“The danger,” some Calgary political scientist solemnly intoned in last night’s online edition of the Edmonton Journal, is that many “Two-Minute Tories” who bought party memberships to take part in today’s vote for the new leader will fail to cast ballots.
Some danger!
If you’re a Two-Minute Tory who slapped down $5 for an Alberta Progressive Conservative membership so that you could help pick Alberta’s premier — a vote portrayed by the media and the government as the province’s only meaningful expression of democracy — just remember that it’s still not too late to do the right thing and not vote.
Do like Big Business and write off the five bucks as a sunk cost on an activity that will never be profitable. Then get on with your life. If you don’t, not only are you legitimizing the policies and domination of the Conservative Party, you’re in for a world of disappointment.
The reason: these guys aren’t really being candid with Albertans like you who are thinking about voting for them.
The media, with its love of simple stories and dark lines within which to colour, has portrayed this race as a contest between three “conservatives” and three “liberals.” The ultra-right-wing Wildrose Party has tried to cast the vote in the same stark light, along with the preposterous claim no “true conservative” can ever win the Tory leadership.
The “conservatives,” according to this media take on the race, are Ted Morton, who wants to welcome the Wildrosers back to a happy Tory home; Rick Orman, who just wants to emulate the Wildrosers; and Doug Griffiths, who apparently only wants the excuse to wear that nice black suit again.
The “liberals,” meanwhile, are said to be Gary Mar, Alison Redford and Doug Horner.
But these lines have become blurred among the candidates themselves. All three of the so-called “liberals” have indicated they are prepared to look at creeping privatization of health care, attacks on the rights on unionized working people, further kowtowing to the oil industry and, in the case of Redford, deals with Morton! And what, pray, is liberal or left-wing about any of that?
For his part, meanwhile, Morton has been assiduously painting himself practically a “wet,” and with his putative ally Redford a great friend of public health care. Quoth the Edmonton Journal on this: “Alison Redford and Ted Morton both emphatically ruled out privately paid health care in Alberta. … ‘There will be no private pay for private health care,’ Morton said. ‘We would have to find more efficient ways to deliver publicly paid health care.’ One possibility includes contracting out publicly paid services to private clinics, he said.”
Are you reassured by this? Ted Morton as the enemy of two-tiered health care? You ought not to be.
Never mind that contracting out public services to private clinics is no way to save money, a case that has been irrefutably made time and again. The truth is that it’s extremely hard to believe even for a minute that this committed, dedicated, life-long foe of public services has any use at all for public health care.
As the Bible asks and answers: “Can a leopard take away its spots? Neither can you start doing good, for you have always done evil.”
Here’s what Morton, who made an academic career as a market fundamentalist ideologue attacking public services, really thinks:
“If your dog needs a new hip, your dog can get a new hip in one week. But if you need a new hip, you have to wait one year. Does that make any sense to you? It doesn’t make any sense to me. … Get the government out of the way between someone who wants to buy a new hip and the doctor or clinic who wants to provide it. … Let’s get the government out of the way!”
This is what Morton believed in the 2006 leadership campaign and, I say to you, it’s what he believes today. If Redford is doing deals with this person, it’s reasonable to assume that all her rhetoric notwithstanding, it’s quite acceptable to her too.
The political polarities in this province have been skewed far to the right for a long time, and all six of the Conservative candidates are nicely in tune with the market fundamentalist ethos of the age. The fact that poll after poll shows Albertans strongly support true public health care — provided by public employees in public venues — affects the candidates’ rhetoric, but not their core beliefs.
Those core beliefs include the notion that we’d be better off if human health care ran like veterinary medicine. Think about that the next time you take your wallet out to pay to de-worm your dog!
Alberta’s Progressive Conservatives don’t have a “Progressive” bone in their bodies! They ought to be reported to the Better Business Bureau for false advertising when they call themselves “Progressive.”
So when you vote for one of them in their private party election — free of limits on spending and donations, without legitimate oversight and rife with questionable voting practices — you are endorsing the outcome.
Yeah, a lot of people do — 97,000 in 2006, if we believe the party’s propaganda. Well, positive change comes one step at a time. And a good first step for you is not to be one of them.
That way, you won’t be even the tiniest bit responsible for the catastrophe a market fundamentalist like Morton would try to sow if he became premier. And you won’t have to feel the bitter disappointment that’s inevitable when a politician you thought shared some of your beliefs turns out to be another destructive ideologue claiming There Is No Alternative to undermining the best features of our society.
You have a duty to vote — in a real election.
But today, you can Just Say No!
This post also appears on David Climenhaga’s blog, Alberta Diary.
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