Apparently, third place is where you want to be.
On a strange saturday night, two candidates came from third place to win their respective leaderships.
First, Ed Stelmach came from behind to defeat Jim Dinning and Ted Morton to become the premier-designate of Alberta and the leader of the provincial Progressive Conservatives.
I've read very little of Stelmach, so I'll have to start learning more into Alberta politics if I end up working in Calgary. I probably won't agree with many of his positions, but if I can respect his principles and he's less reactionary than Ralph Klein, then I can live with that.
Second, Stephane Dion came from behind to beat the two frontrunners of the Federal Liberal Party, Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff, respectively, and become the Leader of the Opposition.
As for Dion, he's pledged his platform around the concept of Sustainable Development, except he actually seems to know what he's talking about when he uses the three pillars: economic, social and environmental sustainability. If he can actually form a coherent platform from this, using help from the likes of Gerard Kennedy and Martha Hall Findlay, it might actually make me consider voting for the Liberals in future elections.
He has two weaknesses that I care about: his failure to do accomplish anything with Kyoto when he was in government. And his lack of a sound foreign policy strategy. I hope he can correct these two flaws (well, the former really requires an admittance of failure while the latter will be a bit tougher...)
Either way, the surge in support for the Green Party in the London by-election and the election of Dion has sparked a small flame of optimism in me about the possible future direction in Canadian politics.
2 comments:
Dion and Kennedy seem to have strategised and read the convention perfectly. I read in The Star today that apparently they both agreed that whichever one of them was in third place would be able to win, but only with the full support of the other. It worked perfectly as Kennedy, unlike other candidates, delivered his delegates almost 100% to Dion - when they could have very easily split between Rae and Igantieff.
In terms of Alberta, when push came to shove, I don't think Klien was that reactionary. In terms of the Canada Health Act and other Liberal boogeymen Klien generally backed down in the end. I think I read somewhere that Morton is a hard-core ideologue, particularly on provincial rights, whereas Stelmach is much more mundane Conservative.
Perhaps Klein was more talk than anything, but he still riled up a lot of anti-Ottawa/Eastern Canada sentiment. Not that it's hard to do in Alberta. It definitely became easier once the money and power shifted westward. I knew that about Morton and Dinning was supposed to be more moderate as well, but Stelmach's a complete unknown to me. I think I heard something about him having a lot of grassroots support. Again, I'm not familiar with Alberta politics so I'll have to start reading with a more astute eye over there.
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