Life after Leg: three former MLAs discuss change since May election
Posted Oct 23, 2015 5:26 pm.
Last Updated Oct 23, 2015 5:49 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The May 5th provincial election in Alberta was certainly one for the history books, as the Alberta NDP went from four seats to a stunning majority as the longtime reign of the Progressive Conservative party was dethroned.
The move also left the Wildrose in official opposition after the infamous floor-crossing of nine members to the PCs in December, led by former leader Danielle Smith, which at the time left the party with just five members.
Instead, Albertans responded by not only putting NDP Premier Rachel Notley in power, but also pushing the PCs to third-party status, as the Wildrose went from five to 21 seats, and later 22 following the Foothills byelection.
The PCs dropped down to just nine members, while the Liberals were left to one.
660 NEWS spoke with three former MLAs who left the legislature, with very different sentiments, including Laurie Blakeman of the Liberals, Thomas Lukaszuk of the PCs and Heather Forsyth of the Wildrose.
ADJUSTMENT: “It’s just bang, you’re done.”
Lukaszuk wasn’t just a former MLA of 14 years, he was also a cabinet minister and at one point, a deputy premier under Alison Redford.
But like others who lost, the impact was immediate.
“Often politicians retire and they say it’s because they want to spend time with family, I actually buy it every time they say it, because I do know personally how little you actually see your own family,” Lukaszuk said. “It’s not something that you turn off at 4:30 or 5 o’clock, it’s a lifestyle that is affiliated with the privilege, the duty of serving, so when that stops, your lifestyle suddenly changes as well.”
Blakeman, who served publicly since 1997, described it more grimly.
“The first part was a grieving process,” she said. “It is like having your spouse of 18 years drop dead beside you at 9 o’clock one night and the next morning the sun comes up and you get up and that whole part of your life and everything associated with it is gone.”
While Blakeman actually looked up the Kubler Ross six stages of grief model following her ousting, Forsyth knew the change was coming, as she only stayed on as interim leader after the floor-crossing.
Although she knew she was stepping down, the adjustment wasn’t any less powerful.
“From December until the election, I was kept very, very busy obviously and then the election, I was helping out in the election and then all of a sudden you just go to a dead stop,” she said. “You’re going from when I was working seven days a week and numerous hours a day and then all of a sudden you’re done, so you kind of shake your head and think what am I going to do?”
“It’s just bang, you’re done.”
LIFE NOW: “Not one job offer, not one.”
While Lukaszuk and Forsyth eventually found their footing in different ways, the May loss was especially hard for Blakeman, who had scored a major victory going into election day.
After a public outcry over the controversial Bill 10 by the PCs regarding gay-straight alliances, the legislation was eventually tabled and a new one with most of Blakeman’s original proposals from her Bill 202 were brought back.
But despite the victory, she couldn’t weather the orange crush, as she represented herself not only as a candidate for the Liberals, but also for the Greens and the Alberta Party.
“I didn’t expect to lose, I’d done very good work as an MLA, I think everyone was surprised, I just got swept away by people that wanted change, which I wanted as well, so fair enough,” she said.
With the exception of a resettlement allowance until she finds her next job, Blakeman has experienced the same as many Albertans after losing their occupation, filing out applications on work sites and setting up meetings.
“For members that were in opposition, jobs don’t fall out of the sky,” she said. “I can’t tell you the number of people that said, ‘I bet you’ll just be inundated with offers for work’, I have to tell you not one job offer, not one, nobody has called me to offer me work.”
Forsyth has been keeping busy with her charity golf tournament, establishing her Working Together For Fun organization, as well as helping out with the Wildrose campaign during the Foothills byelection.
She knows it was the right time to step down, but that doesn’t mean it has been easy.
“I miss the job every day, I miss the people, the constituents that I was serving,” she said. “I don’t miss sitting in the legislature for hours and hours and hours on end debating legislation until midnight, one in the morning.”
Lukaszuk has also gotten used to having some more free time.
“Having this extra free time on your hands, all of a sudden is a bit of a novelty,” he said, adding after a trip to Europe with his family, he had to get back to work.
Since then, he incorporated a company and has done some consulting, but it hasn’t been the same.
“I’m the kind of a guy who can’t sit on his hands for too long,” he said. “I just can’t do a job, I have to be passionate about something that I’m doing.”
MAY 5th: “Political deafness and arrogance, it’s a lethal combination.”
Even though Forsyth was resigning, she scored the biggest political victory of the three former MLAs, helping the Wildrose go from five to 21 seats on election day, and eventually 22 with the byelection.
It came after the party was decimated to five following the floor-crossing, which she called a turning point.
“I knew probably five or ten days after the floor-crossing occurred that we weren’t dead,” she said. “By the hundreds of phone calls, emails, text messages, direct messages I got on Facebook from Albertans of all and I’m going to say that, of all political stripes that were angry and mad as hell about what happened.”
Forsyth said it was clear to her and her party that it fueled anger among Conservative voters in the province because they weren’t consulted on such a move.
“When Danielle and some of my colleagues said ‘well this is what Albertans want’, Albertans weren’t asked if that’s what they wanted,” she said. “I don’t remember in political history where I’ve seen that before.”
But while the party won a solid opposition victory, there was no stopping Rachel Notley and the NDP.
“I thought 10 days before the election, there was going to be a change, because I was at the doors obviously door-knocking and I was somewhat taken back by that,” she said.
For Lukaszuk, the merger was one of many factors working against the PCs, which he traced back to his failed leadership bid for the party.
“I probably had spoken to no fewer than 10,000 people during those four months and getting into some really in-depth discussions,” he said. “When I saw the win of Premier Prentice and the direction he had chosen to take with his cabinet and with policies, with agenda, it was very clear to me that this was not what I had heard form Albertans.”
“The budget that was put forward, the platform, calling the early election, the merging of PC and Wildrose was flying in the face of what I heard Albertans saying.”
Being such a public face of the party, Lukaszuk admits he has responsibility for what happened.
“You own a piece of that, there’s no doubt about it,” he said. “It would be very disingenuous of me and naïve of me to say that I had no part of it.”
“Unfortunately, through the process of how we pick our leaders in the PC party, because of the fact that over duration of time, there was a power base of unelected individuals that would pull the party towards certain directions, the party lost its way.”
In the end, Lukaszuk called the loss a result of ‘political deafness and arrogance’ and it was clear a week before the election that the NDP knew they were going to win.
But he said that doesn’t excuse Prentice resigning the way he did.
“My heart really went out to those nine PC MLAs who were left behind, almost like soldiers behind enemy lines,” he said. “Every Albertan will judge that for themselves, but from my perspective, that is not leadership.”
While Blakeman couldn’t survive the NDP surge, she was happy to see change in the legislature and agrees that there were multiple reasons for the PC dynasty to end.
“When they say that governments lose, they don’t get defeated, that’s absolutely true, the Tories lost,” she said. “They stopped listening to Albertans and I think that Premier Prentice, in particular didn’t listen and was actually a little condescending about Albertans and people really picked that up.”
Blakeman said it was clear Albertans were tired of the scandals under both Redford and Prentice’s rule.
“That entitlement and disregard for who you’re serving, it’s public office, people get that and they did and they were very angry about it,” she said. “I just didn’t get to go along and keep doing my work.”
LESSON LEARNED: People get up in arms when you challenge their democracy
When asked what the big lessons were during their time in public office, including the election, both Lukaszuk and Forsyth said they have to do with the values and morals they learned as children.
“The most important things you learn in life are actually the things you learn before you are six years old,” Lukaszuk said. “Every time I did what I felt was right, even though it may have been unpopular and I ended up getting shunned by colleagues, by caucus, by party, it was ultimately the right thing to do.”
“Not great for building your career as a politician, but at the end of the day, at least you have the peace of mind of knowing that you made the right decision on an issue.”
Forsyth echoed that sentiment.
“People get up in arms when you challenge their democracy,” she said. “My dad was a prisoner of war, he fought for my freedom and I think he instilled that in me when I was young and he instilled that in me when I was growing up, about the right to vote and I think it just came back multiple times over that period of time.”
But for Blakeman, the lesson in the loss is still a mystery.
“There doesn’t seem to be a point to me right now, because I was very good at what I did, everybody really appreciated having me there,” she said. “I have to believe that at some point that will be revealed.”
RUN AGAIN: Never say never
As for ever running for public office again, none of the three have ruled it out for the future, but each say the circumstances would have to be right.
“I can tell you definitely right now, I would not put my name on a ballot with any of the existing parties as they stand right now,” Lukaszuk said, adding his own former party is now in a state of irrelevance in third-party status. “You can take a guy out of politics, but it’s hard to get politics out of a guy.”
Blakeman said many thought she was going to jump into the federal race this month.
“This is always trickier than people think it is,” she said. “A lot of those campaigns had been running for a year and there weren’t openings for me to run.”
“It’s a matter of running for a level of government that you’re interested in and that there’s an opening for you.”
Even Forsyth, who decided it was time to step down, isn’t ruling it out completely.
“I could say yes, you’re absolutely right and three years down the road, change my mind and you’ll get me on your news station saying well here you are in September saying this, ” she said. “I’ve learned in politics never say never.”
