Project Alberta

I listened and watched. I was not overly impressed. My choice for Premier, Danielle Smith (the cute one), remains the same. I like her, she will make a fine spokeswoman for our province. I just hope that the bright lights around her can convince her to drop that $300 give-away plan. Otherwise, She is just what Alberta needs!!

Watching with interest --- Dick.

I too, listened with care the Leaders in this great yawn !

Ms Smith was the definite winner while Redford looked haughty and very "car salesmanish". The NDip leader came off well, but he is still a Socialist, while Raj seemed to be a great waffler - and I suspect his sanity at times.

Where was the Alberta Party - do they not have an MLA ?

So my vote will still be with the Wildrose candidate - seeing as how he's the only one of the bunch to bother knocking on my door !

Only saw bits of it, sorry it was just too boring for me to watch, but it seems to me that the odds are good for Wildrose, they are the only party that seems to connect with people. Change is needed and that cannot come from Redford, too much baggage there and besides they have had their chance, we can see what they are about.

Disappointed that there was no debate about the most serious issues facing Alberta. They talked about money but that is a non sequitur with the lost of royalties due to the discounting that happens when we sell our oil to a single customer and the over all low, below average, taxes being collected from the industry.

The spread between what our oil is worth and what we sell it for, or the WTI-Western Canada Select is costing Albertan's Billions of dollars in many different ways yet there was no discussion about our response could be or should be.

Some argue that the spread is due to the inability to ship our resources, or our royalty structure that charges more when Western Canada price goes up, or the fact that we have one section of the industry selling to another section but all owned by the same few top players but maybe that isn't important. If we look at how other oil producing Nations handle such issues we can see that prices, profits, and benefits, can be kept up by preventing overproduction and being active. OPEC has laid out what can be done and active control of the resource has been proven to be very important.

Then there is the large international "interference", our position on responding to attacks against us and our resources, our image, and environmental protections, our relationship with other Nations in Confederation and so on. I didn't feel there was any real discussion on these issues, sound bites and superficial chatter but that's about it. Maybe there was some serious discussion that I missed and the media didn't report on but I doubt it.

Rather pointless to argue about a budget short fall of a billion or two when tens, even hundreds of billions are being given away or lost.

But if the other parties are not going to get into such issues I don't expect the Wildrose to bring them up. The Wildrose is ahead and it looks like they will win if they can just hold the course they are on. Meanwhile election day draws ever closer.

Is now over - was it good for you ?

Wow didn't see that coming.

I think what killed them was all the talk of cut backs. Planks such as cash handouts was too transparent or condescending. Pandering to special interest groups like "families" reminded too many voters of right wing American Christian politics and of course the big unknown of how they would govern with no real track record.

But I suspect it was the idea of cutting back when government needs to expand to meet the needs of an expanding province and multiple massive projects. I know those who work in industries directly related to government, education at least, were asking if voting WR wasn't such a good idea for them or a province with increasing population.

Judging by oil politics in other Nations, any real change will be resisted. When other nations insisted on change they were taught a very tough lesson. So tough that maybe not changing, not gambling on an unknown, is best.