Although I thought Danielle Smith and her Wildrose team never really managed to reach the level of what I thought an opposition party should be doing, they were at least trying. In my opinion, a strong governing party needs a strong opposition sitting across from them. The Wildrose party had the potential of being that strong opposition. There are some excellent, hard working MLAs sitting on the speaker's left, including our own Bruce Rowe! I thought they were getting stronger as an opposition. Apparently I was wrong.
The other thing that bothers me is that these Wildrose MLAs were elected by their constituents as Wildrose Party members. Now, they're crossing the floor to become Conservatives! I'm hoping they polled their constituents to see if those folks who elected them don't mind that they taking that stroll. At least they must try to justify that walk across the floor!
In the late 1960s, a young Peter Lougheed led a handful of Progressive Conservative MLAs to be Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, against the ruling Social Credit government. The Social Credit majority was so overwhelming, some of the Social Credit members had to sit on the Speaker's left because there was no more room for them on the Government side!
Yet Lougheed plugged away. His credibility rose higher every time he stood to oppose the government. Soon after the next election, he and his party was the government!
That short walk across the floor of the Legislature is a short walk for a man, but a long journey across the Alberta political landscape!
I think that, for many of the people who signed up to stand as Wildrose candidates in 2011, they fully expected to become members and ministers in a new Wildrose government after the 2012 election. Imagine their disappointment at being on the Opposition benches.
ReplyDeleteI'd wager that, for a while, sitting in opposition to the Redford government was easy - she made plenty of mistakes, and wasn't especially conservative to begin with - but sitting in opposition to the Prentice government likely wasn't easy at all. He's a much more astute politician, who's certainly cut a path since becoming Premier.
is there not a law to enforce a by-election, to be elected as p/c, not a walk to the trough?
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