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National Energy Program
Even though this is fluff, I'm willing to give credit where credit is due.
I wouldn't give Danielle Smith or an Alberta that elects her any credit, because to paraphrase Sean in Ottawa from a different thread, her Wildrose Alliance would likely be an even more distabilizing force in Canadian politics than the PQ.
If we had gone the NEP route and not the NAFTA route there is no doubt in my mind that the vast majority of Canadians would be better off. We could have had nice steady growth instead of the steady decline we have seen for 30 years. The NEP was not the friend of the 1% and that was why the MSM media especially in the oil capital of Calgary vilified it so intensely. The mythology is just that mythology. It was one of the things proposed by Trudeau that made sense.
I have lived in Western Canada since 1973 so I know that not everyone in the West hated the NEP.
This image helps illustrate exactly what Redford's power base is in Alberta. The 2012 Progressive Conservatives are centered around moderate Conservatives and Red Tories, and includes a huge chunk of former Liberals and perhaps some of the less crazy Reform types.
Hitting the snooze button.
The combined PC/Liberal vote went down from 79% to 54%, and consolidated around Allison Redford. 1 in 4 voters chose combined PC/Liberal in 2008 and changed their minds in 2012. These were mostly Wild Rose voters not voting Conservative.
I'm not sure how much sense it makes talking about combined votes though...I think it can be used as a rhetorical technique injected with one's desired argument.
The Alberta results do seem similar to Ontario with the status quo party certainly diminished but for now still pretty firmly in power.
I'm not too familiar with what happened in Ontario, but I presume one difference is that what happened in Alberta is the result of a schism on the right - one with some heavy support from the Harperites. I heard it reported today that the Wild Rose took campaigners, and in some cases databases and other resources with them.
But after last night's results, I can't even hazard a guess at what might happen in four years.
Hopefully the WRA will simply fade into obscurity.
Hard to say which is better - having them fade and drift back into the PC party, or isolated on their own, which would allow the PCs a bit more freedom to move closer to the centre.
But I'm not in Alberta; I don't know.
I don't see the WRA going away anytime soon. If they ever do disappear from the Alberta political landscape we'll just dream up some other version of them to replace them, whether that's a new party or maybe we can all go back to the PC's if they become conservative enough for us some time down the road. My guess is, if you want a left of centre government then the Redford PC's are about as close as you are ever going to get elected in Alberta.
I was amazed the PC's won the last election, let alone this one. Every single issue that should have mattered in this election can be blamed on the PC's, whether it's the way they have mismanaged health care, or the sweetheart deals they hand out to industry, environmental concerns, government waste or corruption, etc etc etc. The list goes on and we reward the bastards by giving them majority after majority. It's like trying to train your dog not to poop on the kitchen floor by giving it doggie treats every time it poops on the kitchen floor. All we seem to do out here is reward past bad behaviour.
Maybe I am just embittered from this last election but I just don't see the political left ever forming government out here provincially. I'll give the NDP a lot of credit for trying but let's be honest, winning 4 seats shouldn't exactly be much of a cause for celebration, although I guess by Alberta standards it's a decent result at the end of the day. Likewise for the Liberals, while I suspect a lot of them voted strategically for the PC's this time around they haven't exactly had much hope of forming a government lately.
Maybe my crazy theory of contaminated ground water causing us to continually vote for right wingers isn't so crazy after all.
On that theme of upside down....
With my wife losing her job thanks to the Dexter NDP, and me not being able to get much work around here anymore, it looks like goodbye to the family homestead.
And since we'll be heading down the road anyway, Alberta is looking better. You know, somewhere they dont take slashing government services quite so seriously.
I think this is about the best result Conservatives could ever hope for in the last bastion of political conservatism in provincial Alberta. And they needed a party scarier than themselves to contrast against in order to achieve it.
If Albertans can't have change provincially, maybe they will do something really off the wall federally in 2015.
Although we were having a discussion at a party this weekend about the shock a lot of Saskatchewan residents get when they go to Alberta and wind up paying five times the price for car insurance. One of our friends was telling us how she pissed off the customer service person when she said "are you fucking kidding?"
They may not have sales tax there, but according to our friends who have moved there there are quite a lot of things people come back here to get done.
And four seats may not seem like much, but it is important to have them there. A relative of mine who was living near Lethbridge was told her health card for herself and her children was no good because she hadn't paid her premiums because of a dispute. THey hadn't been able to go to a doctor in a year. I wasn't sure what was up, but I knew that was against the Canada Health Act. We couldn't get a straight story from anyone until I phoned the nearest NDP MLA, who got it sorted within the hour.
I never would expect Alberta to elect a truly progressive government, and I think Allison Redford is the best that province could possibly expect.
However, she gave an interview on CBC a day ago where she acknowledged that Alberta is in the midst of tremendous change with folks moving here from all over, including from cities quite different than anything in Alberta, and this is forcing progressive change like Nemshi in Calgary - extreme right wing positions are simply not going to fly with the new generation of Albertans.
She said she's going to build bridges, not walls.
Although she is a PC'er, she's not Danielle Smith, and for that we can give thanks.
Correct me if I'm wrong (Lou, old buddy!!), but Alberta has never seen a provincial legislature made up of the government and three (count'em, three!) opposition parties who have official standing, with all the resources that go with that.
Will it make any difference with having 3 fully-funded opposition parties vs. the P.C.'s?
Why it was beneficial for both Canada and Alberta
OK.
Hit that Snooze button 20 hours ago.
And the masses are still waiting.
Keep on believing that
Better that than believing in myths of your own victimization at the hands of your fellow citizens.
Did you even bother to read it?
Just woke up and had a big breakfast.
Now I need a nap.
In all seriousness, I'm still pretty foggy, but here are some intitial thoughts:
My takeaway from this election is that the PCs are beatable:
There is a long-standing sense in Alberta that maybe the province needs a change from the PCs. This sentiment was evident even 5 years ago, when Ralph Klein's former seat went Liberal in a by-election. Unfortunately for the opposition parties, none of them were able to articulate change or convince Albertans as a whole to go in a particular direction, so naturally a downward spiral resulted, where only PC supporters bothered to vote, everyone else gave up because the PCs are going to win anyways, and none of the opposition parties tried because the PCs were going to win anyways. The fact that the Wildrose Party started polling even with the Tories was evidence that voters wanted change. It's not that Albertans were particularly fond of far-right policies, it's just that the Wildrose had more resources to get its message out than any of the other parties. And that "we'll vote Wildrose for change" sentiment stuck, until Wildrose began shooting themselves in the foot with their crazy statements. Indeed, once the PCs realized that the right-wing vote was firmly parked with the Wildrose, they painted themselves as centrist (whether or not they are is a different matter) even to the point of saying they could work with the Liberals and NDP. The fact that Albertans not only responded positively, but in a much higher turn-out rate than average, shows that the political culture in Alberta is not as far to the right as the media would have us believe. I don't sense that there was a great love for the PCs, that it was more a "devil you know" vote. Now that there is a strong Official Opposition and the NDP has official party status (and came close to winning a seat in Lethbridge) who knows where things may lead?
One could wish for a different Official Opposition, although official party status is better than not having it.
I do wonder what might have happened if Rachel Notley were leader (or what the resulting three-female-leader dynamic would be)
Going back to that point about Redford not being progressive or really even liberal, that will emerge over time. The job is amplifying and making it stick.
You dont need me to tell you that bought and paid for by big oil is a problematic message to be flaunting in Alberta. Consolidating that as the NDP's own message may help move from 10% to 15%... which is not in its own right to be sneezed at. But is it really a building strategy to expand your share of the political ghetto vote? Even the denizens of the political ghetto respond positively to success on the big stage.
Right about your substantive point of the hard work coming. But I dont think it is just spin to say that it doesnt show being stuck when you went from 9% to 10% in the context of a smaller pie available because of the advent of WR.
In case you have forgotten your "ancient history".... characteristic of the NS NDP in the late 80s and early 90s was minimal or no gains in seats won or total vote share, while posting an accumulation of ever more impressive ground campaigns.
When everything else was ready, had it not been for that accumulation of experience, we would not have been ready to go as far as we did.
Too bad you have to live with leaving Nova Scotia too early.
But you've got a lot to work with now.
I don't know who deserves credit for the con, but consider this:
1) The WRA's main attack on her was that she was Liberal (or NDP)
2) The Liberal leader is most notable for being an ex-PC (oh yeah and he's a doctor or something)
3) Rather than run against the label, Redford waxed liberal on social issues, health care, and education; while veering to the right on other matters (i.e. oil, the economy)
So, except for a few mouse squeaks in the media of the NDP and Libs saying the PCs are not progressive, which isn't very "newsy" (the Libs and NDP always say this), the message the public got was: Redford is a Liberal, but really she is a Progressive Conservative, and Raj Sherman is a Liberal, except really he was a Progressive Conservative. You figure out who to vote for...
ETA: Raj Sherman continues in a proud tradition of Alberta "Red Tories" becoming Liberals. Kevin Taft was a PC before he ran for the provincial Liberals.
I don't see the WRA going away anytime soon. If they ever do disappear from the Alberta political landscape we'll just dream up some other version of them to replace them, whether that's a new party or maybe we can all go back to the PC's if they become conservative enough for us some time down the road. My guess is, if you want a left of centre government then the Redford PC's are about as close as you are ever going to get elected in Alberta.
I think it will change when Alberta faces an economic crisis due to its total focus on the oil industry. People are most likely to overthrow their governments when fundamental economic crises (as bad as our current crisis is, it is still not at a level where most people feel that we will have not recover) show their economic way of life is not sustainable (see Mayan and Communist civilzations for 2 of many examples). For Alberta this will end in one of three ways: (1) the environmental, social, economic and political problems created by the global climate change crisis will require a great reduction or elimination of the fossil fuel industry; (2) Alberta and other fossil fuel producers will be left behind as economic dinosaurs as other countries shift to green technologies (China is spending $200 billion on green technology in the next 5 years in an effort to dominate this field; Denmark already gets 19% of it energy from wind); (3) depletion of the Albertan fossil fuel resources (least likely as at least one of the others is likely to kick in first).
While such scenarios may seem something that may occur in some distant future, and in the world of politics where "a week is an eternity", from a historical or environmental perspective, even one or two generations is not very far into the future. Believe it or not, Alberta had some of the most radical union locals in North America in the 1910s-1920s, even electing a One Big Union member to the Alberta legislature from Crowsnest Pass (ie southern Alberta) and a progressive government in the United Farmers of Alberta from 1921-1935 that was only wiped out when the a major economic crisis hit (the Depression).
Alberta is starting to look like Ontario politically, as the Liberals get squeezed between the NDP and the Conservatives, who are slightly to the left of the Wild Rose, but are trying to portray themselves as more centrist.
I don't think people voted strategically to prevent the WR. Even before the election the liberals were only at 10 to 15%. I do think the Liberals did not have a good campaign and had a confused message. The thing that confused me about the Liberals is that before the election they did not talk about progressive policies but once the election started they talked about progressive policies such as higher taxes to pay for social programs. SO maybe that was one of the reasons the liberal vote collapsed.
Also I know people talk about the NDP and liberals merging or forming an alliance, but even if they did that they would still lose badly. Is all hope lost in Alberta for having a progressive government?
Nah. Can't lose what isn't there in the first place. Things that can shift the ground in Alberta: demographic change, and climate change (as jerrym discussed above). The rural ridings will change much more slowly, and remain socially conservative for a while.
Also, which way did the 16% increase in voter turnout lean? If they were mostly dormant Lougheed-esque Red Tories, the NDP/Lib vote can go down percentage-wise without absolute numbers changing much.