Since the race for the leadership of the Alberta Tories has come down to a guessing game, here's this man's guess as to what's going on and what ought to happen.

I think it will become a contest between those Albertans who don't want change and those who do, and I think the latter are in the majority, and they're right.

Change, one might recall, proved the formula that saved the party before.

In the last contest for the Tory leadership, it was Ralph Klein who stood for change while Nancy Betkowski stood for the status quo.

The party voted for Ralph, and survived in office for another 14 years.

Nancy went on to change her marriage, her name and her party and emerged as Nancy MacBeth, the leader of the Alberta Liberals.

Since the Tories had already been in office for 21 years, this makes for quite a record, but not yet an all-time one.

The Social Credit administration that preceded the Tories held office for 36 years, one more than the Tories to date.

But since the Tory mandate can go on at least two more years, they are almost certain to top the long Social Credit regime.

The Tories have done this, not by affirming the status quo, but by substantially changing it.

The difference between the style of Peter Lougheed who brought the party to power and Don Getty who succeeded him on the one hand, and Ralph on the other is startling.

Undoubtedly, the leadership candidate who most represents the status quo is Jim Dinning, a former provincial treasurer and minister of education.

His backers boast he now commands the support of 60% of the present Tory caucus.

"Jim's been being groomed for this job for 20 years," says former MP Lee Richardson, a top Dinning supporter.

Dinning's half-dozen or so corporate directorships recommend him as the candidate of the establishment, and that's the way Dinning himself seems to want to be viewed.

So who stands for change?

All the other candidates would up to a point claim that role of course, but none so distinctly as Ted Morton, the political science professor and one of the six authors of what is called "the Alberta Agenda," a program for fundamental change advanced in an open letter to Premier Klein in January, 2001. Another of the six, one might note, was a certain Stephen Harper, now prime minister.

The slogan of the Agenda was "more Alberta, less Ottawa," and it advanced five proposals: An Alberta pension plan to replace the ever-more-precarious Canada Pension Plan; Alberta to collect its own personal income tax as it already collects the corporate income tax; an Alberta police force (just as there are Quebec and Ontario police forces); an Alberta Health plan; and the restoration of the provincial role in immigration.

Morton is committed to all five proposals, the other leadership candidates only certain aspects, not all.

Moreover, Morton favours using, rather than shunning, the "notwithstanding clause" in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that empowers the province to quash rulings of the Supreme Court of Canada in areas that affect provincial jurisdiction.

In other words, Morton stands for decisive change in specific areas, which he has carefully considered and enunciated since the Agenda was created five years ago.

In this he resembles his fellow-signator Harper.

The two have that quality in common.

What enables Harper to weather so successfully the media and Opposition flak that incessantly descends upon him is the fact he has long considered the issues involved, knows what he intends to do, and can advance and defend it superbly.

Morton exhibits precisely the same qualities.

Like Harper, he has learned to translate these issues from the language of the faculty room to the language of the conference room, the board room, the locker room and the living room.

He has learned, that is, to sell the case wherever it has to be sold, and he deeply believes in it.

Curiously, so does Harper.

He is plainly determined to reverse the centrist direction of the federal government and restore to the provinces the powers Ottawa over the years has usurped from them.

This was the resolve of last weekend's Calgary Congress and Morton is obviously the man to carry it out.