Alison Redford

Was it insularity and tone deafness, or Machiavellian cleverness, that led the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party to time the opening of the convention that includes Premier Alison Redford’s leadership review to coincide with the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination?

Or is 50 years long enough that it’s just a weird coincidence that was only going to be noticed by a few old geezers like me who, yes, actually can remember what they were doing when they heard the news on Nov. 22, 1963?

Well, whatever. Today’s the day the PC convention opens in Red Deer, smack dab between Calgary and Edmonton and, of course, as we’ll be hearing throughout the day in the media, it’s also The 50th Anniversary of the End of American Post-War Innocence.

Anyway, it won’t be until Saturday the 23rd that Alberta’s not-very-progressive Progressive Conservatives actually vote to endorse Redford to take another kick at the Wildrose can and extend Alberta’s interminable Tory dynasty out into spitting range of half a century itself.

I phrase this positively because it is a foregone conclusion the PCs will keep Redford on, notwithstanding the post-election leadership review mandated by the party’s constitution — even if it’s not a foregone conclusion she’ll win her next election against Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith.

Dislike the premier as her own caucus might (and a lot of them do) and as nervous as she makes her own supporters, who else have they go to go with? Dave Hancock, the minister of feeble excuses? Fred Horne, the minister-CEO of Alberta’s chaotic health care system? Thomas Lukaszuk, the deputy premier that federal Immigration Minister Jason Kenney once declared to be “a complete and utter a**hole”?

Naw, there’s no Brian Mulroney waiting in these curtains as there was when Joe Clark was the the-PC Party’s federal leader in 1983, fresh from a record short stint as prime minister. So choices like the three gentlemen mentioned above pretty well guarantee the 1,500 or so Tory stalwarts who turn up in Red Deer will hold their noses, metaphorically speaking, and endorse keeping Redford on the job.

Just in case, though, her supporters have been setting expectations as low as they can — I guess so they can declare 55.9 per cent, the percentage that saw former Premier Ralph Klein sent back to Calgary in 2006, to be an acceptable margin of victory.

“In my mind, anything in the 50s is good,” key Redford campaign boffin Susan Elliott told the Calgary Herald, speaking percentages, of course. “Anything in the 60s is a success and anything in the 70s is absolutely a triumph.”

You see, she went on, “we’ve had a government that’s had a really tough couple of years with finances and so on.” Yes, you could say that.

Another Redford supporter, whom the Herald didn’t bother to name, tore a leaf from the Book of former Quebec premier Jacques Parizeau, and opined: “50 per cent plus one is the working premise.”

Speaking of Mulroney, this is a far cry from the days of courageous (or foolhardy) Conservative leaders like Clark, who declared in 1983 after a similar review at a biennial federal party convention in Winnipeg that the 66.9 per cent he got wasn’t high enough!

What was with that, anyway? By the way, Clark, who was finished off by Mulroney in the Tory leadership convention he asked for in Ottawa six months later, will be in Edmonton next Wednesday evening to flog his book assailing Prime Minister Stephen Harper for ruining Canada’s reputation at home or abroad. But that will have to be a story for another day.

Anyway, it’s said here that Redford should have done the same — or rolled the dice for even more, say 70 per cent — which would have made this coming weekend a good deal more entertaining than it’s likely actually to be.

No such luck. Her supporters have set the bar low enough they can declare almost anything a victory — even a Klein-topping 56 per cent — and schedule the premier’s next trip to Washington or Beijing.

As for the rest of us, we can shovel snow.

This post also appears on David Climenhaga’s blog, Alberta Diary.

David J. Climenhaga

David J. Climenhaga

David Climenhaga is a journalist and trade union communicator who has worked in senior writing and editing positions with the Globe and Mail and the Calgary Herald. He left journalism after the strike...