Bid to create Wildrose 2.0 gets firmly off the ground

Inside a mystery location EDMONTO N in Nisku this past weekend, a group of around 50 disillusioned Wildrosers met to reanimate the party they love.

The Wildrose Party is all but gone now — membership has merged with the Progressive Conservatives, its MLAs have crossed to the new United Conservative Party, and its leader has resigned to pursue a bid to become leader of the UCP.

The meeting was closed to the media.

Marilyn Burns, president of the Edmonton-Southwest Wildrose constituency association board, said last week it was only for those “very interested” in or “very committed” to the idea of forming Wildrose 2.0.

What about a reporter very interested as an impartial observer? A chuckle, and, “No, but good try.” This was billed as more than simply a meeting to gauge interest in a new party — Burns insists that appetite exists.

Instead, it was a gathering to get the ball rolling — form an organizational committee, figure out a party name, get a society registered, set up a bank account, decide on a constitution, and pencil in a date for an annual general meeting in the fall.

She says the new party — like the old — will use the Wildrose constitution as its bylaws, with only a few tweaks to things like candidate selection and reducing the number of members required to set up a constituency association.

There are three choices to register a party in Alberta — get three sitting MLAs to do it, run candidates in half of the province’s constituencies in a general election, or submit a petition in which 7,868 registered Alberta voters support the party’s creation. When the Wildrose Party was formed a decade ago, it went with the third option.

Burns was part of the crew that gathered those signatures. It took them eight months, but she doesn’t seem daunted by the task of doing it again.

Not content to rely on signatures, Burns and the organizational committee formed Saturday have their eye on five “good, principled” Wildrose MLAs they think might support a new party.

Burns won’t name names, but says one has already been approached.

Former Wildrose leader Brian Jean didn’t want to comment specifically on Burns or her plan last week, save to say he’d like her to “have a second thought, reach out, and come back to the fold.

“I just think, as conservatives, we’re much stronger if we do things together, not divided,” he said.

“I would encourage her to come back and fight the fight. The more Albertans get involved in the united ... movement, the better off we all are.”

I just think, as conservatives, we’re much stronger if we do things together, not divided.

But Burns and her crew are sticking to their guns.

“Never,” she said, will they align with the UCP.

“Coming back to the fold means doing what we’re doing, because we’re using the constitution and the policies of Wildrose — every single principle, every single object,” she said.

This week, the group will put some possible Wildrose 2.0 party names to Elections Alberta and see what sticks. The plan is for a second organizational meeting in August and an AGM in October

Meanwhile, another new political movement in the province, Alberta Together, which includes Alberta Party Leader and MLA Greg Clark and former PC president Katherine O’Neill, held a meeting with about 100 people last Monday after the UCP introduced its interim leader, Nathan Cooper.