A Canadian Lesson in How Not to Politick in a Right-Wing Stronghold
Alberta, Canada’s most conservative province, recently went to the polls. The purportedly left-wing New Democratic Party, in its attempt to court conservative voters, provided the Left with an abject lesson in acquiescence — a road map of exactly what not to do.
Then Alberta premier Rachel Notley seen speaking to supporters at the campaign office of Jasvir Deol during the Alberta provincial election campaign in Edmonton, Canada, March 22, 2019. (Ron Palmer / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images)
If you ask the most fervent partisans of Alberta’s nominally progressive New Democratic Party (NDP), they will tell you that they did a great job in the May 29 provincial election. They got the most votes in the party’s history; they elected two indigenous legislators; they won the popular vote in the province’s two largest cities; they defeated six of the governing United Conservative Party’s (UCP) cabinet ministers.
All of this obscures the fact that they lost and that the popular vote wasn’t even close — the NDP lost by 8.6 percentage points, amounting to more than 150,000 votes. While the NDP may form the largest Official Opposition in Alberta’s history, that will be cold comfort for those who have to suffer the consequences of living under four more years of Alberta premier Danielle Smith’s hard-core libertarian political philosophy.
Priorities for a Smith government include forcing a referendum on any future tax increases (but not cuts); involuntary treatment for people who use drugs; more money flowing from public to charter schools; increased publicly funded health care delivery from for-profit corporations; and subsidizing oil and gas companies in the midst of the climate emergency.
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