If you want a useful yardstick of the relative health of Alberta's opposition parties, you need look no further than the number of candidates they have nominated for the next provincial election.

Using this measure, it is very unlikely the increasingly marginalized Alberta Liberal Party under Leader Raj Sherman will be capable of fielding a full slate of candidates on election day.

There will be 87 seats in the provincial Legislature after the next election. Here is a prediction: The Liberals will be unable to field a slate of even two-thirds that number, and may only be able to find candidates for about half the seats in the Legislature.

Another shoe must drop before the new campaign by provincial Liberal Leader David Swann to "unite the left" in Alberta has any hope of success.

Unfortunately for Swann -- since he can expect no immediate reciprocal gesture from the province's New Democrats -- it is his Liberals who will have to make the next necessary concession too.