Herald Column: Alberta Needs a Passionate, Meaningful Election

Alberta's 2012 election campaign is now underway, and my latest Calgary Herald column looks at what we should expect and what we should hope for:

After weeks of posturing, Premier Alison Redford has now launched us into an official election campaign that will culminate with the vote on April 23.
With the Tories’ bizarre “fixed election period” legislation, we all knew an election was looming, but the specifics were still subject to the whims of the premier.
The uncertainty is over, and if the pre-campaign campaign is any indication, the actual campaign is bound to be a passionate, if not downright heated, affair.
Frankly, that’s a good thing.
The 2008 Alberta election would never be described as “heated,” let alone “nasty,” and perhaps the fact that it was such a mundane, pedestrian affair is one of the primary explanations as to why voter turnout was so pathetically low.
Mind you, that election turned out very well for the governing Tories, so of course they’d love to see the “tone” of 2008 repeated here in 2012. A low-key sleeper of a campaign is much less volatile – and therefore, safer – than a campaign bursting with emotion. For a sitting government, passion can be a dangerous thing.
Although, for as much as the Tories might like this campaign to have all the excitement and passion of a lazy stroll on the beach, don’t think they’re above kicking some sand in some faces.
Between the party leaders and the party strategists, there’s the opportunity to play good cop/bad cop, wherein the former can speak at great length about the need for a positive campaign and the latter can let loose with the negative ads targeting their opponents.
At some point, however, it becomes more than a little disingenuous to be capitalizing on negative ads while at the same time denouncing them.
Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with negative ads. Why shouldn’t the parties take aim at their opponents and challenge their record or their policies?
The Tories certainly didn’t see anything wrong with the radio ads they launched earlier this month targeting the Wildrose party and its leader, Danielle Smith.
One of the ads centred around the government’s controversial impaired driving legislation. The implication of the ad was that Redford, in championing the legislation, was interested in saving lives. Smith, in opposing the legislation, was not.
The ad exhorted supporters to “tell the Wildrose that real leadership is about making decisions to save lives.” If the message wasn’t clear enough, the warning at the end of the ad was even starker: “Danielle Smith and the Wildrose — not worth the risk.”
Aside from the fact that it appears to rely on a bogus figure (claiming 300 Albertans have been killed by drivers under .05 blood-alcohol content since 1998), the ad is hardly an atypical example of a rough and tumble political ad.
Presumably, though, as leader of the party responsible for the ad, Redford is aware of its existence. However, last week in addressing the media, you’d never know it.
Instead, Redford warned that in this campaign, “the tone from some political parties is not going to be very nice at all.” I suppose if “some political parties” included her own, then it would be an accurate statement.
I’m assuming, however, that’s not what she meant, since she later pledged to “do our very best to keep the tone of the election to one I think Albertans expect, which is an appropriate, dignified discussion with respect to policy.”
Of course, there was no denunciation forthcoming of the ads from her own party. “Not worth the risk” is hardly a dignified discussion of policy.
We shouldn’t want childish name calling or outlandish misrepresentations of opponents’ policies. We should, however, want passion – even anger.
There is much at stake in this election, and I think Albertans are looking for a reflection of that in those seeking to lead this province.
Therein lies the danger for those hoping for a repeat of the empty and tepid 2008 campaign: Albertans are restless, frustrated, and, yes, angry. Ignoring that could prove to be politically fatal.
So if a “nasty tone” means we have an emotional, passionate, meaningful election, then, by all means, bring it on. It’s about time we had an election that mattered.