Alberta Politics - started May 7, 2015

yep while millions if not billions over the years went to PC cronies, a drained heritage fund, no royalties collected and they wanna freak over pot pics on a tee shirt, and stupid youth actions, and whose to know....she might have beem saying "fuck you stehen harper" while looking at the flag and fingering. i know i have many times.

people stuck on stupid.

if you wanna go down the path of worry about who gets credit, or not, then go all the way back and carry on because she didn't, nor does every Canadian woman politician thank Nellie McClung every time they won, or hell even speak.

after all, according to your style of thinking, if not for Nellie's INCREDIBLE work, we women wouldn't be where we are today.

I wonder when the cabinet will be announced.

lol....terry terry terry it's been my experience, from being in contact with my mom's NDP, and women in politics, reality not one ground breaking woman is forgotten, nor man either if the truth be told. they all have memories like elephants has been my experience. they know the spirits of each and every one stands with them and they don't need to be name dropped.

According to Stephen Maher in the National Post, the Alberta NDP quietly dropped p.r. from their platform in February.

http://tinyurl.com/ookjyuo

Quote:

But the Alberta NDP supports PR. The party ran on it in the last election, and in January, its platform, which is still cached online, was still promising that an NDP government would “set up a system of proportional representation.”

In February, they quietly dropped that sentence, and they did not campaign on PR.

Federal NDP MP Craig Scott, who is pushing a sensible and detailed PR proposal, will nudge Notley to move, but she knows that if she puts PR in place, she will never get another majority.

This is why we don’t have proportional representation.

Although it is clearly superior to the first-past-the-post system, it is worse for governing parties, and only their votes count.

NorthReport wrote:

the name of the game in politics is to win, as winners control everything and losers control nothing.

So are you now against PR?

bekayne wrote:

JKR wrote:

 

According to Stephen Maher in the National Post, the Alberta NDP quietly dropped p.r. from their platform in February.

 

http://tinyurl.com/ookjyuo

Quote:

But the Alberta NDP supports PR. The party ran on it in the last election, and in January, its platform, which is still cached online, was still promising that an NDP government would “set up a system of proportional representation.”

In February, they quietly dropped that sentence, and they did not campaign on PR.

Federal NDP MP Craig Scott, who is pushing a sensible and detailed PR proposal, will nudge Notley to move, but she knows that if she puts PR in place, she will never get another majority.

This is why we don’t have proportional representation.

Although it is clearly superior to the first-past-the-post system, it is worse for governing parties, and only their votes count.

Was the original position on PR voted on by party members? How about the change in position?

Good question. My guess is that party members continued to support p.r. but the higher ups in the NDP were less supportive. Here in BC a similar thing happened in the 2013 election. P.r. was also a policy of the BC NDP but when the election came it was not placed on the election platform. Maybe when party executives and higher ups see that they may win power and positions through a phoney FPTP majority they become less enthusiastic about p.r.?

NDP pushed me to cross the floor, ex-MLA Laurie Blakeman says

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/pushed+cross+floor+Laurie+Blakeman+says/1...

A member of my family made an interesting observation regarding the sole Liberal remaining in the legislature, Calgary Mountainview's Dr. Swann... "is there any reason that Rachel couldn't invite him to join the cabinet as the health minister?" Frankly, I don't see any constitutional barriers to her doing so...

While I doubt it would occur to the ANDP, it would be a bold way of indicating that the new political reality in Alberta was breaking from the old one - so long, of course, as it wasn't conditional on his crossing the floor.

And given they have someone like Bob Turner who would make an excellent Health Minister why go scraping up the one Liberal who was lucky to survive his party's drubbing?

robbie_dee wrote:

bagkitty wrote:

A member of my family made an interesting observation regarding the sole Liberal remaining in the legislature, Calgary Mountainview's Dr. Swann... "is there any reason that Rachel couldn't invite him to join the cabinet as the health minister?" Frankly, I don't see any constitutional barriers to her doing so...

While I doubt it would occur to the ANDP, it would be a bold way of indicating that the new political reality in Alberta was breaking from the old one - so long, of course, as it wasn't conditional on his crossing the floor.

It's an interesting idea and I wouldn't be surprised if comes up actually. Something like it was actually tried before in Saskatchewan - where Notley's current chief of staff Brian Topp used to work. Unfortunately it didn't work out so well for either the Saskatchewan Liberals or the individuals involved. After the 1999 provincial election the Saskatchewan NDP won exactly half of the seats in the legislature so to ensure that it were not vulnerable on any confidence motions the party proposed a coalition with the three-seat provincial Liberals. The three MLAs initially accepted the offer and Liberal leader [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Melenchuk]Jim Melenchuk[/url] and his colleagues joined the cabinet, with Melenchuk holding the important Education Ministry. Unfortunately grassroots Liberal party members were not impressed, rejected the coalition and ordered the MLAs to break it off. When Melenchuk and fellow Ron Osika refused, they were kicked out of the party and ended up joining the NDP and running for reelection under the orange banner in 2003. Both of them lost, but the Saskatchewan Liberals have not elected a member to the legislature since then, either.

Obviously Saskatchewan and Alberta are very different political cultures and the circumstances are different here, too (including that Notley has no need for Swann's support to ensure her government's survival). In the end, though, I doubt this would happen.