After the low of losing her mother and the high of winning the Conservative leadership and becoming Alberta’s first female premier, Alison Redford appears to have more drama ahead.
Early attack ads by Wildrose Party leader Danielle Smith, and controversy surrounding the bad debts of her campaign strategist Carter McRae, means Redford will have to hit the ground running.
The 46-year-old wife and mother took leadership of the PC Party in a surprise win over frontrunner Gary Mar on Oct. 2.
On Oct. 15 she announced her new cabinet, a mixture of new faces and veterans that include leadership rivals Doug Griffiths, Doug Horner, and Ted Morton.
Other rivals Gary Mar and Rick Orman, who do not currently have seats in the legislature, have not announced whether they will run in the next election.
Barry Cooper, a professor of political science at the University of Calgary, says Redford’s support of teachers and nurses—occupations with a high percentage of females—played a big part in her win.
“I think it was her appeal to the interests of teachers and nurses that caused a lot of them to join the [Conservative] party even though they probably were not considered activists or long-time members,” he says.
In her campaign, Redford promised to restore $107 million to the education budget within 10 days of being sworn in, and improve the public health care system.
Cooper says that although Redford has claimed to be shaking up the “old boys club,” she is more representative of Joe Clark and Peter Lougheed-era politics than truly fresh, new ideas. Redford served as senior policy advisor to Clark in the late 1980s.
“It’s not really a fresh vision of things but it’s a resurrection of part of the party that, for different reasons, has been in the shadows for the past couple of decades,” he says.
Redford, however, has an impressive resume, and is known for her articulate speech and sharp intellect. She has been actively involved in both provincial and national politics since the 1980s and established her own law firm in Calgary in the 1990s.
Throughout the 90s, she worked on legal, human rights, and educational reform in Africa for the European Union, the Commonwealth Secretariat, and both the Canadian and Australian governments.
In 2005, she was appointed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations as one of four International Election Commissioners to administer Afghanistan’s first parliamentary elections. After being elected MLA for the constituency of Calgary-Elbow, Redford was named Minister of Justice and Attorney General by Premier Ed Stelmach.
Redford is more educated and well-travelled than premiers of recent decades—Ralph Klein never graduated from high school and Ed Stelmach rarely left the country and did not go to university. Redford is the first Alberta premier to hold a university degree since 1992.
Strong Support for Tories
She also has the enviable position of being in the middle of a provincial love affair with the Conservative party. A poll released recently by the Citizen Society Research Lab at Lethbridge College says the Alberta Tories have almost 48 percent support among decided voters.
The NDP and Wildrose Party follow with 16.3 and 16.1 percent respectively, with the Liberals trailing at 13.4 percent.
A separate online poll of 1,000 Albertans conducted by ThinkHQ Public Affairs Inc. found voters’ view of Redford improved between July and September, and that she had the most momentum leading up to the second vote of the leadership race.
The ThinkHQ poll also showed Alberta’s two female political leaders have almost equal approval ratings among voters. Redford had a net approval rating of 18 percent, compared with 17 percent for Wildrose’s Smith.
Cooper says Smith will give Redford some stiff competition. Wildrose had already released attack ads against the new premier one day before she was officially sworn in (although the party had also allegedly prepared attack ads aimed at Gary Mar if he were to win).
In the ads Redford is accused of trying to shut down the legislature after promising openness, and promising fixed election dates but then not giving a date.
One position that may soon open is that of Redford’s chief of staff, after her current advisor, Stephen Carter, was recently found to owe the University of Calgary and others over $600,000 in bad debt from an event put on my his former company, Carter McRae Events.
“If he is appointed as her chief of staff that will show such a lack of judgement on her part,” says Cooper.
Alberta’s ethics commissioner has stated Carter’s company debt is not a breach of the Conflicts of Interest Act. However, Smith and Wildrose MLA Rob Anderson have called for Carter to step down.
