Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Would a right wing party by any other name, smell as sweet?

The Wild Rose Party still don't have a leader, but they now have a policy platform. Among the highlights of their founding convention:


-Setting up an Alberta provincial pension plan

-Abolish health care premiums

-Allow private health care in Alberta

-No funding of abortions by health care (except in extreme circumstances)

-Their view on Stelmach's royalty compromise with big oil: "The paltry $1 billion or so extra that the government hopes to collect by forcing a royalty hike, will do far more harm than good."

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9 Comments:

  • I attending the founding convention and we had limited time, which meant that just the most controversial policy proposals were considered with others to be taken up later. We shot down or dialed down a lot of fringy proposals. We also heard from lawyers and an investment banker which was informative. The Alberta Pension Plan proposal was quite sophisticated, actually.

    By Blogger Brian Dell, at 10:34 p.m.  

  • Sounds like a fabulous organization. Its about time there was a real conservative party somewhere in canada!

    By Blogger Unknown, at 10:38 p.m.  

  • Sounds like a fabulous organization. Its about time there was a real conservative party somewhere in canada!

    By Blogger Unknown, at 10:39 p.m.  

  • "The paltry $1 billion or so extra that the government hopes to collect by forcing a royalty hike, will do far more harm than good."

    Hmm... Well, last year the Alberta gov't took in just over 38 billion dollars in revenue. $1.4 billion in additional revenue(*) works out to a 3.7% increase.

    I'll leave it up to others to decide whether that qualifies as "paltry".

    (*) Minus whatever is lost to decreased economic activity...

    By Blogger The Invisible Hand, at 11:10 p.m.  

  • Sounds like a fabulous organization. Its about time there was a real conservative party somewhere in canada!

    By Blogger Unknown, at 12:23 a.m.  

  • Well, the 1.4 billion number would likely be around 5% (depending how much revenue increases by the time we get there) - I don't think that's paltry, especially on governmental scales.

    The interesting thing about this new party will be to see if they completely suplant the Alberta Alliance or if the two will just split the vote. Also curious to see if they'll be able to attract a strong leader.

    By Blogger calgarygrit, at 1:40 a.m.  

  • I've seen it pointed out elsewhere that they have yet to attract enough signitures to register as a party and run in elections.

    That's not paid-up memberships, but mere signatures.

    I don't see them as posing much of threat to anyone.

    By Blogger Reality Bites, at 3:50 p.m.  

  • Wild Hair Party might be closer to the style of the thing

    By Blogger Unknown, at 5:37 p.m.  

  • It won't truly have effect, I suppose so.

    By Anonymous My Wacky Friends, at 2:52 a.m.  

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