Prem Singh was born and grew up in Brooks where her father taught at Brooks Composite High School.
She is fluent in Punjabi and has taught it to children at classes in the Sikh temple in Calgary. She reads and speaks Hindi.
Prem makes her living as the international bridge between, and rainmaker for, Indian and Canadian businesses and investments.
Prem is the co-leader of Alberta Can't Wait, the political movement that aspires to bring Alberta's “small-c” conservatives together under a single umbrella. Where they belong, in Singh's opinion.
She comes from an accomplished public family. Besides her own political rise, her brother, Harnarayan, is the popular play-by-play announcer for the Punjabi-language broadcast of Hockey Night in Canada.
Just ask his fans to explain his patented, “Bonino Bonino Bonino Bonino.” (Hint: it's not a Punjabi word, it's kind of like Foster Hewitt's “he shoots, he scores”).
All by way of saying Prem Singh is nobody's fool.
In a one-hour interview about politics in Alberta since Ed Stelmach became premier and the political values and ideas that unite conservatives of both major parties in Alberta, there is one word she never used. Merger.
The five words she did use are: fiscally responsible, principled, competent and populism.
From those words, the Alberta Can't Wait movement is crafting a big umbrella, a big tent, that most, if not all, conservatives will join under for the 2020 general election.
Said Singh, “we have to have a reset button in Alberta politics. A ‘small –c'conservative reset button.
“Those brands (Wildrose and Progressive Conservative) are damaged, and with either party thinking they can do it on their own, we run the risk of the NDP coming back into power,” Prem said.
“The reasons why we were divided don't exist anymore. It's time for us to come together.”
She has a particular message to PCers picking a new leader. “We have to realize that and acknowledge that the PC government did make mistakes and we can't repeat those mistakes.
“We can't just come together for the sake of getting back in power.”
To both Wildrosers and Progressive Conservatives she counsels, “let's put our egos aside and come together.”
When it burst on the scene in Red Deer on May 1, the Alberta Can't Wait movement had to earn political credibility.
Well, it has credibility now. The NDP honeymoon is long over; its prestige is suffering even with its base.
Respecting the populism of MLAs and the leadership of both parties to do what their grassroots tell them, Singh paints a picture of the inevitable Alberta conservative reunification.
Not a merger, a single party of reunified conservatives.
The old made new.
- Frank Dabbs is a veteran political and business journalist, author of four books and editor of several more.
