Pastor Allen Hunsperger, Wildrose Candidate and blogger

Every Wildrose Party news release ends with the following words: “Wildrose stands for free enterprise, less government, increased personal freedom, and democracy.” (Emphasis added.)

Of course, that bit about increased personal freedom may not apply if you’ve sought a nomination to run for the far-right party any time lately.

Turns out that in return for a decent shot at a cushy job as an MLA, the party of increased personal freedom and free enterprise has been demanding that its loyal would-be candidates fork over a $1,000 “good conduct bond” to ensure they keep their traps shut in the event they don’t get the nomination.”

You don’t get your behaviour bond back until after the election, and if you say anything to “sabotage” the candidate who won (party leader Danielle Smith’s description, by the way) you don’t get the money back at all. Nobody’s explained what constitutes sabotage, but here’s betting the bar is pretty low. One wrong word outta you, buddy, and you’re out a thousand smackaroos!

If you’ve been wondering how even an old fear monger like Tom Flanagan, the party’s chief ideologue and campaign manager, could enforce such tight discipline on a group of people who in the past have shown a propensity for running off and saying almost anything … well, now you know.

What is this? The Manyberries Mafia?

Aww, what’s the big deal, party organizer and candidate for the Senate Wait Staff Vitor Marciano told a local newspaper, it’s exactly the same thing as the federal Conservatives do in an election campaign. And I’ll bet, dear readers, you didn’t know that if you live out there in Ontario and Quebec!

Marciano, whose nickname is currently “Vic,” but who had better used to the idea of being known as something like Vitor “The Muffler” Marciano, told the Edmonton Journal that Stephen Harper’s party put the rule in place after the 2004 federal election. “We thought it was a good rule so we brought into to our party.”

 

OK, so that takes care of the party cadres who don’t get a nomination, but what about the ones who do?

Last night all Twitter was a-Tweet with reports of a nutty blog post written by Allan Hunsperger, the party’s candidate in the riding of Edmonton-South West expressing the view that you’re not doing gay people any favours by being tolerant of them. The reason? “You see, you can live the way you were born, and if you die the way you were born, then you will suffer the rest of eternity in the lake of fire, hell, a place of eternal suffering.”

Mr. Hunsperger, who is a pastor at The House Church in Toefield, which rather cheekily calls itself “Gate of Heaven,” closed his comments with the note that “warning people to not live the way they were born is not judgment or condemnation — it is love! Accepting people the way they are is cruel and not loving!”

Realization that this had been posted — almost certainly by a candidate who can’t understand how this could be seen as doing anything wrong — must have been a nightmarish moment for the official enforcers of the Wildrose Party’s Code of Silence. The post quickly disappeared from the church’s website — but by then it was too late.

Yesterday Smith stood by her man. What else could she do, under the circumstances? “When a person is making personal statements in their capacity as a pastor, which he was, I don’t think anybody should be surprised that they’re expressing certain viewpoints,” she told reporters in Calgary.

We’re not surprised, actually, that a Wildrose candidate expressed this sort of opinion, and without even risking his $1,000 good behaviour bond. What is surprising is that we’re apparently about to elect these guys as the government of Alberta!

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...