Alison Redford keeps Joe Clark legacy alive to maintain status quo

Though former Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark is only a couple years off from being a whole decade away from the active political scene in Canada, his current protege and former senior policy advisor when he was a Canadian Minister as Secretary of State for External Affairs under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, Alison Redford, has been making quite the name for herself in a likely to be successful effort to surplant his importance politically in the Province of Alberta. The academically inclined Redford eventually took up law and then articled for Jim Prentice at his law firm Rooney Prentice, another former protege of Clark who had been himself a Canadian Minister as Secretary of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non Status Indians, of Industry and of the Environment under prime Minister Stephen Harper, which allowed her to grow up politically in the ideals of the Progressive Conservatives. Therefore it was not a stretch when Redford took over from Ed Stelmach last fall to lead the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta and its 41 year old run of provincial government without interruption under four, likely now to be five, Premiers Lougheed, Getty, Klein and Stelmach who collective have allowed the form of government that my poli sci prof Dr. David T. Koyzis here at Redeemer University College colloquially called Albertocracy to threaten the record provincial governmental dynasties held by the 42 year hold Ontario Tory Premiers Drew, Kennedy, Frost, Robarts, Davis, Miller and their Big Blue machine had at the Pink Palace from 1943 to 1985 and the 43 year record by Nova Scotia Grits who kept their legislature red under Premiers Pipes, Fielding, Murray and Armstrong from 1882 to 1925.

Looking back then and into the future now, I note that a supposedly dead more British Progressive Conservative movement, which had been philospohically nurtured and influenced by George Parkin Grant and politically by Charles Joseph Clark, did not die a political death when the more American Reformed Conservative alliance, which had been philospohically nurtured and influenced by Ernest Preston Manning and politically by Stephen Joseph Harper, came into town. Rather, the competition within conservative ranks in Canada of a more republican, libertarian and individualistic flavour brought the classic taste back in style, which is how one explains the withering away of Californian Frederick Lee or Ted Morton and the influence of his University of Calgary School, in the areas of economics, history and political science towards policy goals of more individual freedom and less government. Redford, who opposed Morton like Stelmach before her, used progressive conservatism head on against reformed conservatism, showing the example of how Harper has used the latter federally in Ottawa to reason why we need the former once more.

Conservatives of the progressive kind will likely end out with a 12th consecutive majority government in this upcoming 2012 provincial general election, which should be a short one, as this has been the going trend in duration of elections recently. People wonder if the Wildrose Party alliance of blue conservatives, green reformers and white and black libertarians, objectivists and independents, lead by Danielle Smith, can make up the difference and take back Edmonton. However, as was shown by the massive progressive comeback of the Alberta Party, formulated by Edwin Erickson, Brian Thiessen and Dave Taylor and led by Glenn Taylor moving on up in the polls, any of the parties in this election have a shot at second, but neither the Raj Sherman led Liberals, Brian Mason led New Democrats nor this brand new Alberta Renew Green Progress alternative can honestly say they will make up the next government in Wild Rose Country, but then neither can Wildrose itself.

Kony and Obama more alike than not

Not for shock and awe value or clickbait and sinker gamesmanship, but for the raw truth of the matter, I find the Kony 2012 and Obama 2012 campaigns and the products themselves really to be more alike than not past the usual trivialities like similarities in their birth year of 1961, area of ancestral background for them being East Africa, and both fighting to oppose the institutionalized governmental unfairness with their own sense of justice despite being leaders in their own right. I see how both hold office with a dialectic mix of civil nationalism and religious fundamentalism or even mystic like charismaticism in their respective ideologies, to create a syncretic way of life that rings hollow and not as true as it can be, using a message of hope, change, and progress to purify and enlighten their nation from the dark past it has been and path it still walks. One can even realize how both Joseph and Barack and their micromanaged campaign teams, if you look very carefully, run from the same playbook albeit one quite militaristic and the other political yet still using means to an end zero sum game theory.

That now said, I do not think both these leaders are the same people with the same goal, Joseph Kony and Barack Obama are two different personalities with two different objectives in life who in all likelihood will eventually one day come to oppose each other in a global interventionist mission sooner than later due to such a massive social media tsunami we all witnessed most recently.

However, let it be widely known, advocacy group influence and their clicktivist socmed campaigns like Invisible Children and its Kony 2012 run the risk of becoming so popcult in their ways of action, that a less than positive reaction will become more the norm than not over just a short time from now. As facebook, twitter, and youtube becomes important buzzwords in our lexicon, the actions and reactions when using these pomo tools could have some deep and divisive consequences, beyond any current thought or contemplation we can harbour in such a shallow intellectual basin. For these websites hold more power than we really do give them credit for, with us only now realizing how disasterful and destructive slowly as the Stop Kony and Cover the Night epic fail in not plastering the major cities of the world in posters has shown us, lost political strategy and capital on emotional causes only gains strength for those reasonably motivated on important positions and situations with a goal no matter how saintly or sinful which is true and real for them and falls pathetically short for anyone but is the lesson here.

Chatsworth elect at large with the rest of Ontario

So now Chatsworth joins the rest of Ontario in electing at large, after Mayor Bob Pringle brought council to agree on droping the past ward system for the conventional at large system, being one of the last municipalities left in the province to do so. Since the major amalgamation shift of 2000 here in Ontario, Pringle felt it would be more populist in allowing people more voice on who they were electing, Ward 2 Holland Councillor Cornelius Vlielander being the sole opponent against seeing all five candidates for council being voted for by all constituents at large from within the municipality. The ward system being used right now allows the mayor and deputy mayor and two candidates to be elected at large, with three councillors voted in from their wards, this system changed from the days of amalgamation when there were four wards with only the mayor elected at large.

A municipality like Chatsworth is the kind in which you need to have your ear to the ground on all issues local, having combed the whole map with dad while he was on professional real estate business, mom for property management business or the rest of the family to visit other family and friends, I know from Keady to Williamsford and from Scone to Walters Falls then Chatsworth in between it, the greater community is found in these small towns and villages.

Which is why I agree with Cornelius that wards make for a better idea, they do make you know your people better, quite like the reason why he voted against the motion in the first place, as he represented his constitutents and rightly so. A couple preliminary consulting hearings will continue to back the results of the vote, I am sure, but something is missing each time we change the past and progress into the present. I am sure with the major amalgamation shift of 2000 here in Ontario, we miss a lot of the local community bonding and banding together which seems to be slowly being replaced by a globalized social media and melding of our own minds collectively into one monolithic thought, instead of the pluriformity of difference only community can create.