At the close of the spring legislative session last week, Kevin Taft once again told impatient reporters that he’d announce his plans regarding the leadership of the Liberal Party by the end of the month.

However, this doesn’t mean that the rest of the Liberals haven’t already started planning for a possible post-Taft era. At the end of May, a group of predominantly Calgary Liberals released a manifesto called New Liberal, New Focus onto the web, setting out its positions in the ongoing discussions about the future of the Alberta Liberals. Specifically, they oppose a name change and a merger with the NDP. They also propose a reinterpretation of Liberal values.

Corey Hogan, a 26-year-old Calgary Liberal and political consultant, is one of the document’s primary authors, and he calls it a more practical look at how the party can move forward.

“There’s been a lot of discussion within the party about the future,” Hogan says. “It almost felt like this was running away from us. A bunch of us who are proud Liberals felt that we had to change not who we are but what we do.”

New Liberal, New Focus has been downloaded more than 800 times since it was posted, and about 60 people have endorsed it. The group is seeking opinions from everyone, including disaffected members of other political parties and the general public.

“It wouldn’t do us any good to have these discussions in smoke-filled rooms,” Hogan says. “We need to bring more people into it. We need to broaden our big tent.”

Values And Votes

New Liberal, New Focus does a good job of assessing the strategic situation and laying out why the Liberals need a makeover, says Harold Jansen, a political scientist at the University of Lethbridge, but he cautions that the answers Hogan and his co-authors present are far from inspiring.

“The core values that they define aren’t ones that I think the Conservatives would disagree with,” he says. “That’s what I find paradoxical. They say if they change the name they’ll drift away from their principles and then basically the principle that defines them is that they’re not the NDP or the Conservatives.”

That practicality, however, is what appeals to Kyle Olsen, president of the Alberta Young Liberals, and another Calgarian. “It’s a bit of a wake-up call to people who have become too focused on ideological purity and not enough on winning,” he says.

He says the party needs to prioritize its values, and ditch policies that aren’t gaining traction among voters. (Energy re-regulation is on his ditch list.) He’d rather form a government and implement 60 per cent of their ideas than continue criticizing from the opposition sidelines.

Taft To Get Shaft?

It’s difficult to talk in concrete terms about the future policies and direction of the Alberta Liberals before the October leadership convention even takes place. After all, much of the party’s platform (and how they market it to the public) will depend on the personality of the leader. New Liberal, New Focus does give some indication of a possible path.

For instance, it recommends rebranding the party as the “New Liberals” in lieu of a wholesale name-change — a proposal modelled on Britain’s Labour Party, which revitalized itself at the polls by rebranding the party as the energetic, youthful “New Labour.”

A full name change, on the other hand, might come off as a transparent attempt to fool voters into thinking the Liberals had undergone more of a reinvention than they actually have. (Calgary-Mountain View MLA David Swann, who has expressed tentative support for a name change, says he would only want a new name if the party were truly revamped.)

Whatever they choose to call themselves, Jansen says, the Liberals can’t present themselves as a different party in the same way New Labour did if they don’t elect a new leader. And that new leader will need to bring the same charisma and fresh ideas to the role that Tony Blair brought to the Labour Party.

Taft says he doesn’t feel any pressure to leave because of the changes being proposed by the New Liberal group or Swann. “I think there does need to be a process of renewal,” he says. “I said from the beginning that everything is on the table, including my leadership. I’ve got lots of people urging me to stay, and I know there’s a current urging me to go. I’m pretty philosophical about it.”

If the anti-Taft current prevails and there is a new leader, that person will most likely come from Calgary. Dave Taylor, MLA for Calgary-Currie, has already announced his intentions to run. (Taylor is the only MLA who has endorsed New Liberal, New Focus — and furthermore, an anonymous Liberal tells Fast Forward that the release of the document represents an early salvo in Taylor’s leadership run. Taylor declined Fast Forward’s request for an interview.)

And although Swann has not said whether he will run for the party leadership, he has positioned himself as a leader within the party by fostering the discussions around a name change. There have also been calls for Laurie Blakeman, the long-sitting MLA for Edmonton-Centre, to throw her hat in the ring, but she has not made any official announcements either.

Calgary Rises Again

With the majority of Liberal MLAs now based in Calgary, it makes sense that discussions of the party’s future are based here. It represents what Jansen calls a “natural shift” within the party.

Swann agrees. “There is a much stronger sense that Calgary has a very progressive dimension,” he says. “And this is also the epicentre of the corporate oil and gas industry. This is where some of the great drivers of change in the province are going to come from, and we better be front and centre in that.”

“There’s a lot of energy in Calgary for Liberalism,” adds Hogan. “I don’t think it’s necessarily more than Edmonton, but it is new and exciting.”

Jansen thinks Calgary’s new political landscape — and the presence of a premier more closely associated with Edmonton, as opposed to a Calgary partisan like Ralph Klein — is conducive to a Liberal resurgence. Mayor Dave Bronconnier is a natural ally for the Liberals; his complaints about provincial funding and the low level of Calgary representation within Ed Stelmach’s inner circle are well-known.

The previously Edmonton-centric Liberal Party hasn’t served Calgary well, says Olsen. The impression he gets from Calgary Liberals is that the party missed a lot of opportunities in the last election — for instance, by failing to reach out to white-collar oil employees who feared the party was leaning too far left.

Whatever direction the Liberals take over the next of couple years (and whoever leads them after the October leadership convention), Olsen predicts the move will not have much to do with the rivalry between Edmonton and Calgary.

“It’s not an insurgent document,” he says. “It’s not like we’re going to pull a coup d’état, although it may look that way from Edmonton.... In the end, whatever shift happens in the party happens democratically. The party is one member, one vote.”