PCs on collision course
By NEIL WAUGH -- Edmonton Sun

The Alberta Tories, like most outfits that have grown fat and sassy in power, appear to have adopted a new motto: Don't do today what you can put off until tomorrow.

Consequently, a whole series of conflicts have built up that appear to be no closer to being resolved than they were months and even years ago.

There has been no real attempt to address the hot-button political issue of outrageous power bills. Or any impetus to correct the dysfunctional natural gas rebate program that failed to come to the rescue of Albertans when they faced a massive spike in home heating bills last winter.

Meanwhile, Finance Minister Pat Nelson's naive attempt to bring down high auto insurance premiums has gone absolutely nowhere.

These are all money-in-our-pockets, mom-and-pop issues.

And all the Tories have come up with are committees that appear designed more to avoid the issues than solve them.

Add to this the impending agricultural crisis when the summer calves come home in September with no market after the U.S. border was shut because of BSE, and the list of potential political brushfires is pretty extensive.

And that's before the explosive issue of Alberta's role in Canada is debated, which is scheduled to be at the PCs' annual caucus retreat this September in Banff.

Alberta Red Tories, of which Justice Minister Dave Hancock is the most notorious, appeared to try to stifle this debate at the party's annual meeting in March.

Instead, what erupted was a forum that had some card-carrying PCs advocating using the "hammer" of separatism to wring the same concessions out of Ottawa in the same way Quebec does regularly.

Premier Ralph Klein's own three-point plan (appoint the elected senators, regular first ministers meetings and provincial input for international treaties like Kyoto) was greeted with a yawn.

But what did sneak onto the party agenda, largely as an attempt to appease the grassroots hardliners, was the resurrection of the so-called "firewall" that Klein had earlier dismissed.

That said, pacifist Tory MLAs, led again by above-mentioned Hancock, are lining up to shoot at this ring of laws protecting and strengthening Alberta's constitutional rights as too expensive, too impractical and any other reason that pops into their heads.

As a result they may have put the PCs, who will inevitably reject the firewall, on a collision course with a grassroots organization that has been bringing in impressive numbers at town hall meetings over the past few months.

Alberta Residents League chairman Pat Beauchamp insists his outfit is strictly an advocacy group and not the makings of a political party.

Its main purpose is to promote the "Alberta Agenda," which is basically the firewall with a few other points thrown in.

Documents filed on the ARL's Web page call the Chretien regime in Ottawa "an elected dictatorship with sometimes hostile indifference to western interests and values."

Certainly, of all the right-wing splinter groups that have sprung up over the years, the ARL is the one drawing the crowds. Having Senator-elect Ted Morton as their star speaker is clearly an asset.

"The dominance of the Ottawa government is what - pardon my language - (bleeps) Albertans off," Beauchamp spat.

He admits he's under a lot of pressure to drop the advocacy cloak and become a political party.

By drawing anywhere from 200 to 400 at small-town meetings there's enough names in the database to qualify easily.

But for now the ARL remains a pressure group and a force largely within the PC movement.

Curiously, an ARL rep was asked to attend this weekend's pro-beef rally in Coutts.

Obviously, their popularity is spilling over into other areas.

"Klein will never start to lead the parade," Beauchamp surmised. "But if you get a parade going he will walk in front of it."

Except maybe not on the national issue, where Klein has largely been all talk and little action.

Most of his confrontations with the Ottawa Liberals have amounted to little more than a lot of huff and puff, followed by a no-hope Supreme Court challenge from Hancock.

But what if the ARL agenda is ditched at the caucus retreat?

"Then I guess we'll have to start playing tough and dirty," Beauchamp sighed. "And make sure at nomination time those guys never get a chance to run again."

That sounds more like a political solution to me.

Clearly there's something going on out there

And for the Alberta Tories, who are treading a lot of water these days, that might not be good news.