Bruce Cameron: The battle for Alberta's soul

During the first half of the Alberta election campaign, the Progressive Conservatives stumbled and the Wildrose surged to majority level support.

But Easter weekend appears to have been a temporary lull in the fighting and a potential watershed moment.

Regardless of whether the PCs are able to mount a stunning comeback victory (and recent polls indicate it is possible), or if the Wildrose fends off the mid-campaign PC upswing to win on April 23rd, we may all look back at the Easter weekend break to explain why.

Simply put: it's all about soul, baby. Alberta's soul in fact.

The fight for Alberta's soul boils down to figuring out three things: who Alberta is, what Alberta wants and how we plan to achieve it.

The PC-Wildrose fight dominating most of the media coverage really revolves around answering these questions. Unlike the first two weeks of the campaign, however, this round has gone to the PCs, albeit not by an overwhelming margin.

Alberta has been growing faster than any province in the country for over a decade, and the changes brought about by that growth may determine the outcome of the vote on April 23rd.

First of all, Alberta is not nearly as socially conservative a place as most of the "lame-stream" eastern media speculate.  (That Republican code word, now thrown about by the Wildrose and its biggest cheerleader, Sun Media, is used to dismiss any journalism critical of right wing policies).

A fascinating study conducted by self professed Reform-Alliance expert Faron Ellis proves that point.  Ellis, a former pollster with JMCK, is now an instructor at Lethbridge College.

He conducted a study 6 months ago which clearly shows the Alberta electorate is socially moderate to the point of being labeled progressive

On most "social conservative" positions, from same-sex marriage (72% support), to abortion choice (84% support), doctor-assisted suicide (73% support) and even the use of medical marijuana (77% support), this is "not your father's Alberta."           When interviewed around the time of the Wildrose leadership race by Kathleen Petty of CBC's The House (Oct. 17, 2009), Ellis made a revealing statement that strikes to the core of whether Danielle Smith's coalition of libertarians and social conservatives can keep it together long enough to form government:

"If the Wildrose Alliance reverts to its old traditional social conservative basis, they are pretty much, from my perspective, dead in the water. There is little to no growth potential there in the modern contemporary Alberta. There is a huge market for a more fiscally conservative party running the government but Albertans are not interested in trading, backing off on some left-wing social engineering for a whole bunch of right-wing moral engineering."

The second aspect of Alberta's growth that will help determine the outcome of the election are the changes taking place in suburban and urban fringe ridings across the province.

Take the riding of Highwood, directly south of Calgary, where Danielle Smith faces a tough battle against high profile PC candidate John Barlow.

Highwood has two major population centres: Okotoks, a booming community where many people commute to Calgary, and High River, former home of Canada's most well known "Red Tory" — Joe Clark.

The Joe Clark theme is more than a coincidence. Make no mistake about it. The battle started by Stephen Harper, Tom Flanagan, and Cliff Fryers to take out the old federal Progressive Conservative Party (with Red Tories like Jim Prentice, Joe Clark and Peter McKay) has now moved into its final stages. 

Why else would Harper have made the unprecedented move of freeing his MPs to support whatever party they choose in Alberta's election? Don't be surprised if many of those federal Conservatives show up at Wildrose victory parties.

Karen Kleiss of the Edmonton Journal recently summed it up when she wrote: "The battle playing out on the Alberta hustings in 2012 is the same conservative rift that caused the split between the federal Progressive Conservatives and the Reform Party in 1988, [and] . . . many of the players are the same."

She goes on to describe the Reform roots of both Tom Flanagan, the key strategist for the Wildrose, and Cliff Fryers, [who] "did the same job for Reform party leader Preston Manning and was his chief of staff while in office. He later went on to become chairman of the board of the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, and chairman of Enmax."

By the way, Enmax would love to see a Wildrose government repeal the misguided Bill 50 which green-lights the building of massive transmission lines, replacing it with a policy encouraging construction of gas fired power plants closer to consumer markets (like Calgary).

At the midpoint of the campaign, the PCs are experiencing a rebound in the polls for two reasons: first, they have slowly re-gained some sense of composure after a disastrous start, and second, Alison Redford's fear-mongering about the Wildrose social agenda is beginning to resonate.

To truly understand the battle for Alberta's soul, and what could be at stake in a province with "free votes," "citizen generated referenda" and "social conscience" provisions, examine the articulately scary words of Link Byfield, a sure fire cabinet minister in any Wildrose government:

"The power of the secular state to license marriage is historically new. It emerged in the German religious reformation. Prior to that marriage was the preserve of the Church and of common law. Maybe it should be again."

"Today's so-called libertarians are in historical fact more conservative than the so-called social conservatives."

"Public funding of education, ….has pretty much destroyed the authority of the family."

"Once we get past the labels, conservatives of all shades and persuasions confront a single political enemy: 'progressivism.'"

Not your father's Progressive Conservative Party. Link Byfield, and by extension his "so-con" allies in the Wildrose, may be closer to your father's Social Credit Party, but they are far removed from the changing Alberta of today.