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The annual financial statement contains desperate warnings of the kind of thing that can happen to an overleveraged political party that gambles on permanent power and rolls snake-eyes. The PCs, the report observed, have $437,000 in long-term property leases to pay for between now and 2019. A party with exactly one paid employee, which is what the PCs are now, does not really need that kind of space, so the association sub-leased it; unfortunately, that will recoup only $289,000 of the $437,000.

The report also describes an arrangement with a database supplier that requires the PCs, who apparently were not hip to groovy tech lingo like “open source,” to pay for 100 user licenses through the end of 2018 at a total cost of $793,800. Again, this is not really such a hot deal for a one-employee concern, so “The Association is currently negotiating” with the vendor to escape the straitjacket.

The Conservatives are no longer allowed to solve such problems by doing a whip-round of corporations who live partly or entirely off of the government of Alberta. Kickbacks from colleges, municipalities and the like are off the table. And chicken dinners with the PC leader just don’t sell as well when the party is out of power. For the first quarter of this year, the PCs raised $105,000 from 21 donors; at least six were current or former PC MLAs and a seventh was a spouse. Does that seem like an encouraging sign to you?