Why I support the Wildrose Allliance

As a political commentator, I decided not to belong to any political parties – including the Wildrose Alliance. I once was a member of the Progressive Conservative party, and even sat on an executive riding association board with Gary Mar. I then switched my allegiance to the Wildrose Alliance but didn’t renew my membership.

Not being affiliated with any party makes it easier to draw objective conclusions without coming under heavy artillery fire from others inside the "echo chamber" - been there, done that, so no more.

On April 23, Albertans have a unique opportunity to make their votes count and change a government that, after 41 years, has become way too long in the tooth. In federal elections, voters seem more clear-headed about how long a government should stay in power - for the federal Liberals, the voters' verdict in 2006 was a smack in the face: thirteen years is long enough, buddies.

This is why it's so hard to understand that there should still be people in Canada's most common-sensical province who think that giving a dinosaur like the Progressive Conservatives another four years or more at the helm is the okay thing to do - because it is not, especially not after all the recent scandals involving bullying and intimidation of doctors and school boards, illegal donation schemes, and the distinct possibility that the Tories have been helping their cronies to jump the queue for medical services (we'd know more about that if premier Alison Redford hadn't gone back on her promise and cancelled that particular inquiry).

In the Wildrose Alliance, Albertans have a new, conservative (unlike the PCs) party that will bring government back to its senses. Albertans, more than any Canadians, loathe big-spending politicos who consider taxpayers' hard-earned dollars a right, rather than a privilege. (Accordingly, if there were an alternative conservative party at the federal level, Albertans would vote for it rather than "Liberal Lite" Stephen Harper - but by 2015 Harper may face, perhaps, a federal Wildrose party.)

The Wildrose party represents everything that Albertans believe in: fixing health care through private delivery of services, but paid for under the public system - note: this does not constitute a privatization of public health care; establishing a government that lives within its means and cuts excessive salaries and benefits by 30%; a government that will stand up for Albertan interests, including the oil sands, and won't take a beating from left-wing pretend-enviros like James Cameron or Robert Redford and then turn the other cheek and ask to be pummelled again and again.

On April 23, Albertans will have the following choices: one conservative party (Wildrose), one liberal party (Liberals), one social-democratic party (NDP), a green party (Evergreens), a wannabe liberal party (Alberta Party), and a party that straddles the line between liberalism and socialism (PC).

Only one of these parties symbolizes and represents what Alberta is all about - the others are imports from "Upper Canada", which Albertans can very well do without.

Let's spell it out: W-I-L-D-R-O-S-E.

Incidentally, and in closing, the National Post, despite its recent drift to the left, has endorsed the Wildrose.

Meanwhile, just as I predicted in one of my recent online columns, the Globe and Mail, whose footprint and influence west of the Ontario/Manitoba border is zero, has endorsed the left-wing fossil that is Alison Redford and her PC party - proof positive that Redford is a Liberal, or worse, otherwise she wouldn't have garnered the approval of the federal Liberals' long-time cheerleader and the other members of the legendary left-leaning Toronto elites.

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Why I support the Wildrose Allliance

by Werner Patels

21 April 2012