Well that’s a neat tactic to screw over your primary vote splitting opponent.
But if you’re a Liberal does this help frame the PC as greedy careerists? Or are they already seen like that given how bloody long they’ve been in power.
From my point of view, a big part of the Wildrose Party’s mandate has always been to frame the PCs as greedy careerists. People who lack accountability and integrity who are in it for the money and the pension while doing little to truly look after the province.
I guess if Smith and company are crossing the floor, they’ve given up on that fight and are conceding defeat, since Albertans have demonstrated conclusively that they will not vote against the Conservatives, no matter how corrupt and incompetent they are.
So I guess it will indeed fall to Raj Sherman and the Liberals to take back the job of publicly shaming the Conservatives, yes. Not that it will matter.
Has the leader of the opposition in any government anywhere that has a similar setup as ours ever crossed the floor to the governing party before? I’ll include both provincial/state and federal. (I realize “has a similar setup as ours” might be a little ambiguous, but I think most will know what I mean).
In between ROTFLMAO at the hilarity of it all I am just astounded that something like this could happen even in Alberta!
Okay, that is just the first sentence in a dictionary when people look up ‘Politician’. Which really doesn’t bother me so much in a politician. It’s the idealists that scare the crap out of me.
And in other Alberta news, there are calls for the resignations of the Minister of Justice and his two Deputy Ministers, because of a memo that the two DM’s sent out to Crown prosecutors which stated:
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of a Crown prosecutor and is causing considerable concern amongst the Crowns in Alberta, according to this article:
The Supreme Court of Canada stated, over sixty years ago:
[QUOTE=Justice Rand]
"It cannot be overemphasized that the purpose of a criminal prosecution is not to obtain a conviction,” the Supreme Court ruled in Boucher. “It is to lay before a jury what the Crown considers to be credible evidence relevant to what is alleged to be a crime.
“The role of prosecutor excludes any notion of winning or losing,” the ruling further states.
[/QUOTE]
And there’s an interesting news item about Justice Côté, the newest judge on the SCC.
She had a tax fight a while ago with Revenu Québec. She was claiming clothes and some personal services totalling over $200,000 in three tax years as a business expense.
Settled out of court, so we don’t know how it turned out.
I have had to reassure a number of clients that Crowns are not out to “get them,” and do not keep their jobs based on the number of convictions that they get.
As an aside, I see from the linked item that it includes a letter from Peter Royal calling for the resignations of those involved. Mr. Royal taught me Evidence at law school.
You’ve put your finger on one of the strange things about Alberta. We hate the government, and we hate everything they’ve done and are doing, but there is no way in HELL we will ever vote them out. I’m starting to think that people here don’t understand that a government that has no fear of losing power has no impetus to do anything differently, or do anything the people want them to do. I mean, other than Ralph Klein, they don’t actually physically thumb their noses at us, but they might as well.
That does indeed sound like a fundamental (and serious) misunderstanding of their roles.
Yes, people hate the government in Alberta. But what they hate worse are the parties that would replace them. It’s pretty simple really. There is nothing the Liberals, and especially the NDP, can offer that the typical Albertan might want when considering all the other crap that they would bring to the table with them. So, Alberta does it differently rather than change the party governing, they change the leaders in the party.
I don’t know what you’re bitching about in Alberta with no sales tax. In Ontario we have taxes layered upon taxes thanks to the new Harmonized Sales Tax (HST).
The consumption tax burden and energy costs are fucking killing us here.
So, I picked up CTs new points card the other day and used it on the weekend.
You know how you could find multiplier coupons in the store and sometimes in free-be community newspapers? Well, with this new on-line program you always get the highest possible multiplier rate, sans coupon.
I thought I’d let y’all know. I drive a shit tonne and can rack up serious CT money this way. In the summer I bought an $80 skillet for ten bucks. I love Canadian Tire!
