Accountability needed over Tanner comments
By Lethbridge Herald on April 5, 2023.
OUR OPINION
Someone has some questions to answer.
There had to be knowledge within the UCP of the bizarre video that surfaced last week of former UCP candidate for Lethbridge West Torry Tanner denigrating teachers.
The words spoken by Tanner were degrading inexcusable lies which publicly smeared an entire profession in our province, especially Lethbridge. If there had been a single grain of truth to anything she said, this would have been public knowledge long ago.
Her comments would insinuate a gargantuan conspiracy of teachers and parents, even children to keep her claims hidden. It’s pure fantasy. Nothing that insidious would ever stay behind closed doors.
Someone in the UCP constituency had to at least know of her opinions before she was selected as a suitable candidate to run for the party in Lethbridge West. And someone or multiple parties had to be aware of the video she made.
Whatever vetting process existed – or still exists – is painfully inadequate if a person with such ideas can be considered fit to run for office.
Or do her viewpoints have support within the West Lethbridge constituency?
Is Torry Tanner the type of candidate who is considered appropriate and welcome by the UCP?
Given the letters we’ve received further propagating her unproven and perhaps defamatory comments, she does have some support here which is alarming.
Extremism has reached new lows within the UCP by the recent nomination of Tanner and anyone who supports conservative values as well as human decency is going to turn away from the party regardless of who it finds – if it can find someone – to carry the party colours in West Lethbridge in the May provincial election.
The UCP under current leader Danielle Smith does not represent those who are – or were – proud to consider themselves conservative because this party now has gone completely and utterly rogue from what traditionalists consider conservatism to stand for.
Any person selected to run for the UCP has to realize their chances of winning election in Lethbridge West may be virtually non-existent now because of this stain put on the UCP fabric.
It may be safe to consider Lethbridge West locked up for the NDP and Shannon Phillips again after this fiasco. West Lethbridge constituency members, instead of giving the UCP a fighting chance to take Phillips seat, have given even conservatives reason to vote for her. And this matter may very well impact the battle for votes in Lethbridge East – it certainly can’t be ignored by residents in Deputy Premier Nathan Neudorf’s own riding simply because of the party he represents..
If Neudorf wants to be re-elected, his campaign team needs to get him into the public eye swiftly and regularly to have him disavow himself of any association with the radical views that exist within the UCP.
This may alienate Neudorf from his party leader, and perhaps cost his future as a minister in a UCP government but it’s the right thing to do for his constituents.
The community is angry after Tanner’s bizarre accusations and Neudorf is certainly going to be impacted by that anger.
Unfortunately, the Tanner situation is not an isolated matter. Extremism has reared its ugly head in the UCP visibly and often and if the party has any hopes of remaining a credible force in Alberta politics, its membership needs to revolt against the party’s leadership.
The recent decisions by two prominent cabinet ministers not to run for re-election speak volumes about the turmoil that exists within the province’s so-called conservative political party which is more and more looking like a Canadian version of Trump-style Republicanism, in which truth is irrelevant as long as power is retained.
It’s time for the UCP to rid itself of the extremists within and start reflecting who Albertans actually are. And the majority of Albertans aren’t people who believe or support the nonsense espoused in the video by the now-former UCP candidate for West Lethbridge.
We are all better than that – including the UCP. But the UCP needs to show it by professing some public regret for letting Tanner run. Our teachers and our community deserve not only a public apology from the West Lethbridge constituency and premier Smith but also an explanation for how Tanner came to be considered a suitable candidate. The statements made last week by Tanner and the party aren’t enough to undo the damage and the insult of her words, which unfortunately are believed by some who will defend her regardless of the truth. The outrage is justified and so are the demands for accountability.
If the UCP is the new vision of conservatism in Alberta, traditional conservatives need a new party to represent them.
The UCP does not.
24-23
Wholeheartedly agree! The now UCP, is disturbingly plagued by these radical right wing Lake-of-Fire and Take Back Alberta characteristics.
Excellent article.
If the centrist/moderate Alberta Party could figure themselves out, they’d easily win Lethbridge West and many other ridings here in Alberta.
I agree, if the Alberta party could figure it out it wouldn’t stop at Lethbridge West. We need an alternative to a Smith lead UCP. They voted her leader and there are consequences to their actions.
Conservative party is no more. Kenney showed all of Alberta there are two parts to the party. The wildrose and the Conservatives never United under the Un-United Conservative Party.
Travis Toews was the best shot of Uniting the Party but I think he probably had a 30% chance of that ever occuring. This is becoming a party where the NDP just sits back and watches them fall on their own sword. Then the NDP assumes when installed its because they deserve power.
I listen with amusement as Smith tries to buy her way into the hearts and wallets of Albertans, but more amusingly is listening to Phillips suggest its bad politics to do so. When she was trying to save the NDP from the new UCP she promised the world, all unfunded of course!
I worry now about both parties and what they will do to this City. Phillips ignores the downtown and will continue to allow the installation of the Community Care Campus into this City and of course will not take any blame for the results even though she represents the area.
Once in power any job that could become a Union job will be pushed into the downtown and she will ignore the consequences. She has bonded with the previous admin of the old SCS, she believes that whatever is said by nonprofits goes and does nothing to stop what I perceive will result in a chaos of a magnitude she will never believe.
What are the UCP doing? Well the social experiment conducted by Marshall Smith who has moved on from the Addiction Ministry to being Chief of Staff to the Premier has left Lethbridge in the same position and direction as Edmonton and Calgary. The difference being is we had time to think outside the box and didn’t. We are doing nothing different from Edmonton, so why should we expect any other result but theirs?
What’s happening in Edmonton, start reading the news. Businesses are boarding up and leaving the downtown. Deals to purchase buildings are collapsing and the place is heading in the same direction as the Vancouver DTES. Which, by the way is getting huge coverage for vacating 2 blocks of Homeless, when they have about 30 blocks of the same.
Will Lethbridge Die? I actually think so! Certainly after seeing a Deputy Premier ignore the Downtown and a NDP Leader in waiting who represents the downtown ignore it completely! I would say unless something radical is done, you are seeing the Architects driving the last nail in the coffin of what was our Society!
Remember this because I really do not believe Lethbridgians understand what is happening;
“We are building a Community Care Campus in our downtown to treat 5% of the Addicted every year. Every year the “numbers of addicted increases by more than 5%. So we are inviting 100% of an ever increasing number , into the Downtown as fulltime DOWNTOWN residents! Why? I presume it must be so we get a front row seat and can watch the destruction of our own downtown, City, and Society, by people that don’t care!”
Ponder that statement long, and hard! How stupid can we get? Obviously pretty stupid! Don’t worry though, the nonprofits will make huge money under the guise of helping the “Homeless”! You? You will get to deal with the other 95% on a regular basis!
As for Tanner, just another Wildrose Participant that believes Shock, Awe, and verbal diarrhea is the basis of an election platform. Phillips, of course, will see this as a Sally Fields moment at the Academy Awards…”you really really love me”, when we really really don’t! (unless a unionist)
Myashiro? Well he was the “intimidator extrordinaire” in the Spearman Regime and ensured we got the SCS which was going to be so innocuous that we would not even know it was there!
I hope there is a space on the voting sheet between these three people because I have this feeling that will be where the X is placed.
What is a Community Care Campus and where in downtown is the proposed location? Why have I not heard of this? Can you help me out?
Community Care Campus is going to be from Railway Tracks at Stafford to 5th Avenue North on Stafford. It will extend back to the City installed gates into City Bus building etc.
The intention is to have shelter, lodgings and treatment.
https://lethccc.com
Unbelievable, we have been hood-winked by this Council just like the last one and the SCS. Deja vu!
You just can’t trust politicians anymore.
Who is paying for all of this?
What a load of NDP propagandist crap !
UCP manure piles higher.
I find it interesting that in the US parents are finally speaking out and firing whole school boards over their woke ideology including attempts to remove any actions that could be construed as parents rights in education. Here in Canada however anyone who identifies as a conservative , even a moderate conservative is routinely characterized as extreme right by the socialist hordes. There is no chance of dialog with most of the woke socialists, it’s their way or the highway.
They can’t help it if they’re correct. Whiner.