Every generation or so, Alberta produces an exciting provincial election campaign, and the good news is that we’re heading into one now. Ed Stelmach’s PCs know that disaffected Tories are more likely to stay home than vote for the Liberals, the NDP, or the Greens. A few seats may flip as a result, but that’s about it. The real challenge to dynastic extension comes from the right.
Don’t be fooled by poll numbers that place public support for the newly fused ultra-conservative Wildrose Alliance at five per cent. Once we get into full campaign mode, true-blue Albertans will wake up to the fact that our premier isn’t right-wing enough. I predict that the Tories will panic midstream and unveil a new platform two weeks before Election Day, outflanking the Alliance on the right. It will look a lot like this:
The twin problems of big-city whining and shit-fights between Edmonton and surrounding communities will be addressed through “disaggregation,” which is the reverse of amalgamation. The Edmonton and Calgary city charters will be revoked, with neighbourhood community associations receiving full municipal status. This will bring government closer to the people and do away with grandstanding by big-city mayors for vanity projects like public transit.
Ed Stelmach will move our provincial capital to his hometown of Vegreville, and a giant pysanka will top the new legislature. The visionary Alberta bullet train project will finally take off, but will run between Vegreville and southern Alberta’s Big Valley, home of the Creation Science Museum. This museum will be expanded so that it can house the new offices of the Ministry of Education, which will be taken over by Ted Morton.
Choice in education will be maintained, with parents and religious schools free to opt for any provincially-recognized version of the New Testament as the basis for their curriculum. Weaker high school students may seek KFC or Taco Bell internships as a way of keeping university enrolments at sane levels, or they may choose deployment to Iraq under our newly Albertanized foreign policy. Abolishing the legal minimum working age will be studied in conjunction with introducing co-op work programs from kindergarten to Grade 12.
Daylight Savings Time, water fluoridation, and the metric system will all be abolished. French will be replaced by the charming Newfoundland dialect as the promoted second language as part of a plan to compete for workers tempted by the socialist siren song of Danny “Che” Williams.
Effective immediately, we will start paying the oil companies royalties, to compensate for the inconvenience and impertinence of our demands on resources like water that properly belong to them. A mandatory daily period of car idling will be introduced to support our industry and to piss off all the communists with their global warming bullshit. This week’s weather proves that winter ain’t going nowhere.
Everyone in the erstwhile “big cities” will be required to house at least one temporary/migrant worker to help address the labour shortage and to pay for having leeched off rural taxpayers for so long.
A re-elected government will outlaw vegetarianism as un-Albertan. The beef industry has suffered enough, and Jerry Falwell proved long ago the positive correlation of vegetarian diets with lesbianism and witchcraft.
Speaking of the love that bloody well better not dare not speak its name, the recently closed den of sodomy known as The Roost will be turned into a revival hall. Inside the whitewashed walls, penitents will pray the gay away—but not on their knees, lest it give them ideas.
The Tories will provincialize pensions and EI and enhance them through mandatory work experience provisions. There’s nothing uglier than gray-haired layabouts sponging off the Alberta Advantage when jobs are going begging.
Alberta will take over national parks falling within its boundaries and adopt a balanced, made-in-Alberta model of ecosystem management. The government will ensure that all species reliant on forests will be “harvested” before clearcutting takes place.
A Truth and Reconciliation Commission will be formed to investigate the current anti-Stelmach attack ads financed by big labour in this province. Prosecutions will be limited to AFL president Gil McGowan and other union leaders. Those who repent will be allowed to do their community service in fast food drive-thrus, should their applications be accepted.
Finally, a re-elected Alberta PC government will legislate an 11th commandment to deal with the greatest menace to freedom and integrity this province has ever seen— Stelmach-mocking cyber-squatting: “Thou shalt not take the premier’s name in vain.”
