Alberta Tories to gather for policy meeting

Progressive Conservatives from across Alberta will meet in Edmonton this weekend to wrangle over potential policy changes and pitch new ideas.

The PC Association of Alberta’s policy conference will begin Friday night with a speech from Premier Alison Redford, party executive director Kelley Charlebois said. After that, the point is to give the membership behind the party a chance to propose new ideas or changes to the party’s current platforms.

“What the policy conference is really about is to give people an opportunity to discuss issues they may have an opinion on and test the water as to where other people in the party are at,” he said.

There won’t be any final decisions on policy at this conference, where each constituency association will be represented by six delegates. But from there, associations can craft policy proposals to submit for a vote at the PC party’s fall annual general meeting.

For now, the sessions are described in broad terms around subjects such as health, postsecondary education, land use, taxation and PC party operations. Redford also will participate in a question-and- answer session with delegates on Saturday.

Though the event is organized by the political party, it will be watched with interest by political observers. It will be the first policy conference under Redford’s leadership. The conference also comes in advance of a mandatory leadership review for Redford at the party’s fall meeting, which will measure how Tories feel about her performance.

Edmonton-Southwest MLA Matt Jeneroux, one of the party’s caucus liaisons, said he believes delegates will focus their energies on policy, rather than the politics of a leadership review still several months away.

The first-term MLA said his constituency association plans to bring forward a policy proposal that resembles the private member’s bill he sponsored in the legislature that passed in May, amending the Employment Standards Act to allow Albertans eight weeks of leave from work to care for a dying family member.

Members of his constituency also have a particular interest in policy discussions related to new schools or community infrastructure such as playgrounds, he said.

While Tories from across Alberta meet inside the Radisson South Hotel, a protest is planned outside Saturday in the style of a block party.

Public Interest Alberta’s executive director Bill MooreKilgannon said organizers of “Block the Party” want to challenge PC party members on the cuts and changes in the latest budget.

Buses are being organized from as far away as Lethbridge to bring people to the lunchtime protest, a two-hour event with music and an array of mock stations mimicking activities someone might see at a traditional block party like a dunk tank to “dunk postsecondary education.”

Kids also will be able to make their own bitumen bubble, Moore-Kilgannon said, a nod to the phrase Redford introduced to Albertans to describe the discount Alberta received for its oil compared to the North American benchmark.

“It’s about showing how the political decisions being made around the budget are impacting on real people, their families and their communities,” Moore-Kilgannon said. “While these mock booths are kind of funny and tongue-incheek, the reality for Albertans who are impacted by these cuts is anything but funny.”