PC Fundraising Above Scrutiny?

I missed listening to the Alberta Question Period on Monday, but have since read the Hansard.

After this exchange:

Political Party Financial Contributions

Ms Smith: Turning to the business of the day, Mr. Speaker,
Alberta's reputation has been damaged. Our election financingprocess looks like it's been broken by abuse. We have asked theChief Electoral Officer to investigate the enormous and potentiallyillegal contribution from a single source to the government party.But even if the contribution is technically legal through a loopholein the existing law, it means the law is deeply flawed. When willthe government fix it?

The Speaker: Did you wish to direct that question to anyone in
particular?The hon. President of Treasury Board.

Mr. Horner: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Certainly, the Chief
Electoral Officer is an officer of this Legislative Assembly, andwe respect that on this side of the House a great deal. We believethat he is discharging his duties under the legislation that he has infront of him, and he's doing a good job doing that. Of course, theparty opposite doesn't really want to talk about its own history inthis regard in terms of that sort of thing. Perhaps in the 2004election campaign, when one individual bankrolled 75 per cent oftheir entire political contributions for that campaign, one mustwonder . . .

Mr. Anderson: Point of order, Mr. Speaker.

The Speaker: A point of order has been noted from the Member
for Airdrie.

The hon. Leader of the Opposition for her first supplemental.

Ms Smith: I look forward to the hon. Member for Airdrie
correcting the record.Continuing on, Mr. Speaker, given that the government's vagueanswers and insistence that everything is okay have done nothingto restore the public's confidence, surely the Premier must agreethat the shell game that is damaging our public's trust has no placein our democracy.

278 Alberta Hansard October 29, 2012

Mr. Horner: Again, Mr. Speaker, one talks about shell games
across the way. This party has followed all of the rules that are inplace. We will co-operate with the Chief Electoral Officer on thismatter to a T. But, again, somewhat hypocritical of the partyacross the way when in the 2007 by-election the same individualwho bankrolled 75 per cent of their 2004 election campaign bankrolled 99.7 per cent of that party's contributions. Incredible.

It prompted a number of Wildrose supporters to tweet things like "the #wrp (Wildrose) didn't exist in 2004" or "Doug Horner needs to bone up on his Alberta political history #wrp not a party until Jan 2008"

And from Wildrose MLA Rob Anderson:

"#wrp is diff legal entity than Alliance" and "Katz can donate to whomever he wants but not if it is illegal. Nobody has donated 400G to the Wildrose Party-that is incorrect."

Unfortunately in this case I'm going to have to say the unthinkable - the PC's are correct.  The Wildrose and their predecessor the Alberta Alliance are indeed one and the same. Why that is so, is explained in full in Chapter 6, if I recall correctly. And yes there were very large donations from the Thorsteinson family.  (Mind you they were over several years)

The multiple donations of $30,000.00 from the Thorsteinson's (2004-2008) and the ones from Katz Group, family and business associates can be seen as very similar situations.

There is some key differences that everyone seems to overlooking:

One case the investigation was started based on a written request; the other, written requests seemed to either have been ignored or no action is being taken.

One case were several cheques from many individuals and businesses; the other is reportedly one cheque for up as many as 10 different individuals and business entities.

One case Elections Alberta requested (and got) RCMP involvement (via the Solicitor General) so they could compel donors (those who got the receipts) to provide PROOF it was in fact their money  they contributed.  (Section 34(1) of Election Finance Act.) ; the other appears will never even get that far.

It is absolutely appalling that the PC's of today won't open their books to the scrutiny that they expected, they asked for and they received from the Alberta Alliance. 

Update: Oct. 30, 10:30 PM

Chief electoral officer to probe Katz donations to PCs

Alberta's chief electoral officer is launching an investigation into donations made to the Progressive Conservative party by the owner of the Edmonton Oilers, Daryl Katz.
"The allegations are that the thresholds of $30,000 have been exceeded by one individual and the election filings that we've received in our office from the political parties indicate that those contributions were receipted for individuals associated with this one person," said Elections Alberta spokesman Drew Westwater.
"We've determined that there's enough issues and concerns around the source of the donations that have been made to the party that we will launch an investigation and look into the facts of the matter to see if the allegations are true or not."

Click on link to read entire article. 

PC Fiscal Conservatives "tagged"

The following was at the very end of Jason Fekete's piece today. And with the flurry of stories coming out, it likely has been overlooked by most.

Rural Tory MLA George Rogers said he supports the premier's approach of trying to be fiscally prudent without chopping key programs like health care and education.

There are MLAs in caucus "more to the fiscal right" who believe in balancing the budget at all costs, he said.

"I don't think that's the right thing for Albertans," Rogers said. "They've made their positions clear and we know who they are."

The emphasis is mine. This type of statement is indicative of the mindset within the PC's. If you aren't with us; you are against us. Just ask Rob Anderson, Guy Boutilier or Raj Sherman.

The statement makes it sound like they (fiscal conservatives) have been tagged for extermination.

How to dissect a Liberal blogger.

One of the keys to successful blogging is to use FACTS to support your position. Facts are what give you credibility. Have I been caught with my pants down (or is it skirt up)? Sure I have. Everyone makes mistakes.

The thing is, if you are going to open your mouth, (or take to the keyboard) you better be sure what comes out is based in truth. As the saying goes: “Better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt.”

This brings us to Vincent St. Pierre’s blog entry today. I am reposting it here in its entirety (in red) with my responses (facts) interspersed.

The Wildrose isn’t tough enough.



Their media outreach has been lousy this spring. So has their outreach.


And their claim to be “ready to govern”? Doubtful.


In the Legislature they have been almost silent, in the streets almost invisible, and on the airways simply not there. Movements solely around a specific leader, with no basic organization or organizational strength, tend to collapse quite quickly as soon as they arise.

Here is a video collection from Rob Anderson, one of the Wildrose MlAs, so one third of the “silence” in the Legislature.

This is the Wildrose 2010 calendar of events. Does it look empty? Are they invisible on the street and lacking organization? Last I heard they had gone from 15 organized CAs to over 70 in the past six months.

A look at the Liberal calendar reveals 5 events from January to May 2010; conversely the Wildrose Alliance has 47.

Airways? I have heard Danielle Smith, Rob Anderson and Paul Hinman several times on the Rutherford show. And I understand they have also been on CBC, but I haven’t heard those personally. I will let readers root these out on their own.

Unless of course by airways he meant flying. Then no, they rarely fly.

The Wildrose Alliance, at least their elected MLAs, haven’t even been showing up to press conferences and meetings. Shirking their duties and giving up on free and easy opportunities to get attention.

This one that makes me go, huh? The Wildrose has had at least six pressers since the beginning of the year and put out more than 20 press releases.



In fact they took a bit of heat (comical heat) over the last one.


 This compared to the five listed on the Alberta Liberal website over the same time period.

And the Wildrose’s fundraising? Less than the Alberta Liberal Party in 2009. The Wildrose also has less than the Alberta Liberal Party’s membership tallies, too.

If you look at purely the “annual” fundraising of the Liberals, yes they raised slightly more than the Wildrose. However, there is much more to this picture. It should be noted that the Liberals were actually down from 2008 and the Wildrose was up from the previous year.



In 2009 the Wildrose had a leadership race; many supporters were shifting their contributions to those efforts or waiting to see the outcome. Most of the fundraising on the Wildrose side came in the final quarter, after the leadership race, as opposed the Liberals who had all year to seek donations.


Plus there was also a by-election where Paul Hinman’s fundraising was nearly double the Liberal candidates. On the party side, the Wildrose exceed the Liberals by $15,000.00.


All of this is looking purely at the “revenue” side of things. If we look at the year-end bottom line, the Wildrose ended up on the positive side with $196,000.00 and the Liberals in the hole by $89,500.00.

Full information available at Elections Alberta.


Now to those membership numbers. According to the Liberals annual financial statement membership fees amounted to $8505.00. With membership fees at $5.00 each that equals 1701 members for the entire year. The Wildrose put out a press release early in October 2009 with a membership total over 11,670. That works out to the Wildrose outnumbering the Liberal support base by nearly 7 to 1. I suspect it is actually over 8 to 1 now.

The Wildrose also hasn’t had any luck whittling off support from the federal Conservative party. Partisans federally are still wary of the Wildrose and are still holding their bets, and my instinct says that the Wildrose will never be able to tap into those resources there, both human and in expertise.

Not sure where to start with this one. Why would we want to “whittle” support from the Feds? It’s not like we are going to get floor crossers from them. For the most part their supports are “conservative” and are likely to vote that way provincially. The Wildrose finally gives them a conservative choice on the ballot.



As to tapping into those like minded people, it is not much of a stretch to guess this is going on. If Mr. St. Pierre was paying attention he might have already seen evidence of this on some of the constituency boards….or he could have just looked at our Executive Director, Vitor Marciano.

The crossing of the floor of two PC MLAs is not a measure of anything, now. Anderson was a firm Morton leadership supporter and Forsythe has ambitions. With Morton as finance in the PC government all the Mortonites will not flip over to the Wildrose–the leaking of MLAs to the Wildrose stopped with that decision by Ed Stelmach. It’s moot.

This is purely an opinion and I am quite happy to let the Liberals continue to believe this.

The Wildrose’s battle with the Progressive Conservatives on oil royalties is also moot in that Albertans who care about the economic environment of Alberta will notice that before an election is called the economy will improve. By 2012 the royalties fiasco will be long over, long solved, and, with that, the anger against the Progressive Conservatives will just be as long gone.

Wow, Vincent you don’t even read newspapers do you?  They have all but been reversed due to pressure from the WAP.

There’s something to be said about relying on anger and public vitriol to base a party on, too. Members and the public tire of anger. Albertans even more so–we can be pissed for a while but, eventually, we come around to the “then what?” The Wildrose hasn’t provided a “then what” answer yet and the time has passed for it. Their attempt to channel anger to change has, for the most part, been negligible and the public will realize this soon enough. A hefty round of applause should be given to the media who, through their efforts, channeled the outcry against the Tories.

Anger is merely what gets people involved, gets them to take that next step of being active and aid in the growth and development of a party. Something the Liberals haven’t been able to do for decades.

But back to the Wildrose–their numbers are soft. Their support is soft. The anger will run out, their answers will never arise, and their electoral chances will never be more than a seat or two. I actually have a bet with one of my friends (a Wildroser, in fact) that the Wildrose will not receive more than four seats come 2012. We’ve bet beer on it. And, from my assessment of the facts, I think I’m going to win.

A beer! One whole beer? What is that worth? About 5 loonies at a pub perhaps. That’s a pretty strong commitment there Vincent. I will see your beer and raise you. How about we go for a two-four? No wait, I don’t drink beer and since I am going to win, let’s make it a magnum of Baileys.

Side note: You may have noticed that I disabled the comments on this post. The reason is because I know some Wildrosers follow my blog and like to comment on it. (The only time I get comments is when I comment on the Wildrose, too.)

I actually highly doubt Wildrosers follow your blog. It is far more likely people are finding it through Google or Twitter, like I did. Otherwise true followers would be commenting on everything you spew.


This should also give you a clue that the people commenting are finding the Wildrose more interesting to discuss as opposed to the fractured Liberals.

I want those special, active individuals to start blogging and create that institutional toughness vis-a-vis their soap boxes within the blogosphere to assist the Wildrose. Trackbacks are enabled.

I have never posted on your blog, as mentioned I only just discovered it. I have had my soap box (and some would say Wildrose soap box) going since February 2008 when I ran as a Wildrose Alliance candidate.


Do I have “institutional toughness”? Frick, I’m not even sure I want to have that!


A very successful blogger once told me; “If you end up in a debate with another blogger; the goal is not to sway the other bloggers position; it is to influence your readers’ opinion.” I would add, at a minimum it should engage the reader enough to “think”.

Fiscal Four, Thrifty Three, Tightwad Two...

Fascinating development coming out of the PC ranks; the Fiscal Four or is it Five.

If they add more are they still being fiscally responsible?

On Twitter the predictions are that it goes the other direction. @justin_archer quipped

“When Fawcett loses his seat to Danielle Smith, the Fiscal 4 can be the Thrifty 3! Nice!”

To which I responded

“and when the third falls, they will be down to the Tightwad Two.”

Kidding aside, Daveberta has an interesting perspective and speculates this might be a staged undertaking.
This brings two questions to mind.

1) Is the PC party even intelligent enough to pull something like that off without having it completely backfire? And really what benefit is there from creating, for what, by all intents and purposes, looks like a mini internal revolt? Some Albertans may even say it just four youngsters having a tantrum.

2) Are these four truly spineless? I mean if you believe that this is a staged operation; then you must also believe that they are completely operating under the direction of Stelmach and company.

It is that second one that leads me to believe that this is not a PC staged maneuver. I don’t know Rob Anderson or Doug Griffiths; but I have never heard anyone who does know them, speak ill of them. Jonathon Denis and I have crossed virtual paths and spoken on the phone; I believe him to be principled, I think we have more in common than different.

That leaves Kyle Fawcett. He and I first faced off in the 2008 General Election. Those who have seen that exchange would likely be surprise to learn how things have changed. Since then we have shared late night banter; we have had lunch a couple of times and as a resident of Calgary – North Hill, I am a member of the Community Advisory Panel.

One of the things I have learned about Kyle is that he does care; he takes the time to listen and understand the local issues. In fact he spoke out about what he had been hearing. Unfortunately, this type of vocalizing is not tolerated.

This brings us to why (in my opinion) the Fiscal Four exists. They have seen what happens when “one” speaks out. Perhaps they feel there is safety in numbers. Perhaps they feel by being a group, it will give others the strength to join them.
Sadly though, I think they might also believe they can make a difference.

We have seen over the years that change from within the PC’s is not possible. This past weekend’s leadership result also demonstrates they are quite happy with the course of they are on. Since March ‘08 Stelmach has been saying “we have the overwhelming support of Albertans”; now he can change that to “we have the support of our members.” And he will use that to down play any MLA(s) who are not singing from his song sheet.

Stelmach and his band of merry men have not figured out that the role of an MLA is to represent their constituents; with the overall wellbeing of the province and nation in mind. They cannot get past the narrow minded mentality that if you are not with them you are against them.

It will be intriguing to see how this plays out. Will the four (or 5) be strong enough to speak their minds? And at what cost? Will it even make a difference? Will they bend under pressure from the more senior members and end up silenced?

I will close with this.

Don't worry if you don't get it, it's a lame reference that only some of my friends will get.