George Clark's winter of political discontent in Alberta has reached an impasse.
Spring session opening day at the legislature came and went March 8 without Clark's constitutional and non-violent displacement of Premier Rachel Notley's government.
An estimated 500 Albertans First protestors gathered at noon on the legislative assembly grounds with signs and chants protesting Bill 6 and half a dozen other NDP promises and dreams.
However, George Clark, the putative leader of the movement had no grand announcements to make, so the day ended “not with a bang but a whimper,” to steal a phrase from T. S. Eliot.
For better or for worse, Clark has become a politician. And politicians inevitably disappoint their followers.
Clark is especially vulnerable to becoming a disappointment because his people crowdfunded $28,000 to pay petition expenses and more that 2,000 have volunteered to collect names.
Clark has not made clear what he will do with the 160,000 signatures he has collected on petitions asking for plebiscites on farm safety (Bill 6) and the carbon tax legislation.
Nor has he clarified the path ahead for the Albertans First takeover of the NDP through the purchase of a majority of memberships by members of his movement.
The protest March 8 ended without further clarity on how and when Clark would deliver his petitions.
He has said that he would take the petitions to London and convey them to the monarch if the premier or lieutenant-governor will not promise to hold plebiscites. However, he has not met them and if he has communicated with them, none of the parties is admitting to it.
Clark's reach has exceeded his grasp, and he has backpedalled as often as he has moved forward.
In January Clark said he had found a way to remove the NDP government from office. He was mocked for planning a “kudatah” (coup d'état).
His fallback position on the infamous day in a Calgary Walmart parking lot when he met big-city reporters Feb. 18, was that he wanted his movement to bring Notley to the table.
“I'm calling upon the entire province to jump up and let's have 500,000 new NDP members. Let's have her (Notley) listen to Albertans first,” Clark said. “All along we knew that if we weren't listened to as ordinary Albertans our only way was to become Alberta NDP members.”
The next move in this peculiar political pilgrimage is up to George.
- Frank Dabbs, the editor of the Didsbury Review, is a veteran political and business journalist, author of four books and editor or contributor to a dozen more.
