Alberta NDP

Alberta NDP leader Brian Mason says he wouldn't vote for Sarah Palin, but he respects her record on oil and gas royalties

When Alberta NDP leader Brian Mason met with Alaska governor Sarah Palin in January, he had royalties on the brain. “Both Republicans and Democrats (in Alaska) stood up to the oil companies and got a much better deal than Ed Stelmach did,” says Mason, who briefly met with Palin in January when he visited Alaska’s capital, Juneau, on a two-day fact-finding trip.

In the months following, Mason saw his four-person NDP caucus cut in half after a provincial election that devastated the province’s opposition parties. Palin, meanwhile, went on to become U.S. Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s choice for vice-president. As Palin endured a fierce storm of media criticism after her appointment was announced in late August, Mason dug out the photo of him and Palin and put it on his Facebook profile.

“My reason for pasting it on my Facebook page was simply to demonstrate that if a gun-totin’, Bible-thumpin’ right-wing Republican can stand up to Big Oil and get a better deal for her state’s citizens, then what’s wrong with Ed Stelmach and Alberta’s Conservatives?” says Mason. “Why can’t they do it?”

When he’s asked if Palin would make a good U.S. vice-president, Mason laughs heartily. “I’m not touching that one with a 10 foot pole,” he says. “I only met her for about 10 minutes. She was a very nice person…. I found out much more about her background and her politics in the last week and a half than I knew at the time.”

Mason says while he doesn’t share Palin’s political views, the photo shows that people with different politics can find common ground. “I don’t think I’d be voting for her if I was an American, but I do respect what she as well as the state legislature in Alaska have done around the whole question of royalties,” he says.