Edmonton, We Have A Problem

Stop me if this sounds familiar to you:  rich energy company interests are backing a young, female former media personality to lead the charge to the hard right on a platform that the federal government is immoral, that local government should have all the power, that natural resources should be exploited no matter what the environmental consequences are, and that climate science is a cruel hoax.  They've even managed to round up the most conservative, liberatarian elements of the anti-war left, too.

Such a winger insurrection at the state level is annoying, but in the Canadian province of Alberta, the parliamentary system means their version of the Teabaggers, the province's Wildrose Party, is leading in the polls and set to inflict some serious damage on the country.

The Wildrose Party, named after the province’s official prickly flower, was formed in 2008 amid growing disaffection with the Tories over fiscal and social policies, judged to be straying from its libertarian roots.

The scion of the ruling Progressive Conservatives was able to capture seven percent of the popular vote in elections that year, but failed to win a single seat in the Alberta legislature.
Four years on, the Wildrose Party is back, led by former journalist Danielle Smith and leading by seven percent in the polls.

The battle lines were drawn at the height of the last recession when the current Progressive Conservative government proposed hiking royalties paid by companies exploiting the oil sands, the third largest oil reserve in the world and a key energy supply to the United States.

“Well, what happened then, we saw all kinds of money from big oil and gas companies going to the Wildrose Party, big donations,” political scientist Bruce Foster of Calgary’s Mount Royal University told AFP.

The rest, as they say, could be history.

In the dying days of the election campaign, the Wildrose has faced a backlash in the media over racist, homophobic and bigoted public comments of its candidates, as well as ridicule over its platform debunking climate change science.

But it’s unclear if this has affected voting intentions.

Wildrose leader Smith responded to critics by saying that she is personally pro-choice on abortion and supports gay marriage, and vowed that a Wildrose government would not legislate on “sensitive moral issues.”

Sure.  Not until they get into power.  And Alberta becomes Texas overnight.