By Christopher Walsh

Are you in the club?

“Government spying on its citizens is as deadly to democracy as a needle is to a drug addict,” Joe Anglin tells me late Wednesday night from his home near Rimbey, without the slightest bit of hyberbole in his voice.

The 51-year-old former investment advisor and full-time provocateur was sharing one of his campaign ads that hit radio in central Alberta this week.

Anglin was at the centre of a full-blown government scandal last year, when the Tory government (and their arms-length utility regulator) were caught spying on him and other landowners in central Alberta as they built their case against a proposed massive power line project that would feed the United States with Alberta-born energy, running through their backyards. Much has been written about that, so I'll refrain from getting into all the details, except to ask where the public outrage was when the government was caught, without any doubt or excuse, hiring private detectives to spy on its citizens?

In any other democratic society I've been a part of, that kind of stuff would get a government booted out of office, a leader brought down amidst scandal (and true, if he was a Conservative, a Senate appointment 10 years down the road when the public forgot about it).

But that's Nova Scotia stuff and this is Alberta. Here, those headlines about the scandal in papers across the province hardly raised the slightest brow. Yeah, so what, was the general tone from the public. Anglin is a nut-job, a lunatic, and probably one-step away from fashioning himself a tinfoil hat to wear around so the “government” can't penetrate his deepest thoughts.

That's how the Tories portrayed him and that's still their tactic. At a candidate's forum tonight in Lacombe, Tory incumbent Ray Prins attempted to paint Anglin as a “conspiracy theorist”. The only problem with that is that the conspiracy has been proven.

“We're not talking about a theory here,” Anglin says calmly.

I met Anglin last year in Stettler when he took his 'Kill Bill 46' show on the road. But who he's running for in this provincial election came as a surprise. He says there's a good reason he's running as the Green Party candidate in the Lacombe-Ponoka riding. After 37 years, it's clear opposition parties have become ineffective and if there was ever a way to get things changed, it means completely changing the rules, or at least looking for something outside the established game plan.

Anglin was courted by the Liberals, but understood far too well rural Albertan's atavistic beliefs about them. He met with Kevin Taft for dinner one night and told him why he couldn't run as a Liberal.

“I said, but you don't understand my riding,” Anglin explains. “They will never elect a Liberal. I had people say, 'I want to vote for you but if you run Liberal or NDP, I'm not gonna vote for you'.”

The political ideology in Alberta is skewed beyond repair. The Liberals don't want any part of the federal Liberals, the Alliance Party still believe they can win as is, the Social Credit Party is so bent on keeping their name they'll never again matter, and the Tories are the Empire. The only place that comes close to this type of political schizophrenia is Quebec, where Jean Charest leads the provincial Liberals, but only out of necessity. He's the leader of the provincial Liberals, see, but he's still a federal Conservative (wink, wink).

But the Green Party, in Alberta anyway, is not known. They've slipped under the radar as a bunch of 'granola-eating hippies' – at least to the Conservatives, anyway. And that might work to their, and Anglin's, advantage. He's hoping so, anyway.

“Well, the Conservatives never had time to paint the Green Party,” he explains. “The Tories have not taken us seriously which is good. They're not being able to paint us and what's interesting is that we got some good voices out there that makes it very difficult for them to paint us.”

Anglin understands the Alberta political culture of staying away from any affiliation with federal parties. The Alberta Greens are probably starting to get it, too. Their “Green Values” posted on the website include “grassroots democracy” and “social justice and equal opportunity” as the top two policies, followed by “ecological wisdom”. The Greens are moving towards becoming the New, New Democratic Party. They've gained momentum here over the last decade, now polling with the Alliance and NDP and gaining in percentage of popular vote since 1993. Now they just have to shed that image of slim, petite old women with unusually long, dry, grey hair and thick glasses wearing sweat pants, driving their old fashioned fendered bikes around....

In any case, they're broke. So are the provincial Liberals, Wildrose Alliance, the SoCreds and the NDP. Anglin's running his campaign out-of-pocket and so are a number of candidates I've spoken with across the province from all parties. (The Marijuana Party, who fielded three candidates last election, can't even afford to register as a party).

So why are the opposition parties broke, I ask Anglin. Why not raise funds like the Tories do?

“I can only say we've turned into – and I hate using this word because I hear it too many times used improperly – but it's almost as if we're in a communist system, where unless you belong to the Party, you don't get a job.”

He points out, astutely, that just about every small town councillor is a card-carrying Tory.

“If you don't belong to the PC Party, you don't belong to the club.”

That's how psychologically entrenched it is here. I assumed, when I started as a reporter in Stettler two years ago, that it was just a widely held set of conservative beliefs shared by everybody who was intolerant of something different. But I've met some great people here and they vote Conservative without thinking about it. That's the way it is, so that's the way it is. I'm a member and so is John and so is Pat and so is.... everybody! Why would we change our vote now at the start of Alberta's second century, as the leader calls it?

Why, indeed?

For Anglin, it's come to the point where supporters have told him to work from the inside out. If you want to get elected Joe, then run for the Party. The Party! The Province!! There's no way you can win if you don't. It doesn't matter if you don't believe what they stand for, it's the only way you're going to get in. Then, maybe, you can start to change things....

“That's why I refused to run for the Conservatives,” Anglin says, bluntly. “I still have people here; 'you should run in the Conservatives'.

“No,” he continues. “That's what I want to change. I say, don't be afraid of the change.”

Change is the only thing that could possibly get Alberta back on track towards a real democracy. Voting is crucial to the very freedoms we all enjoy as a country. True, we all vote, but for who? Every thinking man and woman grew enraged at the thought of the federal Liberals embezzling money for their friends and we voted them out of office. There's enough here, just in the last few years, that should at the very least, force people to ask questions. How does it happen that the rules can be changed by the government with no consultation with anyone if they don't like the way things are going?

(One example yesterday was a story in the Calgary Herald I almost missed about the auto insurance cap. In short, the Tories were denied an appeal to a judge's ruling earlier this month that found that a $4,000 cap on soft-tissue injuries sustained in a motor vehicle accident was unconstitutional. The Tories wanted the cap in place until the appeal was heard, but it was thrown out. The rest of the story, in the Feb. 26 issue, goes on to question the other leaders about the insurance issue, barely touching on the big one. The story pointed out – as a matter of fact and that's all – that documents entered into court show that the government intended to appeal any rulings against their 'Minor Injury Regulation', even if that meant going to the Supreme Court, while seeking a stay at every stage along the way. But here's where it gets good: “If the government lost at the highest court, it intended to draft replacement legislation to keep the insurance scheme in place”. No point respecting the Supreme Court's decision, they're a bunch of liberal bastards anyways.)

But that stuff has been happening for a while here and it doesn't even form the hook of a good news story anymore. That's the way it is, so that's the way it is....

Anglin has seen it first-hand and even tonight at the debate.

He says the man organizing the debate was the husband of Tory incumbent Ray Prins' secretary.

“It's absolutely amazing,” he says of the patronage and the conflicted relationships that run like blood through the Tory party.

“They just don't see that. That's how far down hill we're going.

“Here's a prime example: At the very end of the night, the moderator said, 'Let's take a vote. Who wants to stay for another 15 minutes?' And everybody [a crowd of maybe 200] raised their hands. Ray Prins looks at the moderator and says, 'cut it now, just cut it'. And the guy cut it.”

I wasn't there tonight in Lacombe, so I can't say for sure that that happened. But, it's not unbelievable these days.

“Here, it's a one-party state and it's very scary,” Anglin says.

The Lacombe-Ponoka seat is one race worth watching Monday night. I don't know if Anglin will take it in the end, but it will be one hell of a run either way. It comes down to a couple of factors – not just there, but across the province – what will the 'undecided' vote do and will they even go out and practice their right?

End Note: I spoke with the Marijuana Party leader a few nights ago to inquire about the state of the fringe parties. Dave Dowling sent me an email, linking me to a youtube page where he displays a letter from Ed Stelmach in response to an email Dowling sent him, asking if the province could do anything to help increase voter turnout in municipal elections. Stelmach says no politely, but adds this: “Casting your vote is one way to be part of the democratic process. It is a privilege; however, there are no guidelines obligating people to vote. The most we can do is provide voters with the information they need and hope they choose to vote.” [My italics].

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3.20 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."