Led by 41-year-old Danielle Smith, a charismatic former journalist with ties to the Reform movement that launched the political career of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Wildrose has moved past its roots as a minor protest party with into a big-tent par t y that has garnered wide support in advance of elections scheduled for April 23.
With a platform that includes paying voters a slice of the government’s take from the oil industry and a promise not to raise taxes, Wildrose has taken a strong lead in the polls over rookie Premier Alison Redford’s Progressive Conservatives and has polarized the province’s politics in the process.
“People are increasingly looking at this (election) as a referendum on whether it’s the PCs or Wildrose,” said Bruce Cameron, president of polling firm Return on Insight. “The Wildrose have run a good campaign and increased Danielle Smith’s popularity and, in contrast, the Conservatives have run a perplexing campaign.”
Elections in Alberta, a province that is the largest source of U.S. oil imports, have mostly been a cakewalk for the Progressive Conservatives since 1971.
But a series of petty scandals - most recently a scheme that saw members of the legislature receive C$1,000 per month for sitting on a committee that held no meetings - has soured many voters.
Rather than turning to the centrist Liberals, the traditional opposition party in the province, Alberta voters are now deciding how right wing they want their government to be. Wildrose, with just four seats in the provincial legislature, suddenly has a shot at power.
According to polls, Wildrose has held a steady lead over the Progressive Conservatives for the past few weeks, with the most recent, released Monday, pegging the lead at seven percentage points, enough to form a majority government.
Smith promises to send as much as $300 to every Albertan by 2015 from the province’s oil and gas revenue. She also says Wildrose will slash legislators’ pay, improve wait times in hospital emergency rooms and eliminate school fees.
“This is largely a civil war,” said Peter McCormick, a political science professor at the University of Lethbridge in the south of the province. “Most of the people who are about to vote Wildrose in enormous numbers are people who used to vote Conservative in enormous numbers.”
Named for Alberta’s official flower, Wildrose was formed in 2008 through the merger of two minor parties. Smith a former property-rights advocate, editorial writer and current-affairs television show host, took over in 2009 and received support from the energy industry as it looked for a champion to fight royalty increases proposed by then-Premier Ed Stelmach.
A promise to boost the government’s take from oil and gas production in the province was popular with voters, who gave Stelmach’s Progressive Conservatives the largest majority in Alberta’s history in 2008. But the promise was bitterly opposed by the oil industry.
Encana Corp, Canadian Natural Resources Ltd and other oil companies threatened to cut investment in the province because of the hikes. In 2010, the fierce opposition forced the government to scale back its plan.
Analysts compare the swift rise of Wildrose to the surge of the conservative Tea Party movement in the United States and the camera-friendly Smith has drawn comparisons to Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate, who has since emerged as one of the movement’s most influential voices.
But while Wildrose and the Tea Party share a distrust of big government, high taxes and entrenched interests, many observers says the analogy ends there and that Wildrose owes its start to the political reform movements that periodically sweep Alberta. Indeed, the last such movement produced what is now the governing federal Conservative party.
In addition, Smith calls herself a libertarian with no interest in the social conservative views that are hallmarks of the Tea Party movement.
“Critics of Wildrose like to claim that Danielle Smith is the Sarah Palin of Alberta,” said Duane Bratt, a political science professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary. “That’s just garbage. Would the Tea Party support a pro-choice, pro-gay rights leader?”
Smith has promised Wildrose will steer clear of legislating on moral issues such as abortion and gay marriage if it wins power. But the Progressive Conservatives have made hay with incidents that show some Wildrose candidates taking a harder stance.
Last week, reporters came across a year-old blog entry written by a Wildrose candidate and Protestant pastor that disparaged homosexuals and called public education “godless”. Other candidates have been vocal opponents of gay marriage.
Gay marriage has been legal across Canada since 2005 and the federal government says it has no plans to tamper with that.
Cameron said fears that a Wildrose government may be tempted to abandon Smith’s pledge and legislate on moral issues may be behind the collapse of support for the Liberals in Calgary as voters decide they must support the Progressive Conservatives to keep Wildrose out of power.
“The issue is just getting going,” Cameron said. “One intemperate remark by some Wildrose candidate might be dismissable. But when it speaks to ’What is this party all about and what kinds of people will be in government in a position of power?’ I think many Albertans are starting to think about that more carefully.”
Original Article
Source: cnews.canoe.ca
Author: Scott Haggett, Reuters
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