Election Time in Alberta

Smoky Lake Signal Article No. 206 (February 1, 2012)

Whispering in the Wind

Alberta’s Election Preparations

Timetable – Here is what we know so far: Speaker Ken Kowalski announced that the Alberta’s Legislative Assembly will reconvene on February 7th with a Throne Speech. Finance Minister, Ron Liepert will table the government’s budget on February 9th. Premier Redford has also made it clear that her government’s financial budget will be debated and passed prior to dissolving the Legislative Assembly and the call for an election. Because the debate on the budget will likely take 4 or 5 weeks, my thoughts as to when Albertans will be going to the polls still stands, sometime around mid-April – and that means, the actual election day could be on Monday, April 16 and possibly a week later on April 23.

Nominations – As of January 26 the Alberta Party has nominated 12 candidates in Alberta’s 87 constituencies; the Liberals have nominated 25 out of 87; the New Democratic Party has put in place 73 candidates out of the 87; the Alberta PC Party has nominated 66 / 87; and the Wildrose have chosen 79 / 87. Nominations will continue well into February. The Alberta New Democratic Party, the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party; and the Alberta Wildrose Party are all expected to have a full slate of 87 candidates when the election is called. The Alberta Liberal Party wants to have 87 candidates but is expected to have great difficulty in running a full slate. The Alberta Party never intended to run a full slate of candidates, their strategy is to run select candidates in select constituencies.

Alberta Political Opinion Polls – Opinion polls can be dangerous tools when it comes to measuring the mood of an electorate and yet it seems that the telephone survey method is the only thing used by commercial research groups when it comes to judging Alberta public, political opinion. Over the last three months four polls have been conducted with some surprising results. First the easy conclusion from the four polls: the Liberals and NDP parties in Alberta equally share about 25 percent “hard core” support from Albertans and that will not change. For the PC party and the Wildrose party the support seems to be all over the map – from one polling firm’s survey in mid-January, the Alberta PC party garnered 53 percent support (the Wildrose got 16 percent) another firm took their survey at the same time and their results were quite different – the Alberta PC party got 38 percent support while the Wildrose received 29 percent. The conclusion that one can draw from these current poll result is that things a very volatile – I’m sure that I will have a lot more to say about polling in the weeks and months ahead but one thing is for sure it’s time to talk about the issues facing Alberta and Albertans.

The Issues – As I have mentioned in past columns, the three most important issues facing Alberta in this upcoming election are: healthcare; property rights; and resource development. I have been chastised for not including education as one of the priorities but in my view Premier Redford handled that issue in her leadership campaign and will be fair in its treatment in the upcoming budget. What I want to see happen in this election campaign are solutions and action strategies to deal with the major issues facing Albertans and Alberta. There is one area that has been picked up by NDP leader, Brian Mason and it is the pricing of power in Alberta as a result of deregulation. I think Mr. Mason will gain support for pushing the power issue, particularly opposite the Liberals.