BT Calgary Blogs

I’ve received an agreeable and rewarding number of emails, comments, and phone calls over the past several weeks inquiring about the absence of material in this space.  I have no wish to whicker and drone about a work schedule here which changed to some degree  –  although it did.  And I’ll not dwell on a couple of other issues which in combination caused abandonment of the weekly blog  –  although they did.

None of that.  I shall instead merely proclaim…..I’m back.

Brian Mason describes himself as an eternal optimist.  If he weren’t, he says, he would long since have walked away from  his job as leader of the Alberta NDP Party,  and found something else to do.

But he soldiers on, one of two NDP members of the provincial legislature, one of a succession of leaders whose collective accomplishment over the years has been to maintain the virtual anonymity of the party in a province which has always voted toward the right or centre right of the political spectrum.  In all probability it’ll do so again as the Wildrose Alliance rapidly emerges from fringe to genuine contender against the floundering troupe posing as a government under Premier Ed Stelmach.

Mason and his lone colleague in the legislature, Rachel Notley, both hold ridings in Edmonton which is where the NDP has occasionally journeyed to actual election victory.  But as party leader, Mason is obliged every now and again to venture forth into territory which historically has shown no interest at all in the New Democrats, and so it was that he surfaced in Calgary the other day to deliver the word.

He attracted a couple of dozen or so ferociously loyal and dedicated seniors who listened attentively as the weary theorems of NDP paradise echoed around the room.  Put the blocks to big oil and make sure all of us Albertans  –  as true owners of  natural resources  –  get our fair share (whatever that is) of energy revenues.  Do not under any circumstances permit the slightest move toward private health care because that would inevitably lead to Americanization of medical services and we all know what that would mean.  (No matter that for at least ten years, the Alberta government and the feds, too, have strenuously insisted the American brand of health care isn’t the preferred model, and would therefore not be the consequence of modest private delivery.  Alberta and Canada would instead adopt the best practices of several European nations, primarily Austria, France, and Sweden to develop a system that would work, be affordable and above all provide immediate access, or very close to it, to both general and specialized care.  Wildrose leader Danielle Smith, in particular, is an advocate of the European experience and has compiled a good deal of research on it).

But Mason insists, as he always has, on raising the phantasma of thousands, if not millions of Canadians without health care insurance, ensnared in a system catering exclusively to the wealthy and utterly disinterested in the poor.  Oh dread and dire:  that’s a pathway we must not follow:  public health now, public health forever:  and  together with all  the other party slogans and verses, Mason offers up the left wing psalm extolling the joys of eternal peace, prosperity, and good socialist government for all.

That said, there are a couple of things about Brian Mason which suggest he might surprise a few people when the next election is called  –  presumably in 2012.  NDP poll numbers are improving slightly, although one might argue twice nothing is still nothing, but there has been a discernable upward trend.  (I hasten to add the polls don’t forecast the remotest prospect of a  party breakthrough in Alberta, let alone outright victory.  Not in this province).

But Mason, whom I encounter rarely because he’s mostly in Edmonton and I’m down here in Calgary, demonstrates a not inconsiderable knack for on-the-spot, at-the-podium communication which cannot hurt when he gets into the electoral ruck and run against Stelmach, Liberal leader David Swann, and even Smith.  For openers, he uses a wireless microphone with which he strolls behind and to each side of the dais.  He’s comfortable and imparts an aura of confidence, even warmth, and when speaking to his sturdy elders the other day referred to no prepared speech, no notes, no talking points.  He was conversational and informal, seemed to be off the cuff, and for Mason that could well be an asset when locked in election combat versus Stelmach and Swann, both leaden and uninspiring performers on the stump.

More significantly, maybe, is evidence I’ve not heretofore seen that Mason has a fairly sharp sense of humour.  Somebody in the audience, lamenting what he described as the persistent lack of  coverage by the mainstream media  (we were in the back of the hall and apparently had gone unseen by the questioner) asked why the NDP and its leader aren’t embracing social media.

That, replied Mason, isn’t so:  he’s on Facebook, the party has a website, a number of provincial constituency offices have websites, they’re right into social media although……well, he’s not on Twitter, doesn’t tweet, doesn’t like little meaningless 140-character squirts signifying nothing and so twitter and tweet he does not.  But on the other hand maybe he should although then again he finds Twitter sort of disconcerting so maybe not.

So after the meeting I asked him:  “Why don’t you like Twitter?”

(Pause).  “Why don’t I like Twitter?  (Pause).  I don’t know.  It just….it’s just….it just doesn’t turn my crank.  (Pause).  Y’know, I like Facebook, I really do.  My staff is pushing me to get on Twitter but….ah….I’m just not comfortable with it.  But we’ll see.  We’ll see.  I’m gonna keep practicing.”

I put it to Mason that he was admitting to being a bit of a neanderthal with respect to social media.

“I know.  I know I am, but……oh well.”

The foregoing doesn’t read on paper or on a blog for that matter nearly as well as it sounded and looked on television delivery, because Mason had an amused glint in his eye and quite clearly enjoyed portraying himself as not quite out of the cave, just yet, in terms of social media.  He was self-deprecating and charming during his confession of electronic wariness and for my money his responses were ideally suited to questions which had been framed with the precise intention of revealing a flair for humour   –  not that I expected to discover one.

By comparison, I suspect Ed Stelmach would have said he prefers the old two piece phone (the box on the wall and the cradle ear piece that looks like an inverted candlestick) at the Lamont general store.  And I suspect David Swann would have embarked on a thesis about the performance evaluation matrix of various social media devices, relative to the ambient light available at any given time to the user.  But Mason caught the drift right off the bat, on a question he doubtless did not expect, and thereby revealed himself to be a man of appreciable wit and media agility.  Conventional media, that is.

Allow me to be clear, as in crystal.  God forbid that Mason and his tiny band of followers ever expand to the point of assuming governance in Alberta, or that they even reach legislature strength in numbers which would give them the balance of power.  But I will say this:  if politics in this province needs one thing, it needs some real people.  Brian Mason, I would suggest,  is one of them and it wouldn’t hurt to have a few more around.

Just so long as not too many are romping about the province waving NDP banners.  If that were the case, then I guess I’d have to ask Mason why he’s so blinkered and hidebound about the energy industry which after all is the principal economic driver of the province.  Mason often sounds a lot like a union leader in the desolate slag heaps of Wales oh, about 80 years ago, and you have to ponder sometimes whether he’s figured out what century it is.   He’s a throwback to other days and times, and in fact the  combined NDP headquarters and meeting hall in Calgary is adorned with portraits of Tommy Douglas and David Lewis and Frank Underhill and all the great warriors of a half century and more ago.  But it seems to me if those men are Brian Mason’s role models, he could do a lot worse  —  so even as he pursues  political dreams which are largely irrelevant in modern society, my sense of  Mason is that he’s nonetheless a pretty genuine and decent fellow.    

In the meantime, I expect to see him Twittering, and fairly soon, too.