| Try to imagine it: Premier Kevin Taft. Say it a few times, out loud: Alberta Premier Kevin Taft. Theoretically, this man could be our next premier. However, if you’re like most Albertans, you don’t think that’s a very realistic possibility. An Angus Reid poll done in December found less than 20 per cent of Albertans would vote for the Liberals in an election. Only six per cent would vote for the NDP, according to the poll. And the Conservatives? A full 68 per cent support. Ouch. Even if the poll is moderately inaccurate, it doesn’t bode well for the Liberals–or for democracy in Alberta.
This is a time when opposition parties should be riding a wave of popular support in Alberta. The reasons are obvious. The Conservatives are fat with corruption, patronage and complacency. In seven months, the party will become the longest-governing party in the province’s history, supplanting the Social Credit’s record. If history is any guide, the Conservatives should soon be booted out of office.
Ralph Klein, the Teflon premier to whom nothing would stick, is gone. Ed Stelmach lacks Klein’s "regular guy" persona, and a lot more is sticking to him because of it. Albertans won’t be so eager to forgive things like a pay-to-meet-the-Premier fundraiser.
Opposition parties should be salivating at the very thought of it. True to Tory neo-con ideology, the Stelmach government has made it clear that it won’t, say, govern or anything like that. It will simply facilitate business as usual and continue allowing the market to shape the province’s future, regardless of the human or environmental consequences.
That kind of thinking might fly in the Petroleum Club, but outside of those walls many Albertans are fed up with this pseudo-fundamentalist nonsense. Alberta is ready for a new government, and it’s increasingly difficult to put any faith in the current one.
Opportunity beckons for any party that can advance a credible centrist plan to deal with the province’s growth and the incredible strains on infrastructure and public services caused by that growth.
So why, then, is it still so difficult to imagine that Alberta’s Official Opposition – the centrist Liberals, led by Taft – could form a government some time in the next five years? For one thing, the Liberal party itself hardly considers it a possibility. At least, that’s what one would gather from listening to Taft. At a Calgary press conference held in December, just days after the surprise choice of Stelmach as Tory leader – a press conference that, tellingly, only a handful of reporters attended – Taft talked a lot about co-operation and working together, but said little about the possibility that his party could soon form a government.
"If I have one messasge for Ed Stelmach it is this: Ed, seize the moment," Taft had said. "Seize this opportunity. Alberta’s at a crossroads. If you get it right, if we get it right as a province we have an amazing future. If we get it wrong, we’re going to fritter it all away and look back in a few years and wonder where it all went. So Ed, your challenge is to seize the opportunity."
Huh? Who should really be seizing the opportunity here? The Conservatives had just chosen an uncharismatic leader with a mind-numbingly vague platform. Reporters were asking Taft about the changing political landscape, and was he ready to take on the Stelmach-led Tories? The answer was painfully clear: not really. "My invitation to Ed is: Ed, you work with us," said Taft. "We’ve got the ideas, we’ve got the agenda, we’ve got the vision and I just hope he takes us up on that invitation… we’re in this together."
This is not the talk of a party leader who is poised to lead the province. The truth is that Kevin Taft hasn’t captured the imaginations of Albertans, and he knows it. He is smart and competent, but Albertans still aren’t convinced that his party is fit to govern. The Liberals are aware of this and have, it seems, resigned themselves to a marginal role in Alberta politics at a time when they should be gaining serious ground.
To be fair, the odds are stacked against the Liberals. No party that has been voted out of power in Alberta’s 102-year history has ever returned to form another government. (If that historical trend continues, the Alberta Alliance will most likely be the party that supplants the Conservatives. What an encouraging thought.) It’s a sad time for democracy when the only possibility Albertans can imagine, aside from a Progressive Conservative government that reigns for ever and ever, is a switch from one conservative government to an even harder-right government. The Taft Liberals should aim to do more than simply work with the current government. That, or they should find a new leader – one that is ready to kick some Tory ass.
Jeremy Klaszus is the contributing editor at Alberta Views magazine.
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