Tue, September 27, 2005
Threat on right
Tenacious new Alliance leader would make Klein regime blink

By Paul Jackson, Calgary Sun

I'm at the elegant Palliser Hotel sipping coffee with Marilyn Burns, who is steadily and steadfastly moving ahead in her bid for the leadership of the provincial Alberta Wildrose Alliance.

That's the rightwing party that started with a flourish under founder Randy Thorsteinson, flagged, and then fizzled just before the 2004 election, electing just one MLA, Cardston's Paul Hinman, yet it did pull in 9% of the vote, giving Premier Ralph Klein's PCs their biggest shock in years.

With Liberal Leader Kevin Taft -- and his Calgary yes-man MLA Dave Taylor -- howling that Albertans shouldn't be getting $400 "prosperity" cheques from our province's oil bonanza this Christmas, I'd expected the fiery Burns to join in the chorus.

But, no -- Burns is all for the prosperity cheques.

The Edmonton lawyer's only criticism is the cheques should arrive sooner, be larger, and come more often.

"I am not in the business of criticizing the Klein government simply for partisan political reasons," she says. "I'm in the business of pressing the government to do what is right, and if it doesn't, an Alberta Alliance government will do it itself."

Wow, Burns surely has her sights on the goal.

That's even though little interest has been shown of late in the Alliance leadership race, being contended by Burns, Hinman himself, and Calgary businessman David Crutcher.

My money's on Burns because she's the best candidate to differentiate her party from all other Opposition parties, and unless the alternative to Klein's PCs comes from the Alliance, there's a real threat Taft's crafty Liberals might sneak up the middle and give us the kind of policies the party's federal wing, headed up by Paul Martin, would like to force upon us.

An utter sellout of our values to the nitwits of nihilism.

We'd see the wildest spending imaginable of our tax dollars, our province likely being driven back into debt again, all kinds of regulations that would gnaw away at our freedoms and strangle our economy, and a stack of zany programs for which the lunatic Liberal-Left is infamous.

One, good, articulate leader and the Alliance would make the PCs blink, put them on guard, and start realizing just how out of touch they have been with mainstream Albertans.

I wrote about Burn's commendable background in "One to watch" (July 26), explaining how this fiery lady didn't attend law school until her four children were old enough to be left alone, and how she financed her way through university, and fed her children, by taking on whatever menial job she could.

Look for someone typifying the true Alberta pioneering spirit and you'll do no better than Marilyn Burns.

Without big financial backers, Marilyn has been crisscrossing the province pushing her plans and networking for support.

With the leadership convention set for Calgary Nov. 18-19, and the Oct. 6 deadline for membership applications to vote in the contest looming, the vise is closing in.

On the prosperity cheque program, Burns would like to see a program set in place, such as the Alaska Permanent Fund, in which residents get cheques every year. This year, Alaska's cheques were for $845 for every man, woman and child, higher than some over the past 20 years, lower than others. Yet because Alberta's Heritage Fund has been frequently ripped off to the tune of billions by PC cabinet ministers and MLAs for their pet projects, it is dwarfed by the Alaska Fund.

Burns' platform is expansive:

She wants to see a stable plan for spending and tax cuts. None of the reckless hit-and-miss tactics of the Klein regime.

Burns believes Alberta must tackle Ottawa's intrusion into areas of provincial rights -- from health care to marriage -- and not buckle under as the PCs have frequently done. They bark at Ottawa's browbeating of us -- but never bite.

She contends that with soaring oil prices, the sweetheart royalty deals the province has with the energy companies must be renegotiated to the benefit of the Alberta people.

All straightforward planks.

If she wins the leadership, and pray she does, she will immediately establish a shadow cabinet -- a government in waiting -- to tackle the listless Klein team on every issue and be ready to take over government the day the PCs have to abdicate if they lose the next election.

This bundle of verve and veracity is the best bet we have going for us if (A) We want to push the Klein government back to acting like true Conservatives, and (B) prevent disenchanted voters from throwing our province to the Liberals.

Watch her closely.

(To read Paul Jackson’s July 26 column on Alliance leadership candidate Marilyn Burns, go to http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Calgary/Paul_Jackson/2005/07/26/1147531.html ).