“They’re honestly old, tired and out of ideas, so it’s time for some new fresh blood that has a real vision for the future.”
— Randy Thorsteinson, Alberta
Alliance Party, September 2002
Albertans who have staked a claim to ideological ground to the right of the Progressive Conservatives have struggled to find a home to call their own for more than 10 years.
The revolving door of right-of-centre political parties began in 1999 with the resignation of then Social Credit leader Randy Thorsteinson.
He and eight members of the party executive quit after “influential party members” tried to impose limits on the role of Mormons in the party. Thorsteinson went on to launch the Alberta First party, which folded in 2004 after garnering less than one per cent of the vote in the March 2001 provincial election.
Meanwhile, the Alberta Independence party held its founding convention in Red Deer in January 2001. MPs Myron Thompson and Darrell Stinson joined more than 200 people at the convention to chart the party’s course. Much like Alberta First, Alberta Independence failed to catch on with Albertans and folded within the year.
Thorsteinson resurfaced in 2002 as interim leader of the Alberta Alliance party. Modelled on the principals of but not affiliated with the federal Canadian Alliance, the party attracted many of Alberta First’s political refugees, including Paul Hinman, who served as the party’s southern regional director.
Hinman won the Alberta Alliance’s lone seat in southern Alberta in the 2004 provincial election and served as the party’s leader after Thorsteinson abandoned ship. He oversaw the merger of the Alberta Alliance and Wildrose party before the Tories reclaimed his seat in the 2008 provincial election.
Wildrose Alliance is the latest iteration of the party to pick up the right-of-centre banner.
In the past year, it has elected a new leader, Danielle Smith; won a provincial byelection in a Tory stronghold; persuaded two disenchanted Tories to cross the floor of the Legislature (a provincial first) and poached a Tory policy advisor with close ties to one of those Tories.
A December poll suggested the party was the province’s government-in-waiting, positioned to pull the “big Alberta switcheroo,” as one Wildrose Alliance member recently put it. If only the next provincial election was tomorrow, not two years away.
Wildrose Alliance puts on airs as Alberta’s government-in-waiting, but beneath the hype are same old, tired cast of right-of-centre characters pitching the same old, tired right-of-centre policies, such as fixed election dates, recall and citizen-initiated referendums, that have been kicked around for almost two decades.
That cast includes Link Byfield, party secretary and independent senator-still-in-waiting. In the 2008 provincial election, he was rejected by the voters of Whitecourt-Ste. Anne by a three-to-one margin in favour of his Tory opponent.
There’s Cory Morgan, former leader of the Alberta Independence party and a Wildrose Alliance southern zone director, who amassed 892 votes in Calgary-Mountain View, placing a very distant third to Liberal leader David Swan.
There’s John Hilton-O’Brien, the party’s vice-president of policy, who garnered a paltry 546 votes for the Alberta Alliance in the 2004 provincial election in Grande Prairie-Wapiti. Todd Loewen, a northern zone director, and Said Abdulbaki, a southern zone director, fared little better in Grande Prairie-Smokey and Calgary-Montrose, respectively, in 2008.
Closer to home, Ed Klop, a perennial right-of-centre candidate who also vied for leadership of the Alberta Alliance, was soundly beaten in the 2004 provincial election in Lacombe-Ponoka. He also crashed to defeat in 2008, receiving 948 votes in Red Deer South, a distant third to Tory Cal Dallas.
In Red Deer North, Mary Anne Jablonski soundly defeated right-of-centre hopefuls Randy Sisson and Urs Lehner in 2004 and 2008, respectively.
Have Albertans suddenly warmed to the idea of electing en mass the seatless senators, separatists and perennial also-rans they soundly rejected a little more than a year ago, as polls seem to suggest? Or will Wildrose Alliance evolve into yet another right-of-centre party after failing to pull off the “the big Alberta switcheroo?”
Of course, Randy Thorsteinson was referring to Alberta’s Progressive Conservatives in 2002, but the same will be said of Wildrose Alliance unless it is able to attract a fresh slate of candidates in the run up to the next provincial election.
That will be a true measure of the party’s popularity with Albertans, not the polls.
Cameron Kennedy is an Advocate editor.