Edmonton– While Danielle Smith and 16 other Wildrose MLAs are heading to the Alberta legislature this spring, some of the party’s more controversial policies may not be coming with them, Smith says.
“We have some soul-searching to do as a party,” she said Tuesday, a day after a provincial election defeat that saw the Wildrose almost shut out of the major cities and northern Alberta.
“Our members have now seen that some of our policies were rejected by Albertans, quite frankly,” she said in an interview. “We will be revisiting some of those. You can’t run a government if you don’t get sanction from the people.”
Asked which policies in particular were up for debate, Smith mentioned the “Alberta Agenda” items that call for the province to establish its own pension plan and replace the RCMP with a provincial police force. Such ideas were touted by a group of conservative thinkers in a famous letter written a decade ago that called for Alberta to build a “firewall” – a term that was used by the PCs to attack the Wildrose during the campaign.
Smith also mentioned her party members’ endorsement of conscience rights, which would allow a marriage commissioner refusing to perform a same-sex marriage, or a Catholic doctor to decline writing a prescription for birth control.
“There may also be a stronger statement to make about climate change and our policy around greenhouse gas emissions,” she said. The Wildrose leader drew criticism during the campaign when she revealed her belief that the science of climate change remains unsettled.
Smith said she expects all such policies will be on the agenda when the Wildrose holds its annual general meeting this fall.
In the meantime, Smith said her party will use its new official opposition status to press the PC government in areas where the Wildrose has more general support from Albertans. Smith said when she stands up across the aisle from Premier Alison Redford during question period, her topics will include instilling more fiscal discipline, reducing wait times in hospitals and better accountability on MLA pay.
“The government still has the same problem today as they had yesterday,” she said. “They don’t have a realistic budget and now they have all these new spending promises to keep. Frankly, I don’t see any way that Premier Redford can balance the budget.”
The group accompanying her to the legislature has just two members – Rob Anderson and Heather Forsyth – who have previously served as MLAs. While Smith acknowledged there will be a learning curve for her largely rookie caucus, she said inexperience will be overcome by talent.
“One of my disappointments is that we didn’t get to feature our candidates much during the campaign, which I think contributed to the result,” she said. “I don’t think people fully realized that we had such terrific candidates, but they will get to see it in the legislature.”
Smith said she will announce a shadow cabinet around the same time Redford announces her new cabinet.
Monday’s election also created a regional split in both the province and the party. The election map shows a wall of green in southern rural ridings where the Wildrose elected the vast majority of its MLAs, along with two from Calgary.
Shayne Saskiw, who bested cabinet minister Ray Danyluk in Lac La Biche-St. Paul-Two Hills, is the only Wildrose MLA with a 780 area code on his phone.
Such a north-south split may have come down to a matter of priorities, said Doug Griffiths, the Tory municipal affairs minister who held onto his seat in Battle River-Wainwright.
“The north has always focused on the need for more infrastructure, and the further north you go, it seems there has been more need for schools and roads,” he said. “So when people were looking for a party that was talking about stronger communities, they looked to the PCs.
“In southern Alberta, while infrastructure is still important, perhaps balancing the budget was more of a key factor.”
Griffiths said the lack of southern rural MLAs in the Tory caucus won’t prevent the government from representing those constituents. He noted Alberta has had geographic disparity before, including a time in the 1990s under Ralph Klein when the Tory caucus was largely from rural areas and Calgary and had little representation from Edmonton.
However, Saskiw and Smith both noted the north-south divide may be overstated. The Wildrose was involved in some close races in the north, proving the party’s support is not as split as the seat distribution suggests.
“In my area, we had a very strong campaign team. But in a lot of neighbouring constituencies, we came within striking distance, so I do consider that to be a tremendous amount of growth,” Saskiw said.
He said his victory revolved around issues common to other ridings, including the shortage of long-term care spaces and anger over perceived infringements on property rights. However, Lac La Biche-area residents were also particularly concerned about the impending closure of Edmonton’s City Centre Airport and the effects on medevac services. As such, Saskiw said he plans to bring up the issue in the legislature.
To pull more seats from the cities and the north in 2016, he said the plan is simply to keep pressing on important issues and work to build up bases of supporters and volunteers in all 87 ridings.
Smith said the PCs’ inaction on property rights concerns will continue to fester, which may bring more northern ridings to her party.
“But the other issues people have are very much the same wherever you go in the province,” Smith said, specifically mentioning accountability and health care.
“We’ll have to make some changes on the party side so we have (improved) regional organizations. As far as I’m concerned, the work starts today.”
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