New Premier Designate Alison Redford will be on a Fast Track

Premier Designate Alison Redford

With the promises made leading up to her selection as leader of the PC party of Alberta, Ms Redford will have to fast track to provide the changes that the voters are expecting.

Doug Horner

The first of course is to select a caucus that supports her ideas and policies and will follow through on those promises. A little carry over isn't too bad so I see Doug Horner being at the table. Not so sure about the likes of Snelgrove or Danyluk who are considered part of the old boys group. Morton would be political disaster while Orman if he can win a seat might be a interesting addition and would add a businessman's sense.

$100 Million in Cash!

She 's also going to have to dig deep in the treasury because she promised to give back the $100 million bucks back to education. Within 10 days! Maybe that can be extended to start from the time she's sworn in because if its from the time of the declaration that she won at two a.m. this morning then the clock is running.

Here's a little side bar, now that  Premier Ed's security detail has switched over to look after AR, who's looking after Ed? Do they just cut him loose and hope nobody bothers him or is there still a watch dog to keep the crazies away. Sure hope so because there are lots out there.

Vote/Info/Vend Kiosk

Another side bar. How best to speed up the voting and counting process? This province is supposed to be full of innovators who bring new technology to the market every day. How about electronic voting - on line or at mall kiosks.  Buy your membership on-line or in person. Each membership has a unique number. Use that number as a pass word to cast your vote, once you're done, the number is recorded and prohibited from casting another vote until the switch is flipped for the next one. This would eliminate a number of problems to wit:
1. Allowing members to vote no matter where they are. (We turned people away from our polls because they didn't reside in this constituency. They had a card but rules said NO). Think of the people who live in Edmonton but work up in Ft Mac -- couldn't vote there. Thousands of votes lost.
2. Would eliminate the need to find volunteers to spend all day staffing a poll. Not a problem in the city but tough in rural areas.
3. Would eliminate local association having to foot the bill for rents, food and refreshments, signage, stress.
And finally, the terminals could remain in situ after the elections for people to use to find direction in the malls, email their government reps with questions, suggestions or complaints, register as voters or download memberships and it could be all financed by selling ads on the screens or pay per click or pay per action links to sponsor web sites.   A little bit of blue skying there but I believe it is possible. You might even be able to make a 3B partnership out of it to get the system financed and operational.

In any case Alberta politics as we know it or knew it is about to change. When the election shoe drops in the next 12 months or so we'll have two intelligent, articulate female leaders going head to head and Dr. Raj as the spoiler. Oh yes and we'll have Mr. Mason and Ms Notley in the mix as well. By God it'll be fun to watch. The media will have 100s of story lines a day and hopefully we'll have something that's good for the people of Alberta.