Before a friendly crowd of nearly 1,000 Danielle Smith led a speech which had them applauding throughout night. The Wildrose leader made a pitch for a fiscal conservative yet sensitive alternative to the current Progressive Conservative government.
Smith started off by saying that the party now had reached the magical official party status with the addition of Boutilier. She however fired serious criticism at Speaker Ken Kowalski.
"He has interfered with us all along the way," said Smith, "(The Tories) hope their pettiness will take our focus off the things that are important for our province, energy, environment, healthcare, education and balancing the budget. Well guess what, it won't work."
Smith continued to express outrage at how the party has been treated in the Legislature. The focus of the majority of the accusations however were leveled at Premier Ed Stelmach rather than the Speaker.
"Make no mistake, it is (Premier) Ed Stelmach who has given the Speaker the permission to run roughshod over Alberta's democracy," she said.
Smith continued to press the idea of intimidation being used against councils and businesses from the Tories and how this is used to keep people on side. She said that the government had created a fear in the populous.
"We have enough of incompetent leadership,. we have had enough of political elites tell us what is good for us. We have had enough of socialists and liberals masquerading as conservatives," Smith said getting loud applause.
Smith also had criticism of the carbon capture and storage program which is at the centre piece of the government's commitment to reduce green house gas emissions.
She said, "Albertans weren't asking for the government to give two billion dollar to big business so they could learn to pump air through a hole in the ground."
Continuing on theme of what the government was doing Smith attached again the idea that the Tories were not conservatives.
"It is the classic big L liberal way, just tax more, spend more, borrow more and then pass the bill on to our children," Smith said about the government.
She also expressed the opinion that the Alberta oil sands is being attacked while the government sat back and let it happen with no response. She claimed that much of what environmental and interest groups say about the oil sands is simply false.
"They don't challenge these groups they don't articulate our province's powerful defense, well we will," said Smith, "(The oil sands are) a safe, secure source of energy for Alberta, Canada and all North America. Until demand for it disappears the detractors and extremists can rail against all they want but developing this source must happen."
Smith concluded that Alberta should not be treated as a junior partner in the world because the province is sitting on the largest oil resource in the world.
She also called for health care to remove debates about the system and look at the mixed payer system from Europe. The European models from German and France has long rated highly from the OECD.
She called on the Alberta government to examine education and consider changing how the system works where students are lost in the cracks. She also called for spending limits on government and set rules for deficit and debt financing.
"We Albertans move forward, we always lead," Smith said bringing up past decades, There we are believing in ourselves, working hard and achieving the impossible. We have always been like this and we still are."
Using this idea of vision and history Smith linked them together.
"We have got to keep up the fight our great province and our great people, so Albertans lets stand up once again and shape history. This is our province, it's our time, it's our future, its time to make this province the fantastic place it can be. It is time to lead again."
The Wildrose Annual General Meeting wraps up Saturday with a policy and constitutional session.
Comments