Wildrose Alliance Party leadership convention. Oct. 17, 2009

Thank you.

You might want to get comfortable. I have many, many people to thank so we may be here awhile. I also want to tell you the course I will set as leader of our party, and with your support, the direction that we’ll go.

Let me start by thanking Paul Hinman, Mark Dyrholm and Jeff Willerton. Without these three hardworking guys there would have been no contested leadership race and certainly no opportunity to build our party, as we have together over the last five months.

As you all know, I admire Jeff’s determination and his track record at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Thanks Jeff for your effort in this campaign.

Now Mark Dyrholm. Congratulations Mark on running a hard-fought campaign. Even though you and I have some areas of disagreement, I know there are far more things on which we agree.  I am looking forward to working with you as we build this party in the years ahead to ready us to form the next government.

Let me now thank our elected MLA for Calgary-Glenmore, Paul Hinman. Paul realized that a contested leadership race would be essential to kickstart our party and regain momentum after the 2008 election, then stepped aside to make it happen. I think he was hoping for a slower pace when he stepped down as leader but someone had another plan. Thank you Paul, once again, for putting the interests of the people of Alberta ahead of your own. You’ll get a chance to relax one day. Just not now.

We have all fought hard against tough odds to help build our party. The first test of any party is its willingness to work. The spirit our members and volunteers displayed during these last few months means we can win. With that spirit we have won, and we will continue to win. We have grown into a party of winners.

There was an urgency, passion and commitment in our leadership contest and in helping Paul regain a seat in the legislature. Farmers were selling each other memberships by cell phone from their tractors as they raced toward the dual deadline of fall harvest and the membership cut-off. Dozens of volunteers in Calgary-Glenmore knocked on thousands of doors this summer. We mailed tens of thousands of letters and called tens of thousands of Albertans. We held dozens of townhall meetings and candidates debates where former Reform MPs reminded us of Alberta’s last political tsunami – the one with Preston Manning’s face and ideas on it that brought new people into politics for the first time. It began as a trickle and grew into a tidal wave.

With the leadership now decided by people from every constituency and corner of this great province, our party now has to go forward with confidence and show Albertans that we are the best group to govern, that we have a new plan for the province, and a new vision of what Albertans can achieve.

We can win because we have grown into a party of winners.

Principles

People in this wildrose province of ours have always known that winning demands self-discipline, focus and accountability. Alberta has been built by pioneers and trailblazers who knew what they had to do to get the job done and did what was right. These values are written into the history of Alberta and in the opening sentences of our party constitution. It starts with three founding principles: (1) internal accountability, (2) provincial accountability, and (3) federal accountability.

The very first rule of our party concerns the leader. The leader must remain “accountable to the caucus and to the members of the party.” Specific means are set in place to ensure this happens. This does not mean he, or she in my case, may never make decisions. It means that those decisions – as Premier Ernest Manning used to say – “must satisfy the judgment of the people.”

You might think that leader-accountability and MLA-accountability are such a no-brainer in a democracy that it wouldn’t need to be said, but unfortunately it does. We see in these waning years of Alberta’s Progressive Conservative era how badly leaders and caucuses behave when they are beyond any requirement to account regularly for their decisions.

I ran for this job understanding exactly what accountability means. My number one job is to turn Alberta into an actual democracy again.

The second rule of our party is to “reflect, strengthen and serve” the common sense values of Albertans. Free people have a right and a duty to govern themselves, individually and collectively, and our party exists primarily to ensure that they do. What exactly they decide to do is, within constitutional limits, up to them.

But the values this province was built on are deeply rooted in a commitment to personal liberty: Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association, freedom of assembly and economic freedom (the foundation of which is a respect for private property rights). The problem in Alberta is the government has become too big and too intrusive for our own good. It must be reined in to preserve the ability of individuals, families and communities to govern themselves in their own way, according to their own values.

As leader, my main concerns will be to repair our democracy, to restore our reputation as a safe, fair and predictable place to do business, to champion our real record on the environment, to fix the health care system, and to entrench property rights in law. These and similar practical concerns are what we will concentrate on first. Others will be dealt with later.

The party’s third principle is responsible federalism. This too is a practical concern for Alberta in another resource price tailspin. The world has entered upon a new era, and federalism must adapt to new realities.

In the fiercely competitive global economy of this century we must leave behind the popular but totally discredited twentieth-century delusion that government spending makes countries prosperous – or that governments can plan the economy – or that you can heavily penalize economic success in one region to heavily compensate failure in another. We must embark on building a new relationship with our federal and provincial counterparts, one that respects the Constitution and leaves provinces free to chart their own course in their areas of jurisdiction.

If we all respect these three principles, and work within them, we will not just shape our party, but the future of Alberta. The principles of this party will become the governing principles of this province and guide our relationship with the federal government.

Thus can we restore what is so plainly missing from the current provincial government – self-discipline, focus and accountability.

We can do this because we have become a party of winners.

Lessons of history

During the campaign I touched on history – on how a century of shared experience has defined us as a province. We’re all Canadians. But we do notice unusual tendencies here in wildrose country.

Albertans are known for their courage to embrace change. We tend to elect governments for a long period of time, but throw them out once they become disconnected from the people they are supposed to serve. And we do it quickly.

As I have gone from one corner of the province to the other during this leadership campaign, I can tell you – change is coming.

People are looking for a party to step up and represent their interests, not the backroom lobbyists and political cronies. People are looking for a vision and a path that makes us better than we are today. Because we are Albertans – we work hard for what we have, are generous to help those in need and we expect our elected officials to realize that they are servants of the people, not the other way around.

Every previous new governing party was more or less hurled into office with no benefit of cabinet experience, and hardly any benefit of opposition experience. That means, if we do our work right, we could find ourselves governing the province by 2012.

Preston Manning says that the most effective claim a Social Credit candidate could make in the upset election of 1935 was that he had never once set foot in the Legislature. Our ability to say “we had nothing to do with this mess – we just want to fix it” may be one of our most valuable assets.

While we may be given a term as official opposition, we will not run as an opposition party in 2012. We must be ready to govern.

Albertans do not vote for oppositions. They elect governments. Always.

That’s the first lesson of history, but there are others.

Albertans – to an extraordinary degree – always look ahead. If you examine the record, you’ll find those before us were always looking forward, no matter what stage we were at in the province’s development, or how tough the times were.

That’s history’s second lesson. Albertans are always anticipating an even better future. That’s why we live here.

We are willing to give a government a free rein for a long time so long as they are getting things done.

What we won’t abide for too long is government incompetence.

Other provinces regularly switch back and forth between left and right, like windshield wipers. Left-right, left-right.

Albertans don’t. We switch governments when elected members become more interested in protecting their jobs than doing the job we send them to Edmonton to do – on our behalf.

So instead of fixating on how right-wing we should be, let’s focus on how grassroots we can be. We – the Wildrose Alliance – represent the resurgence of homegrown government. Let’s focus on finding out what Albertans actually want, and make sure they get it.

In the end, people will not judge us by our ideology, but on whether we care about Albertans – including those who cannot help themselves.

Western society seems headed in a direction where the people will want and need more, and the ability for government to help will decline. What answers do we have? This party must face these issues head-on and find affordable answers. This – as much as tax policy and energy policy – will convince people to vote for us.

And as a strong, compassionate and united party, we can challenge the status quo as so many people have done before us. We can win because we have become a party of winners.

Next Step

Because the extraordinary surge of thousands of new members into our party during the leadership race – and the remarkable extent of positive media coverage, provincial and national – says to me that our support is not a short-term protest movement.

We all know that Alberta experiences sudden seismic political shifts, from one long-lasting party to another. The great thrill of this moment is that the Wildrose Alliance was seen even a few months ago as another marginal protest party. Now we’re the government in waiting. This sense that the shift has come is spreading everywhere, inside Alberta and beyond.

As a party we must grasp our opportunity and prepare to govern, not complain. And considering the organizational challenge to be election-ready, we have very little time. We need strong, credible candidates across the province. We need comprehensive, coherent policy to govern Canada’s third-largest economy in a time of formidable economic challenges.

We have a lot work to do, and little time to do it. We’re Albertans. Let’s roll up our sleeves and get at it. We can win because we have become a party of winners.

In the next few weeks we will embark on a grassroots policy making process the likes of which this province has never seen.

The details of our first policy round table will be announced in November, with three others to follow in January. Grassroots democracy takes work. I will honour the grassroots policy-setting process that lies at the heart of our party. I ask that you commit to participate and to help build the policy foundation that we’ll carry into the next election. This is how we will introduce Albertans to our party. This is how we will show them that government in Alberta can be done better.

But a successful political party requires more than grassroots policy input. It needs to organize 83 effective riding associations across the province. It needs a professional and effective fundraising organization to ensure that we have the money for a growing party office, membership, communications, infrastructure, policy research, by-elections.
And, of course, finance an effective, province-wide campaign in the next election.

Be assured I know what it is going to take for Wildrose Alliance to be the first choice of Albertans in the next election, and I have the plan on how to do it.

This is how we can give Albertans hope once again.

Virtue of Common Sense

Perhaps understandably, we’ve been doing a lot of cringing and ducking to avoid being labeled “extremist.” We should now stop. It’s undignified. Our grassroots party is about common sense ideas, timeless ideas that reflect the mainstream values of average Albertans.

We believe government is not there to tell the people what to do, we the people are here to tell the government what to do.

We believe that if you own something, and the government takes it, then the government should pay for it.

We believe that families and communities should run their own affairs and fulfill their own responsibilities without a lot of political interference from the Legislature.

We believe we should have the highest literacy rate and lowest crime rate in North America, the best and fastest universal health care, the most attractive investment climate and cutting edge environmental practices – and we’re extremely determined to see these things happen. In fact, we won’t rest until they do.

We believe that MLAs, cabinet ministers and premiers should be paid what ordinary informed Albertans think is right and fair, and not according to what multinationals pay their CEOs.

And we believe it is the right and the duty of every person to say what they think is true, and to be free to advance their case – in our party, in our media and in our Legislature.

The people of Alberta believe these things. It’s why people came here, and why they always will. It’s what they want. And it’s why they will elect a Wildrose Alliance government.

Ed Stelmach, you haven’t even begun to imagine what’s about to hit you. We are going to give Albertans back their province. We will give Albertans back their pride.

And we can win because we have become a party of winners.

I mentioned that I have a lot of people to thank so I want to turn now to finishing that.

I would not be here at all if not for John Murdoch from Madison Energy and former president of the Alberta Alliance.
He approached me after the 2008 election, to let me know Paul was thinking of stepping aside and to see if I would quit my job and run for leader. I told him no. But he didn’t let up. Through this race he has never hesitated to send a positive word of encouragement. It meant a lot to me to have his support.

Link Byfield is another big reason I’m here today. We co-hosted the 2006 Calgary Congress together which is where I think he got it in his head that I should leave advocacy and media behind and enter politics. When he helped start the Wildrose Party in 2007, he asked me if I would consider running for leader. I told him no, too. But he didn’t let up either. Link has been a trusted advisor and friend throughout this campaign. Thank you.

Dave Yager was instrumental in making many introductions to members of Calgary’s downtown business community who have been so generous in taking a chance on supporting this new party. I must also thank Dave for taking the time to educate me on how his industry works. He introduced me to many, many more people that have helped me grasp just how important the energy industry is to Alberta. Thank you.

I also want to thank one more person who has been asking me to enter politics for many, many years. Rancher Gordon Butler, my longtime friend, mentor and fellow property rights advocate, has worked tirelessly to sell memberships and build the party in rural Alberta. Thank you Gordon – that work has just begun.

Of course none of this would have come together without the superb organizational talent of my campaign managers Rob Griffith and Dale Bossert. As a seasoned campaign team, they offered terrific counsel, advice and support along the way. I could not have done it without them. Thank you.

Finally, thank you to my husband David for his encouragement, support and willingness to make his own dinner.  I have not been around much for the last five months but his commitment to my aspiration to become leader of this party has not wavered and for that I am extremely grateful.

Lastly, thanks to all of you for buying a membership and voting in this leadership race.

Although we all have somewhat differing views of where Alberta has come from and where it should go, we all have a right to speak and a right to vote. There will be mistakes. We still have much to learn – we all do – and in this learning process we have to exercise patience, care and goodwill. And we must accept that the collective view of the Wildrose Alliance is the message we’ll carry forward, even if from time to time it’s not congruent with our individual views. This is the fundamental maturation of a protest movement to a successful political party. I’m confident that we have enough beliefs in common that we will all make the compromises necessary to fulfill our date with destiny – forming the next government of the great province of Alberta!

But we must be constructive, not destructive.

We do not disrespect the Tories – most of us may have voted for the Tories in the past.

We do not impugn the motives and character of Ed Stelmach. He is a decent man overwhelmed by the conflicting demands of a new economy and an exhausted party – a once-great party whose time is over. It’s time to leave the past behind and move on.

Because we have become a party of winners.

The task of our party is to look ahead – to figure out how we Albertans can be as resourceful and successful in our second century as we were in our first. Let’s leave the politics of resentment and division to others. Think positive. Look forward. Speak charitably but clearly of where we must go.

Listen to Albertans.
Respect Albertans.
Inspire Albertans.
Unite Albertans.
Build Alberta.

Albertans are waiting for us to succeed. Let’s not disappoint them. Let’s make it happen.