these critics are voicing a view that is generally held. What's especially headshaking here is the fact that Forsyth and Anderson have used the soapbox given to them by Wildrose and funded by the Alberta taxpayer (through the MLA office allowances) to go off about a court decision in Ontario, calling on the federal government to wade into a provincial issue.

As a non-libertarian, I am not as disturbed by the substance of the policy issue here, prostitution, as the Western Standard writers. The legalization of prostitution was one of the weekly Economist debate forum topics in September and I think the "con" speaker helpfully raises some of the fallen nature arguments that libertarians, who have have little time for depth psychology, all too often give short shrift to. I also think that that if Johnston, Brock, and Cosh were true libertarians as opposed to anti-social conservatives, they would have reserved their greatest indignation for when "the caucus" (read: Anderson and Forsyth, since I can't believe it was Hinman's idea) took their very nearly successful run at the policy planks that said Wildrose "will allow individual workers to voluntarily determine their membership in labour organizations" and "will extend to workers the democratic right to a secret ballot vote" at the party's AGM in June. I would think that the right to freely buy and sell labour in general is more fundamental that the right to freely buy and sell the human body. But the fact that more than three quarters of Economist readers should think prostitution should be legalized shouldn't surprise anyone and this sentiment was not confined to the upscale readers of the Economist either, if the comment threads on the CBC and Globe and Mail websites are any guide.

Libertarians are something of a fringe group and evidence for this is the fact that the caucus press release at issue here was uncontroversial in the eyes the mainstream media. But as a fiscal conservative I have to wonder how fiscal conservatives would fare under a Wildrose government. Mike Brock writes:

It's time, as I've been saying for a while, for libertarians across the country to withdraw our support for conservative parties across this country.

Even though we are a small minority in the movement, we played a big roll in the media, within the party establishment and on the ground shilling for conservatives over the past decade. What have we gotten for this?

Insults by the prime minister, who used to identify with classical liberalism. A complete abandonment of fiscal responsibility. More regulation. Bigger government. More military spending. Intensification of the drug war.

Oh, and some token tax cuts. At the expense of the biggest deficit in history, mind you.

No. I call on libertarians from all over to withdraw their support and do their damnedest to sabotage the conservative movement by playing to it's hypocrisies on economic issues, in particular.

I have to agree completely that self-styled conservatives need to be exposed for their "hypocrisies on economic issues", with the prime minister being offender-in-chief. Boondoggles like the Atlantic Opportunties Agency are getting as much taxpayer money as ever. It seems to me that what Brock and I have a common problem with is PARTY conservatives. Principled conservatives need to stop drinking the kool-aid, especially the kind labelled "citizen's initiatives", which the worst of the demagogues, like Bill "indicted-by-the-Conflict-of-Interest-Commisssioner" Vander Zalm, exploit for their own purposes. Consider the chain of the events that led to this latest incident. It was ultimately set into motion by a decision that was made, not by ordinary voters who elected Anderson and Forsyth to represent Wildrose, or by a grassroots membership vote to take a positioning that would alienate libertarians, but by an extremely small group of insiders at the top of the party under conditions of negligible transparency. That the financial interests of the floor crossers was reportedly taken into consideration as well (note the potentially "without an income for six months [if the crossers resigned to run in byelections]" quote in that link) just underlines how the fateful decision was made in the best traditions of back room politics.

Brock in fact has it wrong when he contends that the libertarian supporters of the party ended up with a "compromise" outcome they find unsatisfactory. Were that the case, as someone who doesn't hail from that wing I would have no objection. The real problem is that how libertarians would perceive the caucus press release on the Ontario court decision was simply never even considered.