Alberta Premier Jim Prentice, as he appeared to almost everyone until yesterday, except there are no ships here in Alberta, which is why we need all those pipelines. Below: Education Minister Gordon Dirks; humiliated PC MLA Sandra Jansen, official sponsor of Bill 10; and Liberal MLA and Bill 202 sponsor Laurie Blakeman.

If the gong show that erupted yesterday over the Progressive Conservative government’s bungled effort to pander to its troglodytic social conservative faction by roadblocking LGBTQ students’ rights illustrates anything, it is that Premier Jim Prentice is not the political superman we imagined, before whom all must bow.

It also shows that the famed dictum “a week is a long time in politics” is profoundly true here in Alberta, just as it is the United Kingdom where Labour prime minister Harold Wilson is said to have coined it in the 1970s.

Just a week ago, Mr. Prentice stood astride Alberta like a colossus, hands on his hips, master of all he surveyed.

But the key lesson to be drawn from this is that the premier has blown this opportunity to get things right on a key social issue that enjoys significant popular support – his first major blunder since he was entrusted with the province’s top political job.

Maybe he still holds most of the cards, but this brouhaha reveals the premier is just another politician who puts his pants on one leg at a time … backwards.

Surely his government’s obvious and unpopular mishandling of this file will breathe new life into an opposition that only a week ago, bereft of two floor-crossing MLAs successfully wooed by Mr. Prentice, appeared to be on the ropes and ready to surrender to another half century of the incompetent Tory juggernaut.

Nevertheless, thanks to his spineless Tory caucus, Mr. Prentice managed to win the scrap in the Legislature with ease. Only former leadership candidate Thomas Lukaszuk, already sent to Coventry because of his role as one of Alison Redford’s senior ministers, had the intestinal fortitude to stand up with some members of the Opposition and vote against the government’s hastily scribbled Bill 10, which passed second reading in the afternoon by 42 to 10.

Mr. Prentice left the unseemly maneuver of using the vote on Bill 10 to sideline Bill 202, the private member’s bill proposed by Liberal MLA Laurie Blakeman, to his minions. He was in Quebec trying without apparent success to sell his skeptical Quebecois counterpart on the merits of taking all the risk and none of the benefits from a pipeline full of bitumen running through the province on its way to New Brunswick.

Ms. Blakeman’s bill would have required schools to support gay-straight alliances under their roofs if students concluded they were necessary. This drove social conservatives in the PC caucus batty, hoping, as they are, to win back the rural Alberta so-con vote from the Wildrose Party.

Mr. Prentice’s Solomonic solution to this dilemma was to suggest without evidence Ms. Blakeman’s bill somehow violated the “rights” of some parents and school boards. As a result, he had government lawyers pencil Bill 10 onto a napkin from the Legislative coffee shop over the weekend and rush it upstairs to the Legislature.

Mr. Prentice gave the humiliating job of introducing Bill 10 and claiming it does everything Bill 202 does plus is sensitive to parents “rights” to Sandra Jansen, the PC MLA for Calgary-North West who has spoken passionately in the past in defence of GSAs.

This, of course, is baloney, as Ms. Jansen most certainly knows. While the government bill gives children a theoretical right to challenge a school that denies their wish to form a GSA in court, what kid has the resources or the know-how to finance and organize such a legal appeal?

Mind you, any law scratched together this quickly is in danger of collapsing if it ever does come under the scrutiny of a court.

Even the normally supportive Edmonton Journal published a story by a columnist calling the “stink bomb of a bill” Orwellian in title – stating its goal as “to protect our children” is the opposite of what it will actually do – and concluding it amounts to an invitation to bullying and an effort to keep children in ignorance.

“It seems much more designed to protect children from the knowledge that homosexuality exists,” sneered columnist Paula Simons. “This gross hypocrisy of pretending to protect our children, all the while shoving them back into the closet as fast as possible, is so absurd, and so offensive, it almost beggars description.”

Meanwhile, however, in a disturbing precedent, Bill 10 also manages to entrench the notion of “parental rights” as a legal concept deeper in Alberta law.

“Parental rights” is code for laws inspired by the American religious right designed to weaken the curriculum for all children, enable sexuality and AIDS education to be censored or blocked outright, and pave the way for school voucher programs that divert money from public to private religious schools.

It first wormed its way into Alberta’s Human Rights Act in premier Ed Stelmach’s Bill 44 in 2009, championed by Ted Morton, the former finance minister and aspirant for the premier’s job.

Prentice Government Education Minister Gordon Dirks, a former evangelical pastor with strong social conservative views, cast the new powers given to parents who share his views as benign and reasonable, telling the Calgary Sun that “underneath this legislation, (parents) have an opportunity to express their opinion and to be heard and if they don’t agree, to appeal.”

The likely true meaning of this, however, is that parents with extreme religious views will now will have the option of using the courts to demand changes not only to their child’s education, but to yours.

That’s the Trojan Horse. In the short term, however, the worst harm inflicted by Bill 10 will be that, practically speaking, it will make it impossible some places for vulnerable young people to form gay-straight alliances in a safe environment if their principal, or their principal’s bosses at a school board, want to make them go away.

That will mean more bullying, more bigotry and more suicides.

I’m going to give the last word on this tonight to Ms. Simons: “Goodness knows what deals cabinet moderates like Heather Klimchuk and Stephen Khan will have to make with their own consciences to support this legislation,” she commented.

Ms. Simons picked Ms. Klimchuk, the MLA for Edmonton-Glenora, and Mr. Khan, MLA for St. Albert, I am sure, because she knows them to be decent people who ought to know better than participate in a spiteful charade like this.

She concluded: “But that’s clearly the price Jim Prentice is demanding of his new caucus – to sell a little piece of their souls to stay part of the frat that is Team Tory.”

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

PHOTOS: It may not be spring yet, as in this photo, but the clock is ticking down on a spring 2015 election. Below: Bridget Pastoor, the former Liberal floor-crosser who served a term as a Progressive Conservative MLA before announcing she’s retiring, and former Tory finance minister Ted Morton, who’s now calling for a sales […]

The post It’s not spring in Alberta yet, but there are hints of a spring election in the air appeared first on Alberta Politics.

PHOTOS: One moment, please. One of our technicians is calculating your Alberta provincial sales tax and will be with you in a moment. Below: Alberta Progressive Conservative Premier Jim Prentice; former PC finance minister Ted Morton; Alberta NDP Treasury Board Critic Brian Mason. Give Premier Jim Prentice his due, by floating his balloon about a […]

The post Prentice sales tax balloon has Albertans taking note – and potshots appeared first on Alberta Politics.

PHOTOS: Ed Stelmach in the premier’s office at the Alberta Legislature. Below: Preston Manning, the Godfather of the Canadian right; Stelmach’s finance minister, Ted Morton; New Democrat political strategist Brian Topp. Ed Stelmach, the last good premier the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party managed to elect, spoke up yesterday about the tactics used by his party […]

The post By ignoring Ed Stelmach, the oiligarchy and the ideological right overreached and lost plenty appeared first on Alberta Politics.

PHOTOS: The University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, conveniently located adjacent to the oil corporations’ towers in downtown Cowtown. Below: The writers of the notorious Alberta separatist Firewall Manifesto, which then-premier Ralph Klein wisely tossed into the garbage; Calgary School alumni and Firewall signa-Tories Stephen Harper, Tom Flanagan and Ted Morton in appropriate garb. […]

The post If we’d been paying attention, perhaps we wouldn’t be so shocked by the U of C’s corporate-influence scandal appeared first on Alberta Politics.

PHOTOS: Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, running the province as if she had a majority government! What next? Below: University of Calgary political scientist and Calgary Herald columnist Barry Cooper, Broadbent Institute Director Rick Smith and Wildrose Opposition Finance Critic Derek Fildebrandt. It seems some Albertans, particularly those on the political right, continue to have difficulty […]

The post Alberta NDP defies voters by continuing to govern as if it won the election that put it in power: political scientist appeared first on Alberta Politics.

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The post Jason Kenney reported ready to announce his bid to lead a Tory Restoration effort as soon as tomorrow appeared first on Alberta Politics.

PHOTOS: Alison Redford takes the oath of office as Alberta’s 14th premier. Below: Ms. Redford speaks her first words as premier of Alberta and is greeted by enthusiastic well-wishers as she walks through the Legislature’s Rotunda. Bottom: Gary Mar, whom Ms. Redford defeated for the leadership of the PC party and the premiership of Alberta. […]

The post Five years ago today, Alison Redford was sworn in as premier of Alberta … and the wheels fell off the Tory bus appeared first on Alberta Politics.

PHOTOS: Past and present at the Alberta Legislature. Progressive Conservative campaign vehicles may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: Former MLAs Ray Speaker, a Social Crediter and Progressive Conservative, Tory Steve West, New Democrat Ed Ewasiuk, and Conservative Ted Morton, the worst premier Alberta never had. Below them, Calgary MLA Sandra Jansen and assassinated Labour […]

The post Bygone bleats: Ray Speaker speaks again, while your blogger still awaits his letter appeared first on Alberta Politics.

PHOTOS: Dave Hancock as premier, in pink shirt at left, at the Edmonton Pride Parade in June 2014. With him are former Edmonton City Councillor Michael Phair and City Councillor Scott McKeen. Below: Mr. Hancock speaks with the media at Government House in Edmonton on one of the darkest days of Alberta’s PC Government, March 13, 2014, when Premier Alison Redford was given her “work plan” by the Progressive Conservative Caucus, and Mr. Hancock’s official portrait, which now hangs in the Alberta Legislature Building. Dave Hancock, respected lawyer and Alberta’s second-to-last Progressive Conservative premier, has at least achieved his ambition. That, despite a half-hearted run at the PC Party leadership in 2006, was not to be the premier of this place, but to be a judge. Acting Justice Minister Marlin Schmidt announced yesterday that Mr. Hancock, Queen’s Counsel, has been appointed as a judge of the Provincial Court of Alberta, Edmonton Family and Youth. This was bound to happen sooner or later, as loyal readers of AlbertaPolitics.ca are sure to understand. After all, it was first suggested as a likely development in this space on Sept. 15, 2014, in a report on Mr. Hancock’s departure from the premier’s job and from his long-held position as an MLA. He stepped aside, as agreed upon when he took the job 176 days earlier, to make way for the elevation of Jim Prentice to the job Mr. Prentice was expected to occupy for many years. It certainly wasn’t Mr. Hancock’s fault this didn’t turn out as anticipated. “Everyone expects a swift judicial appointment to reward the outgoing premier pro tem before any other government has the opportunity to meddle with it,” I wrote at the time – presciently, as it turned out, on a couple of counts. What I didn’t then expect, I will admit, was that the appointment would be made by a New Democratic Party government, or indeed that there would be an NDP government to do the deed. But there you go! Mr. Hancock is the sort of respectable, not particularly ideological, big-tent Tory that people who hold other political views can get along with, find a compromise in order to get something done, and even quite like. In other words, he was no fundamentalist market warrior or self-righteous social conservative. So his elevation to the Bench by the NDP is not utterly out of character for a government of a non-conservative persuasion. Mr. Hancock – Judge Hancock, as we’ll soon be saying – was born in Fort Resolution, N.W.T., grew up in Hazleton, British Columbia, and went to high school in Fort Vermilion, Alberta, which is an unusual and useful sort of upbringing for a Canadian judge, one would think. He was an active Tory from the beginning, president of the PC Alberta youth wing at the age of 19. Remember, though, in 1974 it may not have been particularly cool to be a Tory, but it was still an honourable enough pastime. Mr. Hancock studied law at the University of Alberta in Edmonton and was called to the bar in 1980. The legal equivalent of a utility infielder, he practiced criminal, civil, family and corporate law. Mr. Hancock was first elected in 1997 and spent the next 18 years as the MLA for Edmonton-Whitemud. He survived a couple of close electoral calls along the way, one to my colleague Donna Smith, a Liberal. He was the second premier to represent the riding, the first being Don Getty. He was a utility infielder in government too, acquitting himself well as deputy premier, justice minister, health minister, education minister, and “human services” minister – all big-problem portfolios that can destroy a politician’s career. He was also Tory House Leader for a spell. As noted, Mr. Hancock ran for the leadership of the party in 2006. He was expected to lose to a high-profile frontrunner like former finance minister Jim Dinning, or maybe Ted Morton, who would later be a finance minister himself. Instead, he lost to than intergovernmental affairs minister Ed Stelmach, who’d entered the race with a profile even lower than Mr. Hancock’s at the time. Mr. Stelmach was premier until October 2011, when the PCs surprised everyone again and chose Alison Redford. Mr. Hancock would have been a better premier that he was if he’d been the dark horse who won the contest in 2006, and thus had been able to take on the job without the tattered luggage he was handed by the departing Premier Redford when, party loyalist that he was, Mr. Hancock stepped up to manage the chaotic transition from her catastrophic two-and-a-half-year premiership in March 2014. As part of the difficult transition, he clearly felt it was wisest to stick with a number of Ms. Redford’s worst policies – like her unconstitutional labour legislation, which sideswiped the free expression rights of all Albertans – rather than advocate the sounder policies he would much more likely have come up with on his own. This mars the well-intentioned political career of this decent and thoughtful man. As I wrote at the time, “At the end of his political career, the whole thing looks like not much more than a long exercise in damage control, publicly justifying the worst excesses of his party’s leaders and cabinet. There was never a plan so bad, a policy so excessive, that Mr. Hancock wouldn’t stand up and defend it. … There’s something to be said for being a good soldier, I guess, but when it comes to writing hagiographies, it doesn’t really provide very promising material.” So it’s no bad thing that Mr. Hancock will have an opportunity to do important work on the Bench for a few years and, when he retires, to be remembered in a more positive light. Two other lawyers, neither of whom served as premier of Alberta, were also appointed to the Provincial Court yesterday – Marian De Souza in Calgary and Robert Shaigec in Edmonton.

The post Dave Hancock, Alberta’s second-to-last Progressive Conservative premier, named by NDP as Provincial Court judge appeared first on Alberta Politics.