Watch above: Brian Mason will officially be out as leader of Alberta’s NDP on Saturday. Tom Vernon takes a look at the three-way race.
EDMONTON – Brian Mason will officially be out as leader of Alberta’s NDP on Saturday when he makes way for a new boss to capitalize on what Mason views as a watershed juncture in provincial history.
Progressive voters, he says, are looking for a new home after former Progressive Conservative premier Alison Redford waylaid her own agenda with broken promises and exorbitant, self-indulgent spending.
“Those people are feeling betrayed and they certainly lack trust in the PC government,” Mason said.
“Some traditional PC voters who were very offended by the excesses of the Redford period have gone back (into the fold). (But), in general, people haven’t. In general, people are pretty skeptical about the PCs’ ability to transform themselves.
“They’re not prepared to give anybody a blank cheque any more.”
Three candidates – David Eggen, Rod Loyola and Rachel Notley – have been canvassing for party votes and support since Mason announced in April that he was stepping down after a decade at the helm.
READ MORE: Alberta NDP Leader Brian Mason stepping down
Ballots will be marked and tabulated, and a winner announced at Edmonton’s Sutton Place Hotel on Saturday.
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Eggen, an Edmonton member of the legislature, agreed that five Tory premiers in the last eight years portends a party and a government that has ceased to function.
“In the larger arc of history, we know we’re at the end of an era, and I know a strong progressive voice in the legislature is very important for this province,” he said.
The new leader takes over a party that has struggled for two decades to rebuild itself, but over the last year it has shot up in fundraising and poll popularity, eclipsing the rival provincial Liberals.
The New Democrats have positioned themselves as a party of solutions more than an angry opposition.
Rather that rail at the exploitation of the oilsands, for example, they now push for better management of the resource, such as more in-province refining and a better return on royalties.
Electorally, the NDP still has a long way to go.
READ MORE: Quiet Alberta NDP leadership race is all strategy: expert
In the 2012 campaign, the party won four seats, up from two in 2008, but garnered less than 10 per cent of the overall vote.
It fared well in its traditional home of Edmonton and finished a strong second in Lethbridge-West.
But in the rural regions and in Calgary, the New Democrats were a non-factor.
Notley, also an Edmonton member of the legislature, said life in opposition can be frustrating.
But the New Democrats have had success highlighting and occasionally shaming the government into doing the right thing when it comes to health care and social issues, she suggested.
This year, the NDP and other parties spotlighted what they termed the inhumane closure of Red Deer’s Michener Centre and the dispersal of its developmentally disabled residents.
Last month, Premier Jim Prentice agreed and put a stop to it.
Prentice also shelved controversial public-sector pension revisions that the NDP and unions said would ultimately gut the nest eggs of workers.
“I think we do have a lot of indirect impact in that we drive a lot of the public debate,” said Notley.
“If we weren’t there to say things about the environment, to say things about minimum wage … then it wouldn’t get said, and it wouldn’t be part of the conversation that the government feels compelled to respond to.”
Loyola, a labour leader, is the only non-elected member who is running. The 40-year-old is head of the Non-Academic Staff Association at the University of Alberta.
He plans to run for the party in Edmonton-Ellerslie in the 2016 provincial election.
Loyola was born in Chile, but became a refugee as the country was coming under the heel of dictator Augusto Pinochet.
“My candidacy in this leadership race speaks to the true nature of democracy that the Alberta NDP represents,” said Loyola.
“Anybody that has the will – the gumption, the fortitude and whatever else – can run for this party, and that’s the kind of democracy that we want.”
Mason says he will continue to sit in the legislature and hasn’t decided if he will run in 2016.
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