EDMONTON — Progressive Conservative backbencher Doug Griffiths has joined the race to replace Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach with a promise that a government led by him would be open to ideas but not overflowing buckets of red ink.
“The one fiscal thing I will never support is running any long-term deficits that start to accumulate debts that my kids are going to have to pay for. That’s a non-starter for me,” the 38-year-old said Tuesday at his campaign launch.
The legislature member from Battle River-Wainwright, on Alberta’s eastern boundary, said he is a fiscal conservative, but will not be hemmed in by orthodoxy if oil and gas numbers don’t improve and Alberta’s budgets continue to run at a deficit.
“There’s no right or wrong on how much you should spend,” he said.
“Albertans want key programs and they’re willing to pay for them. The discussion we’ve never had to have is, ’What are the key programs and how are you going to pay for them?’ That needs to be had.”
Griffiths is the third declared candidate. Finance minister Ted Morton and deputy premier Doug Horner announced their candidacies last month, days after Stelmach announced he will step down later this year.
Morton and Horner both resigned their cabinet positions to avoid any conflicts during the campaign, which is expected to run all summer with a vote by party members in the fall.
Griffiths said he did not have to resign his job as parliamentary assistant in the Finance Department, but said he did so to avoid any perception that he might use cabinet-related perks to further his campaign.
His launch was a mix of old and new. It was held at McKay Avenue School, now a preserved site and home to the first Alberta legislature sitting in 1906.
But the event was also streamed live on the Internet and Griffiths — a married father to two young boys — said he will continue using social media to get his message across.
He promised to focus on five areas: education, land rights, government reform, party reform and health care. Policy positions are to be rolled out in the coming weeks.
He defused any controversy over campaign contributions by promising prompt and open reporting.
“If you donate to my campaign you can expect there will be full disclosure of every single dollar received so there’s no question where the support we have comes from.”
Griffiths, a former school teacher and philosophy student, is a three-term legislature member with wide experience on committees, but he has not held a cabinet post.
He said that lack of experience and outsider status is a strength, not a weakness.
He noted that Naheed Nenshi, now the wildly popular mayor of Calgary, was a business instructor with no political experience when he used social media and strong ideas to win the civic race last fall.
“I don’t think this is about qualifications,” he said.
“Professionals built the Titanic. Amateurs built (Noah’s) Ark. Maybe we should have a few less professionals and a few more amateurs.”
The race comes four years after Stelmach defeated all rivals to replace outgoing Premier Ralph Klein in 2006. Griffiths is seeking to lead a party that has run Alberta since 1971, which means if he should win, he would become the first Tory premier born in the Tory era.
But it’s a party in flux and at times at war with itself, mainly over recent multibillion-dollar deficit budgets.
After 15 consecutive years of budget surpluses, Alberta has run massive deficits in the last two budgets as it struggles to complete infrastructure projects in a time of lower oil and gas revenues.
Stelmach reportedly decidedly to quit last month because he faced a fractured caucus over the 2011-12 budget.
That document, which will be tabled in the legislature Feb. 24, is expected to include another multibillion-dollar deficit that will come close to depleting the province’s rainy-day surplus fund.
Complicating the party’s leadership equation is the rise of the Wildrose Alliance Party.
The party has just four members in the 83-seat legislature, but has nonetheless garnered broad support over the last year on a traditional Tory right-of-centre platform of fiscal prudence and private property rights.
The Alliance — which counts many ex-Tories in its fold —accuses the government of falling from the conservative faith to bottom out as a rudderless, idea-less mishmash of free-spending interventionists.
There is a debate that the next Tory leader could redefine the party itself, that a win by the fiscally hawkish Morton would recapture support from the far right while a victory for a centrist such as Horner would reinvigorate the Tories as a big tent party.
Griffiths said the answer is neither.
“I don’t think that’s the issue,” he said.
“It’s not moving the party to the right to bring the Wildrose in, or moving it to the left to get the Liberals or the Alberta Party.
“It’s about leadership, inspiration and a vision for the province. Whoever has that, that’s where Albertans will go.”