Alberta Election Tuesday April 16 2019

Strong arguments, A24. I agree. Waiting to hear the rebuttals.

Yes, Misfit, but I believe A24 was responding to your comment about the NDP being a "sophisticated party", with advisors, etc. You're quite right. Electoral success doesn't hinge much on that.

Misfit wrote:

What data do you have A24 that Notley’s campaign doesn’t have?

I'm sure Greg Selinger, Lorne Calvert, Adrian Dix, Darrel Dexter, and Thomas Mulcair all had access to data that I didn't. What does that prove?

https://www.sprawlcalgary.com/twitter-suspends-left-leaning-albertans-before-election

My guess is the ACP trolls mounted a coordinated campaign against specific accounts to get them banned under twitter's rules. Of course that is not as sexy an explanation as twitter directly interfering in the election. But according to Freeland we should all quiver at the possibility that Russian spies can manipulate the internet.

Misfit wrote:

It is very easy to be an armchair critic and say that they ran their election all wrong. All political parties have data and internal polling and a huge campaign team. They have access to information that we don’t have.

We're all armchair critics. That's what Internet discussion boards are all about. Plus, being in a democracy, I have the right to decide whether or not I like what a particular party is doing.

Misfit wrote:

These political advisors work with the information that they have, and in the end, only one political party wins.

I don't trust political advisors at all. They tend to be in their own world, tone deaf to the struggles of people in their daily lives (how many of them know what it's like to struggle to make ends meet) and especially NDP advisors seem to connect better with their counterparts in other parties than the working classes the NDP is supposed to represent. I watched the NDP blow several elections that were theirs to win, including 2 municipal elections right here in Winnpeg, the 2013 provincial election in BC, the 2014 provincial election in Ontario, and the 2015 federal election. Most regular people don't care about politics, and somehow mainstream political organizations haven't picked up on that yet.

Misfit wrote:

the reality is that Alberta is a fiscally and socially conservative province. They have voted for right wing parties up until four years ago. We all knew that an NDP re-election now was very slim at beat even as far back as four years ago.

So Rachael Notley ran a campaign and her chance of re-election while not impossible is now very slim. Some will argue that her campaign focus is what cost her the election. I believe that just like the NDP federal inroads in Quebec in 2011, the NDP never has had nor likely ever will have a solid support base that can sustain them beyond one term.

it would be cool to go into the United Ststes and campaign for single desk health care delivery and increased social services and government funded daycare and dental care and pharmacarw. I don’t care how well I campaign, my chances of resonating with the mass majority of Americans is slim to none. It is not impossible but it is not the campaigning that is the problem but rather the target market.

quebec does not identify with the NDP  Alberta does not identify with the NDzp and the United States does not identify with social democracy.

Do you believe in the ideas you espouse or don't you? That's one thing I admire about Christian fundamentalists is that they believe their way is in people's best interests, and they go out and make that argument anywere and they don't care what kind of opposition they face. Sure, people might identify as "right wing," social democracy," "liberal" or whatever, but how many of them can actually tell you what that means when you press them on it? I think the media and the pundit class like to divide people up into neat categories and predict how they will vote because it sell papers and generates ratings. Real 3-D people are much more comlpicated than that. To take a real life example, Bernie Sanders believes that policies like taxing the rich and single payer health care will help people in West Virginia. So what does he do? He hosts town halls in counties that overhwelmingly went for Trump, and these people are cheering on what he says. Or consider that most people view West Virginia as a more conservative state, and even self-identified conservatives in West Virginia supported Sanders in higher numbers than Liberals did. Why? Sanders treats voters as real live people and he communicates with them accordingly.

So to my original question, does the idea of lessening economic dependence on boom and bust and other NDP ideas make sense for Alberta? If it does, then make that argument loudly and clearly.

..soon alta will be facing it's own challenge and still on my point that fantasies being sold. 

TarSands Trial Legal Backgrounder

quote:

Impacts on Beaver Lake Cree territory by the numbers: Canada and Alberta have issued up to 19,000 ‘individual authorizations’ (permits) which translates into 300 individual industrial projects that take up more than 90 per cent of Beaver Lake Cree traditional territory. As a result, the once-pristine forest and hunting grounds are now covered with 35,000 oil and gas sites, 21,700 kilometres of seismic lines, 4,028 kilometres of pipeline and 948 kilometres of road – with devastating effects on caribou populations and fish species.

Case trajectory to date: The Beaver Lake Cree first launched a constitutional challenge for infringement of Treaty rights in 2008. Canada and Alberta responded by attempting to have the case dismissed, unsuccessfully. Upon appeal, the Court ruled that no further “delaying tactics” should be permitted in this litigation, and that Canada’s complaint in particular “flies in the face of the Supreme Court of Canada” and its previous decisions.

NorthReport wrote:

It is going to be a tough for NDP fans tonite but thanks to all those who supported Rachel Notley and the Alberta NDP

UCP majority has been called.

Not the result many here were hoping, for but I think there's an important context that is missing. It's always disappointing for a government to be defeated. If, however, you remove the 2015 results from the equation, the results for the NDP would be considered a breakthrough by that standard. Approximately 35% of the popular vote, approximately 20 seats. Never before has the NDP done this well as an official opposition. They're in a good position to critique this government.

In the end, people seemed to be angry about the state of the economy and took it out on the NDP. With the NDP coming in just at the start of the oil crash, it appeared they were the ones responsible. Now Kenney has to deliver on his promises, and there is a good chance that he can't. Perhaps having the oil and gas industry continuing to struggle under a right-wing government will cause people to reflect and finally direct their anger towards the oil companies for that.

I'll have more to say later on. For now, routine congratulations to Kenney and the UCP for forming the government. He will soon learn that there is more to governing than yelling, screaming, threatening, and throwing a temper tantrum when things don't go his way.

Just listened to Notley speak. She gave a very spirited and upbeat defense of her time in government, and reminded people of the deck of cards she was handed. I agree with the pundits who said if she had spoken like that on the campaign trail, the numbers might have been different.

Well, Edmonton seems to have held firm for the dippers. I was actually thinking the UCP might make more inroads there, because the Conservatives have on occassion done not entirely badly there, including during the tenure of supposed Calgary Uber Alles man Klein.

Aristotleded24 wrote:

Just listened to Notley speak. She gave a very spirited and upbeat defense of her time in government, and reminded people of the deck of cards she was handed. I agree with the pundits who said if she had spoken like that on the campaign trail, the numbers might have been different.

Is she staying on as leader or standing down?

Ken Burch wrote:

Just clisked at Elections Alberta-had no idea the night had been so comprehensively dismal for the Freedom Conservatives.  .5% of the vote?  Jesus!

I was surprised the Alberta Party did as badly as they did in the seat count, with even Mandel coming in third in the city where he was a popular mayor for years. Guess politics in Alberta is headed for a BC-style polarization, at least for a while.

Ken Burch wrote:

If Notley leads the NDP to defeat(and it's looking more and more like she will)it will be because-with the exception of things like the farmworkers legislation and the measures to protect LGBTQ kids and their straight student allies-she has assumed that she has to carry on the "Alberta against the world" tradition-a choice which led her to irreporably damage her party's chances of holding power by raging against the rest the NDP on the pipeline issue and her arrogant refusal to to acknowledge even the basic validity of the Leap Manifesto, a concept with which she might have engaged by proposing, say, a compromise which would have pushed the timeline for the transition from fossil fuels from 20 years to 40.   Had she done that, and were she running a re-election campaign centered on presenting and defending the solid progressive achievements of her government, Notley would likely be neck-and-neck with Kenney and have a good chance of beating him. 

Notley might have done slightly better if she had emphasized her government's accomplishments more, but with the economic recession still hurting the economy and the Cons united in a single party, it was all but guaranteed that she was going to lose.

On the other hand, abandoning any pretense of dealing with the global climate change existential crisis by proposing a forty year period of adjustment means abandoning environmental principles in the hopes of winning a few more votes that are highly unlikely to come the NDP's way since those who do not see the crisis are not likely to be won over by this 'compromise'. Such a 'compromise' would definitely shift votes away from the NDP.

If wildfires burning down a large part of Fort McMurray, the record wildfires that drove 65,000 from their homes for up to two months in BC in 2017, the new record wildfires set in BC in 2018 that burned the equivalent of 40% of Nova Scotia, the warnings that it is already too late to save the Arctic as we know it, and even the warnings today from the head of  the Bank of England and the Bank of France  that a “massive reallocation of capital” is necessary to prevent global warming above the 2°C maximum target" and “If some companies and industries fail to adjust to this new world, they will fail to exist,” (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/17/mark-carney-tells-gl...), doesn't convince you that 40 year plans are dead, I don't know what will. We face desertification in western Canada as rainfall decreases, evaporation increases with temperatures, and runoff from disappearing glaciers disappear, to say nothing of the similar risks to the billions in India, China and the rest of the Himalayan glacier countries dependent on glacial water, as well as sea level rise that not only threatens many island nations but coastal cities around the world where a large part of the globe's population lives. Canada, which has the world's longest coast, already is facing enormous risk. Even a BC Liberal government report determined that Metro Vancouver will need to spend $9.5 billion to protect it. Sea level rise is also having an impact right now on PEI's, New Brunswick's and Nova Scotia's coast that will only get much worse. Protecting New York City alone is estimated to cost $100 billion.

"If warming is not mitigated and follows the RCP8.5 sea level rise projections, the global annual flood costs without adaptation will increase to $14 trillion per year for a median sea level rise of 0.86m, and up to $27 trillion per year for 1.8m. This would account for 2.8 per cent of global GDP in 2100." (https://phys.org/news/2018-07-sea-world-trillion-year.html) I haven't even touched on many of the global warming problems that place the world in peril since that would take too long. 

We need a Green New Deal that combines social policy with combatting global warming and we need it now. 

Last week Norway's Labor Party withdrew its support for Arctic oil exploration producing a majority of the legislature favouring this (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-08/norway-is-walking-awa...). China is aiming to become the renewable energy superpower. It already has 29% of renewable energy patents and last year had 45% of new renewable energy investment. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/dominicdudley/2019/01/11/china-renewable-en...) Even Even Saudi Arabia is making major investments in preparing for life after oil.(https://business.financialpost.com/commodities/energy/saudi-arabia-prepa...)

There are two possible futures: the world shifts fast enough to avoid catastrophic global climate change or we don't. If we don't, you won't have to worry about social policy. If the world does avoid the worst case scenario while Canada continues on with the getting the last drop out of the tar sands mentality, which NDP candidate Linda McQuaig criticized in the last election and was ostracized for both inside and outside the party, then Canada and Alberta is in danger of becoming a leader in what will be the new buggy whip industry. 

Even in the US change is occurring quickly. Coal is dying as an industry despite Trump because it is too expensive. Renewables are becoming increasingly cost competitive, even with natural gas. Furthermore, there is growing evidence that methane gas (which has more than 25 times the heating effect of carbon dioxide) emissions from natural gas development are much higher than previously thought.

For around 10 years, the conventional wisdom in the energy sector has been that natural gas is ascendant. Coal is dirty, and it’s getting expensive, but it’s too early to jump all the way to renewable energy. To get from the fossil fuel present to the renewable future, we will need ... a bridge.

Natural gas is meant to be that bridge, a way to reduce our emissions relative to coal while we work on scaling up renewables. (The shift from coal to gas is a big part of why US emissions have declined over the past few years.) ...

 Recent forecasts suggest that it may be cheaper to build new renewables+storage than to continue operating existing natural gas plants by 2035. 

That means natural gas plants built today could be rendered uncompetitive well before their rated lifespan. They could become “stranded assets,” saddling utility ratepayers and investors with the costs of premature decommissioning.

Meanwhile, gas’s environmental reputation has suffered from a series of reports, most recently a study in Science, showing that gas’s lifecycle methane emissions are much higher than previously estimated and could seriously dent gas’s climate advantage over coal. (See author and activist Bill McKibben for an extensive exploration of this point.)

According to the consultancy Lazard, the all-in, “levelized cost of energy” (LCOE) from some renewables is already lower than the LCOE of a lot of fossil fuels in many cases, even without subsidies and without environmental benefits factored in. Wind is the cheapest energy of all, and utility-scale solar is competitive with the cheapest natural gas.

In the Midwest, wind is cheapest. In the Southwest, solar is cheapest. As costs continue to fall, areas where renewables beat new CCGT will grow and spread.

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/7/13/17551878/natural-ga...

JKR wrote:

Ken Burch wrote:

Just clisked at Elections Alberta-had no idea the night had been so comprehensively dismal for the Freedom Conservatives.  .5% of the vote?  Jesus!

The right has clearly learned not to split their vote. Former PC’ers and Wildrosers are celebrating within their United Conservative Party now because of that. The NDP would have had a chance at winning again if the right had split their vote again.

We all know trying to merge the NDP, the Liberals and the Alberta Party wouldn't have made any difference.   Such a merger would have meant having no policies and pretty much governing as a right-wing provincial Liberal government like they tend to get in the Maritimes or like they had in Manitoba before 1969.

JKR wrote:

Ken Burch wrote:

JKR wrote:

Ken Burch wrote:

Just clisked at Elections Alberta-had no idea the night had been so comprehensively dismal for the Freedom Conservatives.  .5% of the vote?  Jesus!

The right has clearly learned not to split their vote. Former PC’ers and Wildrosers are celebrating within their United Conservative Party now because of that. The NDP would have had a chance at winning again if the right had split their vote again.

We all know trying to merge the NDP, the Liberals and the Alberta Party wouldn't have made any difference.   Such a merger would have meant having no policies and pretty much governing as a right-wing provincial Liberal government like they tend to get in the Maritimes or like they had in Manitoba before 1969.

I guess the solution would be electoral reform to fix the vote splitting problem caused by FPTP plurality voting. Too bad the Alberta NDP government didn’t support electoral reform when it had the chance.

Agreed.  Probably they were afraid they'd have to form a coalition with the Greens or some sort of newly formed green-socialist party that might push them towards accepting someting like the Leap.

Ken Burch wrote:

JKR wrote:

Ken Burch wrote:

JKR wrote:

Ken Burch wrote:

Just clisked at Elections Alberta-had no idea the night had been so comprehensively dismal for the Freedom Conservatives.  .5% of the vote?  Jesus!

The right has clearly learned not to split their vote. Former PC’ers and Wildrosers are celebrating within their United Conservative Party now because of that. The NDP would have had a chance at winning again if the right had split their vote again.

We all know trying to merge the NDP, the Liberals and the Alberta Party wouldn't have made any difference.   Such a merger would have meant having no policies and pretty much governing as a right-wing provincial Liberal government like they tend to get in the Maritimes or like they had in Manitoba before 1969.

I guess the solution would be electoral reform to fix the vote splitting problem caused by FPTP plurality voting. Too bad the Alberta NDP government didn’t support electoral reform when it had the chance.

Agreed.  Probably they were afraid they'd have to form a coalition with the Greens or some sort of newly formed green-socialist party that might push them towards accepting someting like the Leap.

I doubt that that was the fear. The assumption was probably that the only hope of the NDP coming to power in ALberta would be if a majority right woudl be split. PR makes power virtually impossible.

I doubt that this will remain the case in another generation.

The most telling thing for me is that when they ran in 2015 the NDP got 603,459 votes and only 536,220 this election with more people voting than in 2015.  Obviously their own voters gave them a failing grade. They either lost one out of every ten voters and attracted no new supporters or attracted some of those oil friendly votes they were looking for and lost even more of their base. I suspect they lost a part of the 2015 base that understands climate change and gained a minuscule number of new centrists. Given the Greens dismal support the interesting question is where did those voters go or did they just not go to the polls.

I think with the right united in Alberta under the UCP banner, the UCP will have a very long run in office against a fractured opposition. The UCP run could be as long as the Alberta PC Party’s run  was or as long as the Alberta Social Credit Party’s was.

quizzical wrote:

kropotkin1951 wrote:

The most telling thing for me is that when they ran in 2015 the NDP got 603,459 votes and only 536,220 this election with more people voting than in 2015.  Obviously their own voters gave them a failing grade. They either lost one out of every ten voters and attracted no new supporters or attracted some of those oil friendly votes they were looking for and lost even more of their base. I suspect they lost a part of the 2015 base that understands climate change and gained a minuscule number of new centrists. Given the Greens dismal support the interesting question is where did those voters go or did they just not go to the polls.

i'm betting once the advance pools are counted they beat their 2015 vote totals. 

and you're wrong they couldn't have gone anymore "left" or they woulda lost more seats.

there's going to be bad buyer's remorse by this time next year or sooner. 

once they find out they're not going back to work 'next week' things will get ugly.

they want their "coke and prostitutes" back afterall.

I hope you are right. The government did many good things but I still think that fishing for votes from oil industry workers was just flat out misguided. Her attacks on BC and demands that the "national interest" should prevail over the self determination of the people who live on the Coast or the indigenous leadership of unceded territories were over the top and IMO have done lasting damage to the NDP brand.

You are right that Albertan voters voted for a return to the coke and prostitute economy of rapid oil and gas expansion. Never believe an Albertan that promises not to piss away the next oil boom.

Krop wrote:

You are right that Albertan voters voted for a return to the coke and prostitute economy of rapid oil and gas expansion.

Can we please lay off insinuations about the alleged spending habits of workers in the oil industry? What they're spending their money on shouldn't matter if the issue is enviromental degradation.

If green energy takes off as predicted, you think the white-colllar tech workers making the stuff will be spending all their money on vitamins and feminist encounter seminars?

Misfit wrote:

the reality is that Alberta is a fiscally and socially conservative province. They have voted for right wing parties up until four years ago. We all knew that an NDP re-election now was very slim at beat even as far back as four years ago.

....I believe that just like the NDP federal inroads in Quebec in 2011, the NDP never has had nor likely ever will have a solid support base that can sustain them beyond one term.

quebec does not identify with the NDP  Alberta does not identify with the NDzp and the United States does not identify with social democracy. 

Yes to Alberta, no to Quebec. Quebec does not identify with any particular political party period. We would vote NDP or a brand new party tomorrow if we thought we would profit from it. Quebec has gone Conservative, NDP, Liberal, and Bloc in recent history. Alberta is ideologically free market and Conservative. 

Aristotleded24 wrote:

Here is what really bothers me about this whole thing. I can remember when oil was booming, and there was a sense of entitlement in Alberta. Hands off our oil, this is provincial jurisdiction. If you don't have jobs where you live, move. That's what they said as unemployed people from across the country poured into Alberta to work in their economy.

So true. Alberta seems to have become a professional victim. Playing the victim no matter what the situation is the right wing fallback position. Some Albertans seem to think this is the same as Quebec getting their way by being the squeaky wheel but Quebec wasn't demanding the rest of the country risk their land. 

Alberta takes the attitude that people are stopping pipelines just to be mean or that they can't stop pipelines if they drive cars or they can't stop pipelines if we import from elsewhere or pretends that piping bitumen is the same as piping other oils. 

epaulo13 wrote:

..soon alta will be facing it's own challenge and still on my point that fantasies being sold. 

TarSands Trial Legal Backgrounder 

I have found that very odd. Albertans are falling for it too. They really seem to believe they have the legal right to put pipelines through provinces and indigenous lands.

Aristotleded24 wrote:

 Most regular people don't care about politics, and somehow mainstream political organizations haven't picked up on that yet.

Many people here haven't picked up on that yet. They still think people will priorize other issues over economic well-being.