Tories set to launch new PR campaign stressing can-do people rather than no debt, low taxes
The Alberta Advantage, a government slogan that for years touted the province as a bean counter’s paradise—low taxes, no debt—is to be retired, says Roxanna Benoit, a one-time Ottawa Conservative strategist who returned to Alberta in 2007 to become managing director of Alberta’s Public Affairs Bureau. Almost three year and $25-million later, the campaign Benoit spearheaded will focus on alternative, perhaps more reality-based credentials, now that the Alberta Tories are talking deficit and the specter of higher provincial taxes hovers over the proceedings. Benoit says focus groups and public opinion surveys show Albertans have a different story to tell than mere conservative politics and “dirty” oil. “The Alberta story is about the people,” she says. “They see this as an aspirational and dynamic place with a diversity of voices and openness and willingness to accept other ideas.”