Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs (SACPA)

In December 2014 Danielle Smith and eight members of her caucus announced that they were crossing the floor to join the Progressive Conservatives and Premier Jim Prentice. The announcement elicited a great deal of vitriolic responses from the public and reignited calls for floor crossing to be banned or at least for floor crossers to require a by-election to sit as a member of another party. The speaker will argue that floor crossing is a necessary part of the parliamentary process and must not be limited but that the floor crossers from the Wildrose Party, especially leader Danielle Smith, need a strong lesson in another piece of parliamentary democracy: a loyal opposition. The history, and value, of opposition will be reviewed and the speaker will argue that Smith’s democratic breech was in dismissing the value of opposition in a parliamentary democracy, not in crossing the floor. Speaker: Lisa Lambert Lisa Lambert served as SACPA’s Administrative Manager from 2009-2014 while she conducted her doct