Alberta Tory Leadership - Jim Dinning

In my second of three parts looking at the frontrunners in the race to succeed Premier Klein, I've turned my attention to Jim Dinning.

Mr. Dinning is the current frontrunner in the race. So, I went to his website: http://www.jimdinning.ca to take a look at what he's been up to lately.

Dinning is the biggest mystery of the candidates. He's been out of elected office for quite some time. His last elected position was as Provincial Treasurer where he conquored the deficit in Alberta. An accomplishment that he is to be commended for, for sure.

So, the question becomes, what does he think now. I have to say, I was a bit disappointed. In the section Jim on the Issues there is a selection of quotes from Dinning on a variety of issues. I guess it's to be expected that a front-runner will avoid controversy, this section seemed to be nothing but meaningless platitudes like "I will lead a government that respects all of Alberta..." and "The best way elected officials can connect with their voters is to deal with the issues that count and show results." "We can balance the pressures of competing demands. But only if we think it through deliberately." "And the need to put real solutions on the table to combat real problems."

Overall, I see only one proposal to this point. He's promising to cut Alberta's tax rate in half for those under 30. While I'll never complain about taxes going down, this would, according to his figures, only account for 1% of provincial revenues. I think there's more room than that for tax relief.

Hopefully we'll see more details and proposals from Dinning in the coming months. For the present, I'm skeptical to say the least.

Alberta Tory Leadership - Lyle Oberg

I've decided to inform myself on the developing leadership race to replace Premier Klein here in Alberta.

From the first poll out, it seems there are three serious candidates in the race, Jim Dinning, Lyle Oberg and Dave Hancock. I'm going to take some time and read what they have to say about issues and try and do a synopsis of them.

First up, Dr. Lyle Oberg: http://www.lyleoberg.com

Dr. Oberg was a family physician before entering politics, and his site shows it. It seems, he's focusing on three policy areas: Healthcare, Education and Energy. Most of the thought at this point seems to be devoted to Healthcare.

Healthcare
-Eliminate Healthcare premiums
-Shortening waiting times
-Enhancing patient choice (ie. dual public/private system). Interesting wrinkle here is that he plans to force docs to work 75% of their time in the public system. Does that mean he'll only be working 25% of his time as Premier? Never been a fan of dictating how people in society should use their skills.
-"Proactive Disease Management" - it seems we have a new buzzword for "wellness"

Education
No mention here of primary or secondary education. Plans to open up 30,000 new post-secondary spaces by 2012...lets just hope this isn't all university...we need tradespeople and apprentices too...

The interesting idea here is to make "high achievers" final year of post-secondary school tuition free.

Energy
A lot o' "green" talk here. Encouraging "individual" actions to reduce greenhouse gasses.

Summary
Not a bad platform to start. As basically a libertarian, I really don't like the 75% quota on docs, but I like the idea of bringing choice into healthcare. I'm a bit disappointed with the lack of detail on the Education file, he used to be the responsible Minister after all. The campaign is still early, let's wait and see if he adds some meat onto the bones.