Did she Conquer? maybe not quite yet but the 200 plus members of the public who showed up on a minus 25 degree night in Bonnyville were rooted to their seats for nearly two hours.
Former PC MLA and cabinet minister Ernie Isley who is now the Mayor of Bonnyville introduced her as Alberta's "Premier in Waiting."
With that, Danielle Smith, newly minted leader of the Wild Rose Alliance Party (WRAP) began by summarizing a number of weak spots with the current government body. The First fiasco was the Royalty Rate Review that she said started the downward trend in drilling and development in Alberta. It drove energy development companies and their money to other locales that had more favourable opportunities. WRAP believes the program was poorly developed and dropped like a bomb into the laps of petroleum producing companies and that there had to be a better way to ensure an equitable outcome could be developed. In fact she said this program has been revamped at least 5 times in the past year by the current government to try and make it work.
The next target was the budget. Smith said we were promised a balanced budget but now we've gone into debt financing with nearly a 5 Million dollar shortfall.
The Health Care story is out of control and they just don't know how to fix it. They (PC party) has just floated out trial balloons and then when faced with opposition have back peddeled and tried to fix it but the damage has already be done because they've lost credibility. They really created more trouble when they cancelled a proposed continuing care facility in Fort McMurray and then bounced Guy Boutilier from Caucus when he criticized them. Another part of the Health Care problem surrounds the H1N1 program and WRAP believes it needs to be reviewed so it doesn't happen again.
The department of Agriculture was the next problem area that needs fixing or at least streamlining and removal of the cumbersome filing system for producers to get access to programs. They also need to look at alternate revenue streams for the agriculture sector and increase marketing of our products on a national and international scale but that marketing should be left in the hands of the producers, not government.
The last item was integrity and open government. The PCs haven't really been truthful with Albertans when they said they were taking a 15% roll back in wages because only about 5% came off their salaries while the other 10% merely came off an expense allowance each member has.
Rather than just dump on the governing party Smith also came prepared to talk about WRAP's numerous policies that address each of the problem areas and a few more areas that weren't talked about in the summary. They're website lists seven main categories including: democratic reform, economy, education, environment, health care, justice and social. Everything from agriculture to dealing with the feds to showing financial responsibility and accountability in government, health care, education and the judicial system. It is a full list and available on their website http://www.wildrosealliance.ca/ . She ably fielded many questions from the audience ranging from health care to education, agriculture and energy. While she had ready answers for most of the questions, she readily admitted she didn't have all the answers and said she would be counting on her new team and Albertans to begin to find those answers and solutions.
When asked earlier if she thought they could succeed in winning the next election she said "I went into this planning to win, I'm not here to win a miss congeniality contest." She acknowledged that they had a huge amount of work to do between now and then but they are growing. At year end there were 41 constituency associations in place and they believe the party will have a full count by their AGM in June of this year. Once that is established they will be working hard to recruit suitable candidates for the next election.
As to their rising popularity in the polls, she quoted a Ralph Klein back room handler Rod Love who said success in one poll is an anomally but success in four polls, that's a trend. She went on to say that even if it takes them two elections they will be the party in power. Albertans don't change their governments regularly but every once in a while they have changed them radically. This could be one of those waves.
