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An ugly exchange during a UCP leadership panel this week reveals tempers fraying
Author of the article:
Don Braid Calgary Herald
Publication date:
Sep 16, 2022 1 hour ago 3 minute read 6 Comments UCP leadership candidates Leela Aheer, left, and Danielle Smith at an all-candidates forum in Fort McMurray on Sept. 14. Vincent McDermott/Postmedia Article content
An ugly exchange during a UCP leadership panel this week reveals tempers fraying as the campaign enters its final phase.
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Global News video of the Fort McMurray event shows candidate Leela Aheer, sitting right beside Danielle Smith, saying the wrong people in control of provincial immigration could base admission on race or color.
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Furious, Smith accused Aheer of lying about her platform.
Global supplied me with raw video of the exchange. Its remarkable.
Aheer asked the audience to imagine if you have people at the helm of our province in charge of who immigrates to this province. . . .
There is no way I would feel comfortable with our province running immigration without knowing exactly what the rules are, Aheer said, adding that admission could be based on race, color, money.
Many of us would not be invited into the province with the wrong people at the helm.
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Born in Edmonton, Aheer is of South Indian heritage.
Smiths response was bitter and personal.
We can see why Leela lost her board and probably isn’t going to win her nomination, she said, referring to the longstanding struggle for control of the Chestermere-Strathmore riding association.
Because she lies about my platform all the time, and calling somebody a racist on this platform and somebody a separatist on this platform is not acceptable.
I get keep jabs at me, quite frankly.
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Aheer interjected, saying Those aren’t jabs. She said her target is the Sovereignty Act; its not about you.
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After that, frozen looks all around.
While the candidate competition is getting hotter, theres no controversy this time about the party itself, or the conduct of the vote.
Thats a switch from the leadership review that forced Premier Jason Kenney to announce his intention to resign after he received only 51.4 per cent support on May 18.
Determined to be transparent, the UCP is running the worlds most boring livestream a 24/7 security camera view of the room where leadership ballots are stored.
This is mostly useful as a sleep aid. Once every few hours a human might appear carrying more boxes.
Some people suspect the view is a photo, not a livestream. One person on Twitter suggests the UCP put kitties in the room so wed see moving something.
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The show will live up Sept. 22, when the party starts verifying vote IDs in the room. That will continue until Oct. 5. On Oct. 6, the votes will be counted and the winner announced.
Many people are still cynical about these UCP votes. This includes some party members, and they have their reasons.
The leadership campaign over Kenneys future was chaotic.
The rules were suddenly changed from in-person voting in Red Deer to mail-in balloting.
Some ballots were mailed to people who had never been UCP members. Other legitimate members never got a nerd. In a few cases, the same person received two.
And yet, after all that, Kenney didn’t really win. Despite the fiddling with voting method and date, there was no valid criticism of the ballot handling or vote counting a process then overseen by the accounting firm Deloitte.
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The auditor this time is Crowe MacKay, a reputable smaller accounting firm with offices in Alberta, BC, Yukon and NWT The party has gathered learnings from the earlier vote, says UCP president Cynthia Moore.
We thought we had a solid process during the leadership review and were repeating that process during the mail-in ballot. Not a lot has changed.
More than 123,000 members are eligible to vote. Judging by the stacks of boxes, many thousands have already arrived.
Albertans can be pretty confident that this is a fair vote. The real concern is that fewer than 123,000 people are going to pick a new premier maybe one who promises immediate and radical changes to the policies the UCP was elected on in 2019.
Danielle Smiths Sovereignty Act is an obvious example. She would enact it immediately with approval from only a tiny fraction of Alberta voters.
She and others, including Brian Jean, also promise big changes to Alberta Health Services a crucial move the general public has never endorsed.
The only fair vote on those issues is a general election.
Don Braids column appears regularly in the Herald
Twitter: @DonBraid
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