Wednesday, June 22, 2005

more tory patronage

This afternoon, Advanced Education Minister Dave Hancock appointed defeated Tory MLA Mary O'Neill to the Board of Govenors of the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT).

In 1997, O’Neill was first elected in the St. Albert riding by only 16 votes over Liberal MLA Len Bracko (who served as MLA from 1993 to 1997). O'Neill defeated Bracko in a 2001 re-match, but was knocked-out of office by Liberal Jack Flaherty in 2004 by 410 votes.

O'Neill will join former Dunvegan Tory MLA Glen Clegg (MLA 1986-2001) as a political appointee on NAIT's BOG.

I love how Tories foam at the mouth when this stuff happens in Ottawa, but do the same stuff at home. Typical.

10 comments:

  1. Disgusting.

    Any Alberta Tory who rails against Ottawa's patronage culture should realize that they're supporting the same corrupt practices at home.

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  2. I know. It really ticks me off.

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  3. The best one was when they appointed Rod Love to the U of C BOG. Talk about hackdom. :P

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  4. Dave Hancock and Mary O'Neill were two of the five rougue PCs to vote against the Marriage Amendment Act of 2000. So was recently-appointed to-the-bench Marlene Graham.

    I say: at least they're dispersing this patronage to the right people. I mean, it could be worse. They could be appointing John Lord or Stan Woloshyn.

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  5. Just a note, this isn't a post againt Mrs. O'Neill.

    She was most definately one of the more level headed members of the Tory Caucus and I'm sure she'll do a fine job on the NAIT BOG. The point is that this is another blatant example of Tory patronage.

    All one has to do is look at the composition of our Health Authority Board and University and College BOG's to see it. They're overflowing with former Tory MLA's, defeated Tory Candidates, and PC Constituency President's.

    I think I will elaborate more on this topic in upcoming posts.

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  6. What's wrong with Stan the Man? :P

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  7. Thank you for drawing attention to one of the more offensive aspects of Albertan federal "conservatives" and their constant rants about how single party government is such an evil and undemocratic situation that anything is justified to bring down such a dictatorial party. Of course, when it is a conservative government in power for over three continuous decades, that's just fine.

    Why is it ok for Alberta to be a single party conservative Province, always voting PC, but the rest of Canada that votes Liberal or NDP are corrupt, brainwashed, sheep, and so on? I remember throughout the "merger" process of 2003 that the main argument for it's necessity was the (then) ten years of Liberal dominance at the polls. That it was inherently unhealthy for any party to have such dominance with a weak opposition, undemocratic, and dangerous to Canada. I thought then and do to this day that it is not the single party dominance that bothers them, that it is not *their* party that is dominant, as in Alberta.

    Thank you for again underscoring this point with this post.

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  8. I think what alot of people forget is that the Provincial Tories only recieved 48% of the vote in the last election. Considering that only 47% of Albertans voted, it ends up being that they only received 20%-something of the popular vote.

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  9. Hackery. (that's it.)

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