Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs (SACPA)

The Progressive Conservative Party has been the governing party for more than four decades in Alberta for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that there has rarely been a viable alternative party with enough support to move from the Opposition to the Government benches. In almost every political system that employs a single member plurality electoral system the opposition parties merge into one party (or a coalition) to provide an alternative to the government. But in Canada we have done the opposite by creating multiple parties that do not cooperate during elections. So the rebirth of the Alberta Green Party is not a surprise but is it a good thing for democracy? The speaker will argue that the re-emergence of the Alberta Green Party is important to democracy for two reasons. She will argue that the most serious issues facing the Alberta economy are environmental and Alberta’s economy will be devastated if we don’t start moving quickly toward the new, smart, greener way of doing things. Seco