Legislature session deteriorated like a bad season of Survivor

The legislature session ended Thursday just as it began, in a cacophony of insults, accusations and character attacks, most of them aimed at Premier Alison Redford.

Wildrose name-dropping has also dragged her former husband, Robert Hawkes, and her sister, Lynn, across the legislature floor.

Reactions vary, of course. But some Albertans are flat-out disgusted by the unrelenting Wildrose assault. One result is a surge of sympathy for Redford.

Sensing this, PC ministers turned the lens back on Wildrose leader Danielle Smith, questioning her motives as she attacks Redford’s.

Answering yet another question from Smith about the tobacco contract, Justice Minister Jonathan Denis said Thursday: “We are on the side of the average taxpayer — not big tobacco. How about this member?”

Deputy premier Thomas Lukaszuk had already made the allegation as he waved columns from Smith’s highlibertarian phase as an editorial writer at the Herald.

Noting her sympathy for the tobacco industry, he basically accused Smith of trying to sabotage Alberta’s $10-billion lawsuit against the companies.

In 2004, Smith lamented what she called the Quebec government’s attempt “to force Canada’s third-largest tobacco company into bankruptcy,” adding that “big tobacco is the most overregulated, over-taxed and over-monitored industry in North America.”

There’s no sign yet of Smith handing out smokes to teenage legislature pages. And she insists her questions are about the contract, not the lawsuit.

But a leader who throws mud should not expect marshmallows in return.

The PC counterblast is no more unfair than Smith’s public flaying of the premier’s sister, for things she may or may not have done before Alison Redford was even elected to the legislature.

The Wildrose feroc- ity seems to stem from a conviction that Redford and her party harbour no decent instinct, do no good thing, and live for no purpose but perpetuating power by crooked means.

At the recent Wildrose convention, Smith told the crowd the PCs “are the party of rewards and punishments, carrots and sticks, bribes and bullying .... It’s how they think. It’s all they understand. Fear and retaliation.”

Smith said only her party respects the voters, and then added: “This culture of respect applies to all Albertans, but it doesn’t apply to this government.

“The PC party has created in Alberta a level and culture of cynicism that has to be confronted head-on in blunt language.”

There you have it, the official Wildrose rationale for daily blunderbuss eruptions in the legislature.

There’s no doubt that Wildrose has dredged up some dubious stuff. The tobacco contract was worth airing, if only because Redford made a dreadful error by failing to hand the whole file over to another minister.

And the Lynn Redford case, like other examples of questionable political donations, had to become public.

Rather surprisingly, given the high emotion, the premier accepts all the controversy as legitimate.

“I welcome that,” she said Thursday. “I’m disappointed it has to happen but if those questions are being asked, it’s absolutely fine that we consider those questions.

“I know who I am and I know who my sister is and how we live our lives. And we will move on from there.”

When this legislature session opened, many Albertans were looking forward to a tough, focused opposition that might prove itself worthy of government someday.

Instead, we’re getting a bad season of Survivor.

Nobody expects Wildrose to become just another tepid Alberta opposition. The PCs need tough scrutiny. But Smith’s crew has to start showing some humanity, or die.