EDMONTON - The three winners of Alberta’s senate election will have to wait exactly one year for a possible senate appointment — and they will have big shoes to fill.
Senator Bert Brown, the father of Triple-E Senate and advocate since the 1980s, turns 75 on March 22, 2013 and must retire. Harper is expected to choose as his replacement the senate nominee who wins the most votes in the election that will run along side the provincial vote.
“This is a campaign for Bert Brown, who has been the champion of the elected senate since the 1980s,” said Wildrose candidate Vitor Marciano. Whoever wins the spot “needs to run with that ball,” he said.
A second Alberta spot will open up in 2014, when Liberal-appointed Joyce Fairbairn from Lethbridge retires in November that year. A third spot won’t open until 2018, when recently appointed Edmontonian Betty Unger is slated to retire.
So far, the senate race, Alberta’s fourth, has attracted nine candidates, two-thirds of them from the Wildrose and provincial Conservative parties. The three others are independents.
Though they are running under provincial party banners, Wildrose and provincial Conservative candidates say they will sit in Harper’s Conservative caucus in the senate, not under their Alberta party banners.
Doug Black, a Calgary lawyer and longtime provincial Conservative, stresses, however, that his “primary obligation is to the people of Alberta who elect him.”
Other candidates already have close ties to the Harper Conservatives. Marciano is former chairman of the Conservative national policy committee, and Mike Shaikh, a longtime federal Tory, was appointed by Harper to the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority.
Two of the candidates — University of Alberta professor Ian Urquhart with a keen interest in the environment, and Len Bracko, a former Liberal MLA from St. Albert — say they will sit as independents.
The newest candidate, Edmontonian Elizabeth Johansson from the newly minted provincial Evergreen Party will sit as part of the Green party caucus, represented solely by MP Elizabeth May. The Evergreen Party, officially incorporated in December 2011, is a revised version of the defunct provincial Green party.
Alberta senator Elaine McCoy, a former provincial cabinet minister, is the only senator sitting as a Progressive Conservative, the now defunct party that merged into Harpers’ Conservative Party.
The senate election is provincewide and voters will pick three candidates on a ballot given out at polling stations along with one for provincial MLA. Each candidate for senate nominee must be 30 years of age, have $4,000 in property and collect 1,500 signatures in the first 15 days after the writ is dropped to get on the ballot. The three top vote getters will make up the list from which Harper will choose, although he has no legal obligation to do so.
With the New Democrats and Liberals still boycotting the senate race, the contest “does not yet cross the broad political landscape,” says Steve Patton, U of A political scientist. “It’s still, for the most part, a game to be played by Conservative supporters of Harper.”
Each party sets its own rules for picking its candidates for the senate race.
Patton also noted another potentially contentious area. While the new senators will sit in a federal caucus, they are running for election under much looser Alberta campaign spending rules.
In Alberta, an individual donor can give up to $30,000 to the candidate of their choice in an election year, far higher than the $1,100 limit on individual donations for candidates in federal elections. Also, in Alberta, there is no limit on how much a candidate can spend.
If senate elections spread across the country, as the Harper government hopes, the federal government might be forced to look at that, said Patton.
None of the candidates are saying what they might spend on their campaigns. But like Alberta MLAs, they will have to file their expenses and list of donors to Alberta’s chief electoral officer after the election.
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