Rumblings for Edmonton Mill Creek?

Rumours are floating that Alvin Finkel, chair of the Democratic Renewal Project, is planning on attempting to win control of the Edmonton Mill Creek NDP Constituency Association at the upcoming AGM on May 4th.

Finkel and the DRP’s goal “is to elect a new government by building a grassroots coalition that unites the Alberta Liberals, Alberta New Democrats, Alberta Greens, truly progressive Tories and independents.” They aren’t advocating for a merged party, but definitely are encouraging non-competitive agreements for future elections.

Unfortunately for Finkel, the last Alberta NDP convention gave the plan a giant thumbs down, and so the party has no plan to pursue this agenda.

Perhaps this is justifiable, given the recent difficulties in the other progressive parties in the province.

But this won’t sway Finkel. The DRP website has a new (inactive) link entitled “Sample Constituency Resolution” which implies there’s more fact than fiction in the Mill Creek rumour.

I don’t need to read the non-existent document to know what it calls for. Finkel wants to call on a riding association to declare that it will not run a candidate.

Now, I can outline at least a few problems with the not-combatant agreements Finkel wants:

1. There’s no evidence that this works, it didn’t work for Elizabeth May, and even the Conservative Party doesn’t get as many votes as the Reform and PCs got individually.
2. Not all Liberals will vote NDP (and vice versa). Many New Democrats will likely stay home or vote Green before drop a red ballot, and many Grits may even support the Tories over the other options.
3. Even worse, each party has their partisans in every riding, and if they have no candidate their support may dry up. That means even less money for some parties that are dried up. Not a good way to shore up financial support that will maintain a political movement.
4. I still don’t buy Finkel’s argument that there’s an “illusion of choice” and stand by the “less choice is less democracy” mantra. While our system still needs overhauling, removing choice is not something I agree with.

But nevertheless, something like the “Democratic Renewal Project” has to be open minded and progressive, right?

I mean, they wouldn’t block people from their forums now, would they?

I’ve registered myself for the DRP forums, but haven’t gotten any confirmation or rejection yet, so we’ll have to wait and see on that.

And in the final bit of news relating to Alberta politics, it seems that there is in fact one party other than the NDP and PCs who aren’t about to go bankrupt. In fact, much of the Grit corporate money that should have been keeping them afloat (in the midst of no personal cheques), may have started to shift to the Wildrose Alliance party.

Werner Patels notes that Hinman’s uber-right gang is netting huge numbers of $20 and $30K plus corporate donations. Look for a huge campaign by these guys in the next.

That’s all I have for now, I’ll outline the perfect storm I’m trying to imagine that would take down the Tories in the next 1-2 elections (and I mean perfect, as in highly unlikely) sometime soon.

Update: They approved my forum membership. Guess I’m not as partisan as TPB yet.