Monday, September 19, 2011

Alberta PC Leadership Race

Hello from Muscat, Sultanate of Oman.


I own a small oil & gas service company in Oman (http://www.omanenergyservices.com) and that takes my attention but I am missing my political fix and have been participating in and otherwise watching with re-newed interest the outcome of the PC Leadership race.

Prior to my departure on September 4th, 2011 I had been working through Mr. Ed Tam to support Gary Mar for the Leadership. I feel I need to state that up front because obviously I am a little biased.

I chose to work with Mar having left the Alberta Liberal Party in October of 2009 because they could not define themselves as Centrists in Alberta and therefore did not represent me any longer. Having worked closely with Dave Taylor, I moved to the Alberta Party trying to find a fit politically. This has caused some frustration due to lack of organization and other difficulties. However, I still maintain my membership and my foot in the door.

I met Gary Mar after he announced his intentions to seek the Leadership. The follow-up meeting allowed me to dialogue and get answers to my concerns with Alberta politics in general and PC politics specifically. I was convinced to support Gary and started the task of getting him elected, more importantly for me was to ensure that Alberta maintained a moderate leadership.

That leads me to the thoughts I have from a review of the initial results and what I believe will be the outcome of the Leadership race.

First let me say that people should see the first vote results as a move to the Centre in Alberta politics. Tory voters chose the 3 moderate candidates (so-called Red Tories) including a woman in 2nd place. This flies in the face of the perception from the rest of Canada that we are a bunch of back water conservatives, guns cocked, woman in the kitchen, etc...

Here is the outcome scenario;

Leadership hopefuls who did not make the cut will endorse Mar.

Mar wins the October 2nd vote convincingly.

He changes out the Cabinet in a clean sweep. Not to say all Ministers will be removed but changes are desperately required,

Mar calls Danielle Smith requests she re-join the family, she refuses, still he is seen to be opening up to Wildrose.

He then arranges a time to make an economic statement.

A by-election will be called because either Dave Hancock (destined to the Bench) or Teresa Woo Paw (don't know what they will do here) resigns and a seat is available.

Mar governs for several months to show Alberta what his Government will look like and to convince those who departed for the right that they need to re-think their choices.

May call a June election, most likely a fall, October vote.

From the voice of politics.

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