Alison Redford, Progressive Conservative leader
Personal: 47, married, one daughter, Sarah, 9
Political Experience: She sought and lost the federal Conservative nomination to Rob Anders in Calgary West in 2004. She was elected provincially in Calgary-Elbow in 2008, appointed Alberta minister of justice the same year, elected leader of the Progressive Conservatives and sworn in as Alberta’s 14th — and first female — premier October, 2011.
Background: She was born in British Columbia, but moved to Alberta at age 12. As a child she also lived in Nova Scotia and Borneo. She was president of the Young PCs in her Calgary high school, is a University of Saskatchewan graduate, and a human rights lawyer. She articled at the law firm of Jim Prentice, a former Stephen Harper cabinet minister, and worked for both Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney, former Conservative prime ministers.
Outside Alberta: Her career in legal reform has taken her to Australia, Afghanistan, South Africa, Bosnia, Serbia, Namibia, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, the Philippines and Vietnam. In Africa, she worked on human rights litigation and gender issues policy and she was one of four international national election commissioners to administer Afghanistan’s first parliamentary elections.
Private moment gone public: She had to deal with the death of her mother just before the final ballot in the PC leadership race last September.
Little known facts: She loves country music, reading and baking bread. While working in South Africa, she once shared an office with Nelson Mandela.
Low point of the campaign: Her apology to Danielle Smith after a worker tweeted about the Wildrose leader’s lack of a family. Smith and her husband cannot have children.
High point of the campaign: Her attack on Smith’s position on the science of climate change. “When I go to Washington and tell them why we need the Keystone (pipeline), they don’t want to hear from a premier who denies climate change.”
Campaign quote: “(This election) is about the future, understanding that we’re a different community, we’re a different society, that we have the opportunity to make some really wise and long-term decisions that will change the character of our province.”
Danielle Smith, Wildrose leader
Personal: 41, the same age as the Progressive Conservative government she seeks to topple. She is married with no children.
Political experience: A Calgary school trustee in the 1990s. She was a Progressive Conservative who left the party in 2008. She became Wildrose leader in 2009. Danielle Smith was a Progressive Conservative who left the party in 2008.
Background: She is an English and Economics graduate from the University of Calgary, and went on to become first a columnist and editorial writer at The Calgary Herald, then a television and radio host. She has been director of provincial affairs for Alberta with the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and worked with the Fraser Institute in Vancouver.
Outside Alberta: She did some backpacking through Europe as a 17-year-old, has travelled to the U.S. and the Caribbean, lived briefly in Ottawa and spent a year in Vancouver.
Personal matter gone public: Smith revealed she and her husband David Moretta had sought fertility treatment but could not have children after a PC worker wondered on Twitter why the pro-family Smith had no family.
Little known facts: She’s a mean pool player and owns her own cue. She was known to separate some classmates from their beer money at the pool table during university days. She travels on the campaign with her husband, her parents, and her dogs, Caine, a Labradoodle, and Turk, a Chesapeake Bay Retriever.
Campaign low point: Her seeming ambivalence to one Wildrose candidate condemning homosexuals to a lake of fire and another professing he would be a better MLA because he is white.
Campaign high point: The calm and humour with which she handled the campaign bus gaffe, in which the wheels appeared to be her breasts, a misstep which received international attention.
Campaign quote: “As a person of mixed-race ancestry, I take it personally when accusations of racism and bigotry are aimed at me and my party.’’
No comments:
Post a Comment