{"id":1662,"date":"2008-02-16T14:36:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-16T19:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=1662"},"modified":"2008-02-16T14:36:00","modified_gmt":"2008-02-16T19:36:00","slug":"democracy-derailed-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=1662","title":{"rendered":"Democracy Derailed"},"content":{"rendered":"

The returning officer scandal<\/a> continues to grow, with half Alberta’s returning officers<\/a> now revealed to have known ties to the PCs. In Stelmach’s home riding, the job went to a man who made a large donation to his leadership campaign. In Calgary Currie, it went to a man who ran unsuccessfully for the PC nomination a few short months ago. In others, PC riding exec members got the jobs.<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Equally disturbing has been Stelmach’s handling of this. When the scandal broke, here’s what Stelmach had to say<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“I didn’t provide the names to the chief electoral officer,” Stelmach said while in Calgary.<\/em><\/p>\n

One quick call<\/a> to Elections Alberta disputed that<\/a>:<\/p>\n

But here’s the other half of the truth: the premier and his cabinet approved those officials, many of whom had been proposed by his party and MLAs, and have deep ties to the Conservative party.<\/p>\n

On Dec. 19 last year, and again this Jan. 23, the government’s executive council (the cabinet) voted to appoint returning officers for the province’s 83 ridings.<\/p>\n

As the premier’s men have acknowledged, those people are nominated to Elections Alberta through Tory MLAs, riding associations and the main party.<\/p>\n

Thus the Tories pick them and the Tories appoint them; and Stelmach is chairman of the almighty executive council that does the appointing.<\/em><\/p>\n

Just so everyone understands what’s going on. Returning officers are chosen by PC candidates and PC riding associations<\/a>.<\/em> Un-freaking-believable. At least a few Tory candidates have come around to admitting this needs changing<\/a> but many still try to defend an indefensible policy. When you consider how hard Albertans have fought for transparency and openness at the federal level, I would hope they’d expect the same standards in their home province.<\/p>\n

If you want an illustration of the dangers of one party rule for 37 years, I think this illustrates it better than anything. The PCs simply fail to grasp the difference between the Alberta government and the Progressive Conservative Party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The returning officer scandal continues to grow, with half Alberta’s returning officers now revealed to have known ties to the PCs. In Stelmach’s home riding, the job went to a man who made a large donation to his leadership campaign. In Calgary Currie, it went to a man who ran unsuccessfully for the PC nomination […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[71,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2008-alberta-election","category-alberta-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1662\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}