Another Leader Falls as the Winds of Change Sweep Across ... Alberta

Politicians in wild rose country are resigning quicker than Middle Eastern dictators.

In the wake of resignation announcements from Conservative Premier Ed Stelmach, Finance Minister Ted Morton, and Liberal leader David Swann, the National Post’s Kevin Libin tries to identify the proverbial butterfly that flapped its wings and caused the hurricane in Alberta politics. “The catalyst for this turmoil may be found in the more progressive policies of the outgoing Tory premier: deficit spending, medicare dogmatism, tax hikes on the energy sector and pricey peace-purchasing contracts with public unions,” he writes. These centrist policies robbed the Liberals of a platform but also prompted the creation of right-wing Wildrose Alliance, which in turn became a haven for disaffected Conservatives, causing panic at the top of the PC party and leading to Stelmach’s resignation. Pretty exciting stuff for a province that’s been ruled by one party for the past 40 years.

Both the Globe and Mail’s Jeffrey Simpson and the Calgary Herald predict that Swann’s resignation could lead to the death of the Alberta Liberal Party. As the Herald puts it, “[i]ts inability to win an election in 90 years, since 1921, should tell them something.” It’s not even the Liberals’ policies that are holding them back, goes the argument, so much as their name that reminds Albertans of the federal party that under Pierre Trudeau became public enemy number one in Western Canada. Both Simpson and the Herald recommend that the Liberals scrap their name and merge with the fledging centrist Alberta Party.

“The Alberta Party gives the Liberals a chance to keep its convictions alive, a needed voice in a healthy democracy,” write the Herald editorialists.

“The province is simply far too sophisticated and diverse for all of its ambitions, frustrations and fissures to be accommodated in one big, sprawling party,” writes Simpson. “If Liberals come to their senses, and the conservative right tears itself apart before finally coming together in some fashion, Alberta could have what the province desperately deserves: a fair reflection of itself, with more serious politics and better government.”