Close X
Tuesday, November 12, 2024
ADVT 
National

Alberta Progressive Conservatives finishing voting among 3 candidates to pick new leader and premier

Darpan News Desk Darpan, 06 Sep, 2014 12:37 PM
    EDMONTON - Members of Alberta's PC party are voting today for a new leader and premier.
     
    Ric McIver, Thomas Lukaszuk and Jim Prentice will continue trying today to get out the vote by phone, online or in person.
     
    Results are to be announced around 7:30 p.m. at the Expo Centre.
     
    This is the first time that the party has used electronic voting to pick a leader.
     
    Organizers have been working hard to fix glitches from the first day of voting on Friday.
     
    Party members looking to phone in or register their vote online have faced long delays, blank screens, busy signals, lost PIN numbers or mix-ups matching them to the master voting list.
     
    And the voting may not be over.
     
    If none of the three candidates has a majority of votes by the end of today, the top two finishers move to a second and final run-off vote on Sept. 20.
     
    Prentice, a former Calgary MP, has been considered the front-runner. He has the support of almost all the PC caucus and raised $1.8 million in donations, dwarfing the $417,000 raised by McIver, and the $300,000 by Lukaszuk.
     
    The vote caps a campaign that has been running since the spring, when then-premier Alison Redford stepped down from the top job as party and caucus support evaporated over revelations she spent lavishly on travel and office perks for herself and her inner circle.
     
    Those revelations continued to drop like artillery charges into the leadership campaign, and all three candidates have promised to clean up any lingering sense of government entitlement.
     
    Prentice, a former federal MP, has used Redford's record to bludgeon Redford-era cabinet ministers McIver and Lukaszuk.
     
    Both, said Prentice, were derelict for not stopping the worst of Redford's excesses, including plans to build a swank penthouse atop a government building.
     
    McIver and Lukaszuk in turn have accused Prentice of being another elitist member of the political old boys club.
     
    They say he is trying to buy the premiership by giving away party memberships to supporters rather than selling them for the normal $10 price.

    MORE National ARTICLES

    Plane That Wandered Over Caribbean With Unresponsive Pilot Crashes Off Jamaica

    Plane That Wandered Over Caribbean With Unresponsive Pilot Crashes Off Jamaica
    Shadowed much of the way by two U.S. fighter jets, a small plane with an unresponsive pilot flew a ghostly 1,700-mile journey down the East Coast and through Cuban airspace on Friday before finally crashing in the waters off Jamaica. The fate of the pilot and anyone else aboard was not immediately known.

    Plane That Wandered Over Caribbean With Unresponsive Pilot Crashes Off Jamaica

    Alberta: 100 People Have Gotten Ill From E. Coli Linked To Raw Pork Products

    Alberta: 100 People Have Gotten Ill From E. Coli Linked To Raw Pork Products
    EDMONTON - Alberta's chief medical officer says 100 people in the province have gotten ill from E. coli linked to raw pork products, including 19 people who have been hospitalized.

    Alberta: 100 People Have Gotten Ill From E. Coli Linked To Raw Pork Products

    Trade Barriers Between Provinces A 'perfect Storm Of Dumb': Industry Minister

    Trade Barriers Between Provinces A 'perfect Storm Of Dumb': Industry Minister
    VANCOUVER - Federal Industry Minister James Moore says trade barriers between provinces are "the perfect storm of dumb."

    Trade Barriers Between Provinces A 'perfect Storm Of Dumb': Industry Minister

    Education Minister Peter Fassbender Pans Binding Arbitration To End Teachers' Strike

    Education Minister Peter Fassbender Pans Binding Arbitration To End Teachers' Strike
    VANCOUVER - B.C.'s education minister has swept aside a proposal by the teachers' union to immediately enter into binding arbitration and end a strike that's delayed the start of the school year.

    Education Minister Peter Fassbender Pans Binding Arbitration To End Teachers' Strike

    Not Safe For Cops To Pick Up After Their Horses, Toronto Police Say In #poopchat

    Not Safe For Cops To Pick Up After Their Horses, Toronto Police Say In #poopchat
    TORONTO - A photo of horse manure on a bike lane in Toronto posted on Twitter has prompted the city's police force to explain the poop-and-scoop policy of its mounted unit.

    Not Safe For Cops To Pick Up After Their Horses, Toronto Police Say In #poopchat

    Week of Carnage: 20 People Die on B.C. Roads in various Accidents

    Week of Carnage: 20 People Die on B.C. Roads in various Accidents
    VANCOUVER - Twenty people have died on British Columbia's highways and roads in the last week, 10 of them within the last 24 hours.

    Week of Carnage: 20 People Die on B.C. Roads in various Accidents