Local organizers for Wildrose Alliance are hoping to “strike while the iron’s hot.”
That’s how George Croome, interim president of the Red Deer South constituency association, put their decision to host a inter-constituency organizational meeting on Tuesday night.
“I think there’s been lots of interest in the party lately,” said Croome, who hopes that featuring conservative commentator and former Wildrose candidate Link Byfield will draw people in to the meeting shared by the Red Deer North and South constituencies.
Croome said they held a meeting before Christmas to try to get the constituency properly set up, but couldn’t make quorum. Now, he’s confident enough people will show up that they can elect an official board with a treasurer and president. From there, both Red Deer North and Red Deer South can officially register as constituency associations and start to raise money.
“The Wildrose is ready to take in those disgruntled Conservative party members,” Croome added.
Byfield, who ran the now-defunct Alberta Report and founded the Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy, said that while he hadn’t yet prepared an actual address he will speak to “a new chapter opening in Alberta history.”
“There’s a new way of looking at the provincial government . . . it’s spreading around Alberta very quickly,” Byfield said. “The Conservative party is not an original party created by Albertans.
“It is a conservative party with a top-down mindset that actually came to us from Eastern Canada. And that doesn’t make it evil — that’s just the way it was. What we do in Alberta when we get tired of parties from Eastern Canada, including the Liberals long ago, is we create a homegrown party that has no equivalent anywhere else in the country.”
Byfield said he knows it can be tough to get people to come to meetings when you’re a new political party, but said Wildrose’s increased membership of late is a good indication of success at Tuesday’s get-together. People are realizing, he said, that a change in government is actually possible.
“We’ve been governed at least half of our provincial history by parties like this — the (United Farmers of Canada) and the Social Credit, and soon, I think, the Wildrose Alliance. It’s something that Albertans have done before and I think we’ll do again, in these new circumstances and new times.”
The meeting starts at 7 p.m. at the North Hill Inn. Everyone is welcome and party memberships are available at the door.
mgauk@www.reddeeradvocate.com