The outgoing President of the Young Tories took a parting shot at Premier Ed Stelmach on the front page of today's Calgary Herald.
Outgoing executive members of the Alberta PC youth wing continued their assault Monday against the Tories and the Stelmach government, arguing their policies are rural, stale and ensuring a "slow death march" for the party.There is also a surprisingly nasty letter on the front page of the YAPCA website. The Herald described the situation well.
[...]
The entire nine-member executive has resigned from the youth wing, largely due to the party's and government's lack of vision and attempts to muzzle young Tories, insist the former executive members.
"PC Alberta will continue its slow death march, to the beat of a rural drum and tired, stale policies," outgoing president David McColl, 26, wrote in an op-ed letter to the Herald.
Some of the outgoing members of the youth wing say they're disillusioned with the party's lack of vision and the way it kept the lid on their views and input. It is difficult to gauge the overall mood in the whole wing from a handful of dissenters, but what should worry Stelmach is that these are more people adding their voices to a chorus of disillusionment with his government that is growing steadily louder.On that note, today's Herald also included a new poll showing Premier Ed Stelmach's disapproval rating in Calgary and Edmonton doubling to 29%, from 15% in January. In Calgary, the poll shows that Stelmach's disapproval rating has soared to 39% (from 18% in January) and is coming close to challenging his approval ratings of 44% in Calgary (down from 52% in January). The poll also showed that 41% of Calgarians believe Premier Stelmach is leading Alberta in the wrong direction (35% think he's taking Alberta down the right path).
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13 comments:
The best thing we could do for young PC's in the party is blow-up YAPCA into tiny little bits and never look back.
In a related poll, 98% of all disaffected Tories would vote for the Alberta Alliance before they would ever vote for Kevin Daft.
The poll still had the Tories in good shape province wide, though. Libs are well below their their 2004 totals.
CTV had a Calgary poll (not sure if it's the same one or not) tonight, saying the Tories are at 40% in Calgary, which is a drop of 10% from the last election. Translated city-wide, that'd probably cost them a handful of seats in the city next election (and, most likely, Elbow, one would hope).
Erection Time,
Buddy, time to check those stats.
The alberta alliance is a group of rubes and hicks that wrote their party constitution with crayons.
Times are changing in Alberta, and these morons, including the "Alliance" will take their place as the political rump of a province which looks nothing like its predecessor from the 70's. Good riddance to bad rubbish - and bring on that election time!
I can't wait.
Stelmach is change - in terms of governance style (he respects the bureaucracy) and agenda (can you imagine affodable housing and a smoking ban being on the policy agenda under Klein?) ...and centres of influence (royalty reviews and a shift to more policy and political influence outside of Calgary has to be an adjustment for the past 15 years).
The legislature matters again and government announcements now happen there - in the Capital City - that is a positive change with Stelmach too.
The far right and Calgary is not going to be comfortable with any of these developments...but nothing stays the same.
The PC Party is about to become Progressive again and conserving again not just the old style mean spirited type of Conservative we have seen in the Harris Ontario and currently in Ottawa.
I moderated the panel at the recent PC AGM on youth involvement and the consensus was youth should not be marginalized into a different and distinct group...they needed to be in the mainstream of party events, elections and activism...I liked that approach and think Willblog is right in his observations on this.
One more thing Dave. I see in the Herald story the poll was done by Cameron Strategies...the policy advisor to Lyle Oberg in the PC leadership.
I am sure it is a quality piece of work but we do not know exactly what questions were asked or how they were worded. That is important stuff in evaluating the authortativeness of the poll results.
When can we expect Oberg to release ANYTHING about his campaign fund raising. He has promised to do it but it is about 6 months now and still nothing!!!
I am not happy with anonymous donors at all from any campaign but for the two Doctors - Oberg and Morton to not disclose ANY fund raising information is not appropriate. Particularly when integrity and transparency are stated key governance principles for Premier Stelmach.
He can't force the issue even when new legislation for such matters come up this fall. It can't be retroactive but given the circumstances of these guys being in Cabinet - Stelmach should not be amused and he needs to make those sentiments known.
I echo Willblog and Ken Chapman's sentiments.
A Youth Wing is a sandbox and very glad the Conservative Party doesn't have one. Youth (< 30) can be just as involved as anyone else.
actually the new PC Youth Assoc. (PCYA,i am the new VP Finance) will be an effective group that will network our campus clubs and constituency associations to recruit new members and work on behalf of the PC Youth (<25).
dave mccoll as president of YAPCA (YAP-KA) was a utter failure. during his reign he failed his obligation to ensure that youth be actively involved in the party and many, many PC's can back me up on that statement. mccoll sparsely attended the executive meetings as the youth rep on the PCAA executive and contrary to what he said to the papers, mccoll is still the president of YAPCA, he was the one that called the AGM, HE could not get people to attend and meet quorum to the meeting he called because nobody cares about his little organization. i drove down from st. albert to attend because i wanted to show them out the door.
however, as a matter of fact, there was in fact a healthy representation of youth at the PCAA AGM in Edmonton earlier this month.
anyways YAPCA will be de-certified as the youth wing by the PCAA executive at their next meeting and mccoll can go help out the liberals in the next election. quite frankly he would be doing stelmach and the PC party a BIG favour!
The post should have been called "young tories moon stelmach"
Scott,
Did no-one in your posse read the YAPCA constitution before you all decided to run for executive positions? If you had you would realize that YAPCA is the PCYA and that you and your little friends do not know what you are getting yourselves into. Tread carefully and do not expect the party to stand behind you and support you when the going gets tough.
Well said.
I think this new "PCYA" *cough* *cough* should stop hiding behind PC Alberta and hold an election.
Or are you kids afraid of getting your ego's bruised by losing? how pathetic. Perhaps that's why you are trying to get around the rules of quorum.
At least this david mccoll character is willing to speak his mind and follow the rules. It is because of people like you scott that support breaking the rules that young people don’t care about politics.
Scott, David Mccoll did more for this party in 2 years than you will in your entire lifetime. It's not his fault that Ed Stelmach is ruining the party
Ken:
Take it from an insider, you don't know the full story behind the Cameron Strategy poll, nor the relationship between Oberg and Cameron.
You are correct, it has taken the Oberg Campaign a significant amount of time to release its contributions list.
I notice that you seen to take exception to some of the things that Oberg does, but give him little credit for some of things he does do that you are supppotive of: i.e. the recent decision by the Tories to institute a province-wide smoking ban.
If you read Liscac's Insight into Goverment this week you can see that Oberg had a major role in pushing through the province-side smoking ban.
As I recall, Oberg talked about a province-wide smoking ban in Blueprint for Prosperity (his campaign platform document). As I recall, Oberg's platform was released prior to Hancock's platform.
Give credit where credit is due Ken.
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