daftandbarmy
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Rocky Mountains said:
Anyone want to bet that the NDP will win this time, despite themselves?
Alberta Election (2015)
- Thread starter Edward Campbell
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Anyone want to bet that the NDP will win this time, despite themselves?
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Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail is a look at the challenges facing Premier Jim Prentice and the contradictions he offers to Albertans:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/alberta/open-road-an-apt-metaphor-for-albertas-jim-prentice/article23887759/
A few disjointed points:
"If he wins a majority on May 5, as is widely expected ..." ~ I wonder. My sense is that polls, no mater how well designed, and expert opinion in the media are no longer very good guides to voter
intentions. For whatever reasons we, the people, seem inclined to both tell the pollsters something less than the truth and make up our minds when we arrive at the polling station.
Alberta has to develop and exploit its other great natural resource: an educated, sophisticated population. Oil is a wonderful foundation, and oil prices will rebound (I'm about 99.9% sure that the Saudis, especially, cannot keep prices
depressed for too long ~ their own budget is in shambles), but Alberta needs to build on that foundation, not squander it on social spending.
Jim Prentice is a proven, established leader. Brian Jean is less experienced, he has less gravitas, but he's younger and more charismatic, I think.
Your views, pleases, Albertans.
_____
Mods: Can someone remove the "?" from the title, please?
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/alberta/open-road-an-apt-metaphor-for-albertas-jim-prentice/article23887759/
If Prentice wins majority, Alberta’s future will echo his contradictions
JUSTIN GIOVANNETTI
The Globe and Mail
Last updated Saturday, Apr. 11 201
Jim Prentice is sitting on a bus rattling along a lonely stretch of road dotted in potholes.
His campaign is travelling along Highway 40 in northwestern Alberta, headed from his hometown of Grande Cache, toward Edmonton. The road serves as an apt metaphor for the challenge the rookie premier faces politically and what he wants to fix in Alberta. Only 24 hours earlier he called a general election.
For nearly a decade, Alberta politics have been adrift. Mr. Prentice says he was disappointed by the premiers in office. There were scandals, indecision and poor planning. It just wasn’t the Alberta way, he told The Globe and Mail in an exclusive sit-down interview.
“Albertans were disappointed and I was disappointed as well, that’s why I came back to public life. I was upset,” Mr. Prentice said while sitting at the back of the blue campaign bus. “I felt that our province has not lived up to its promise.”
That talk wouldn’t be uncommon from a frustrated opposition leader, but Mr. Prentice’s Progressive Conservatives have held power for 44 of the 110 years Alberta has been a province. In office as Premier for only six months, Mr. Prentice is seeking the party’s 13th consecutive majority.
He must now perform a delicate dance and persuade Albertans the Tory party they’ve elected repeatedly has transformed enough under his watch to represent change, but hasn’t changed enough to be a risk once returned to office.
This is how politics are done in Alberta. From the conservative Ralph Klein to the more progressive Alison Redford, the party has shifted over the past half-century. With each turn toward the left or the right, the Tory brand is tied to the personality of its leader.
The former senior federal MP and finance executive will tell Albertans he’s the most experienced and reasonable leader running in years. This comes at a time of deep deficits, tax increases in a province that has resisted hikes for decades and some whispers suggesting the party has lost its iron hold on the political loyalty of Albertans.
Mr. Prentice was a prominent and trusted minister in the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper from 2006 to 2010, holding portfolios in industry, Indian Affairs and the environment. There continue to be rumours that he may harbour higher ambitions than the Premier’s office.
In his first days on the campaign trail, Mr. Prentice betrays no hint he’s worrying about being the leader responsible for ending Canada’s longest-serving provincial government. “I’d like to think I’m tough,” he says. At 58, he’s invigorated by the gruelling schedule of the campaign and has been looking forward to it.
After a rocky stint as Premier during a time where oil prices crashed and the opposition was defanged through floor crossings partially orchestrated by Mr. Prentice, he is finally away from the Dome – the sometimes derisive name for the legislature in Edmonton.
The contradictions that co-exist within Mr. Prentice are plainly visible. He’s the coal miner’s son who worked the pits himself but now wears a tailored shirt. He was a senior executive in Canada’s financial industry, but he’s comfortable in small towns without a bank branch. On the first night of his campaign, he drinks a pint of honey brown, bucking his reputation as too slick and polished.
If he wins a majority on May 5, as is widely expected, Alberta’s future will echo those contradictions. Mr. Prentice’s 10-year vision for the province is to spend less, save more and slowly push the provincial economy away from its reliance on raw energy exports.
If he can follow through with his plan, he’ll leave a mark on his province that can’t be erased. He wants to be a builder. He’ll fill potholes – perhaps the ones on Highway 40, as well – and push out new roads, expand schools, refurbish hospitals.
But first there’s the far larger problem of tackling an economy flirting with recession and a budget far from balance due to an oil price that dropped from $92.86 (U.S.) a barrel on the day Mr. Prentice was sworn in to around $50 today.
“Did I expect oil prices to collapse? Absolutely not,” Mr. Prentice said. “When I was campaigning last summer [for the leadership], the understanding I had was that Alberta would record a multibillion-dollar surplus and the province wouldn’t need to borrow for its infrastructure bill. That was going to be the situation going forward.”
Alberta will now run $8-billion worth of deficits over the next two years, before the province is projected to return to balance in 2017-18. To get there, government spending will only grow slowly over the next three years as the province’s population continues to boom.
“Alberta has been the powerhouse of the national economy and our national prosperity has been driven more by the energy sector than many would appreciate,” he said. “We need to focus on the next three years, which will be challenging. But we will be getting back to being number one.”
Mr. Prentice has promised not to touch the nearly $18-billion earmarked for new capital projects over the next three years. He has labelled the opposition Wildrose Party “extremist” for considering delays or cuts to new projects. While investing in the province, he also wants to double the size of the province’s savings fund to $30-billion within a decade.
“Our energy revenue should be set aside for our children and put in the heritage fund. That fund should be used to do things that’ll accelerate our competitiveness, diversify our economy and make our universities and colleges stronger,” he said.
While Mr. Prentice’s campaign is asking Albertans to look toward the future, the Premier’s playbook comes from the opening chapter of the Tory story. Peter Lougheed, Alberta’s first PC premier, is often referenced by Mr. Prentice as a leader who invested wisely and built widely.
Mr. Lougheed ruled over Alberta as Mr. Prentice came of age in Grande Cache and is an inspiration for the Premier, according to Jean-Sébastien Rioux.
Mr. Rioux was Mr. Prentice’s longest-serving chief of staff while he was the federal Industry and Indian Affairs minister. During Mr. Prentice’s leadership campaign, Mr. Rioux spent several days as his policy chief hashing out his boss’s vision for the province.
“He had a very positive agenda to build, but he’s had to switch from offence to defence,” said Mr. Rioux. “The next 18 months are going to be hard and it’ll be easier after that. He’ll be able to switch to being a builder in the second half of his term.”
If he wins, Mr. Prentice will shift more of his attention to files that languished as he dealt with budgetary woes. Chief among them will be working with the other provinces to get stalled energy infrastructure going. Pipelines to Canada’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts have met political and environmental snags.
Due to the election, Mr. Prentice won’t be attending a climate-change conference in Quebec City this spring. The province’s policy in this area, expected last December, now looks delayed until the summer.
He’ll also spend more time on diversifying the economy. While Mr. Prentice’s first budget, unveiled in late March, promised to help unshackle the province’s revenues from the energy sector, he’s expected to push for more investment in the forestry and food sector to create jobs isolated from the booms-and-busts of oil.
In a picture from 1986, a glum 29-year-old Jim Prentice has his hand pulling his hair as election results poured in. In his first brush with politics, Mr. Prentice lost a provincial race in Calgary-Mountain View to NDP challenger Bob Hawkesworth by 257 votes.
“I learned the importance of hard work and getting out. It was a very difficult election because oil prices and the economy really went south quickly,” he says now, running in an election with similar circumstances.
Mr. Prentice practised law for the next 18 years, only re-entering the political arena in 2004 when he was elected as MP for Calgary Centre-North. He soon struck a path as a Red Tory, voting in favour of same-sex marriage.
Soon after the Conservative Party won the 2006 election, Mr. Prentice was recognized as an ambitious and hard-working minister. Keeping tabs on caucus colleagues through the Conservative hockey team, he was seen as the deputy prime minister in all but name.
He was also one of the few ministers in Ottawa to delve into the bureaucracy, speaking with mid-level managers about problems facing government. Mr. Rioux takes pride in remembering his time working with Mr. Prentice and their reputation for running a professional ministry.
“You’re never going to find anyone who ever worked with him who isn’t to this day completely and absolutely loyal and devoted,” said Mr. Rioux. “He’s smart, but he isn’t pretentious, he isn’t a snob.”
It’s a style Mr. Prentice brought with him to Edmonton when he snagged Mike Percy as his interim chief of staff. The former dean of the University of Alberta’s School of Business, Mr. Percy was packing for a move to Victoria when the then Premier-elect asked him to serve.
Mr. Percy had never met Mr. Prentice before, but says he was convinced in a 30-minute meeting to stay in Alberta. The Premier asked him to run a professional office that didn’t leak to the press and saw a clear line of separation between the civil service and partisan work.
“The credential that he looks for is not that you bleed blue, “Mr. Percy said, referring to the traditional Tory colour. “But that you can run a professional organization and get people pointed in the right direction.”
On the way back from a coal mine, Mr. Prentice’s campaign bus stopped quickly in Grande Cache to pick up another round of coffee for the PC Leader and his staff before the long drive to Red Deer – Mr. Prentice drinks two cups in the morning.
As the bus began to leave the town of 4,300 there was a tap on the door. Ned and Diane Fournier had found an old photo of Mr. Prentice’s late father from the 1940s wearing his Toronto Maple Leafs jersey. Eric Prentice played five games for the Leafs.
The Fourniers were family friends of Mr. Prentice from his time growing up in the town.
“It’s my old man,” he said as he placed the photo on a table in the bus. “Dad was never high on politicians so I promised him I’d get in-and-out of politics quickly with his name intact. He’s on the campaign now.”
A few disjointed points:
"If he wins a majority on May 5, as is widely expected ..." ~ I wonder. My sense is that polls, no mater how well designed, and expert opinion in the media are no longer very good guides to voter
intentions. For whatever reasons we, the people, seem inclined to both tell the pollsters something less than the truth and make up our minds when we arrive at the polling station.
Alberta has to develop and exploit its other great natural resource: an educated, sophisticated population. Oil is a wonderful foundation, and oil prices will rebound (I'm about 99.9% sure that the Saudis, especially, cannot keep prices
depressed for too long ~ their own budget is in shambles), but Alberta needs to build on that foundation, not squander it on social spending.
Jim Prentice is a proven, established leader. Brian Jean is less experienced, he has less gravitas, but he's younger and more charismatic, I think.
Your views, pleases, Albertans.
_____
Mods: Can someone remove the "?" from the title, please?
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Living in Alberta during the Klein years, I recall that there was a view to diversify the economy. Successive governments never really go on board with that idea. The lure of easy money perhaps. I hope that whoever sits in the Premier's chair turns casts a critical eye to insulating Alberta from the boom and bust cycles that it is now subject to.
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The biggest issue I had with living in Alberta was that everyone else assumed we were better off because there was no provincial sales tax. Sure, when I made a purchase I didn't have the extra tacked on but at the same time because there was no provincial sales tax money for provincial programs or to trickle down to lower levels of government I found that everything was more expensive.
- Need to send your kids to school on a school bus....$160 a month for all school systems in Edmonton ($80 if your kid was in the public system but $0 if your kid was in the catholic school system).
- I would get repeated calls every August hassling me about the annual tag renewals for my dog and cats. One year I told the woman that I was well aware they were coming due and I'll pay them as soon as I get the notice, to which she replied the notices were being sent out in the next week and if I didn't pay them on time there would be a fine levied.
- I drove a brand new vehicle to the province when I was posted in. Less then 2 weeks off the lot with valid emissions testing and safety check from Ontario but I was still required to pay a $120 Out of Province Vehicle inspection fee. About 6 months later I bought an 11 year old beater to get back and forth to work but because I bought it in the province no inspection or anything was needed.
- I have a relative living there now who is a new PhD professor but because the provincial government has frozen all money for post secondary education various university and college departments are being shut down and wages for professors are frozen. Now many will say thats fine because university professors get paid too much as it but they would be wrong. A new professor in Calgary makes about the same as a CAF Sgt but that doesn't factor in the professors cost of living in Calgary and any outstanding student loans.
Personally I think the province would be much better off with a small sales tax of some sort.
- Need to send your kids to school on a school bus....$160 a month for all school systems in Edmonton ($80 if your kid was in the public system but $0 if your kid was in the catholic school system).
- I would get repeated calls every August hassling me about the annual tag renewals for my dog and cats. One year I told the woman that I was well aware they were coming due and I'll pay them as soon as I get the notice, to which she replied the notices were being sent out in the next week and if I didn't pay them on time there would be a fine levied.
- I drove a brand new vehicle to the province when I was posted in. Less then 2 weeks off the lot with valid emissions testing and safety check from Ontario but I was still required to pay a $120 Out of Province Vehicle inspection fee. About 6 months later I bought an 11 year old beater to get back and forth to work but because I bought it in the province no inspection or anything was needed.
- I have a relative living there now who is a new PhD professor but because the provincial government has frozen all money for post secondary education various university and college departments are being shut down and wages for professors are frozen. Now many will say thats fine because university professors get paid too much as it but they would be wrong. A new professor in Calgary makes about the same as a CAF Sgt but that doesn't factor in the professors cost of living in Calgary and any outstanding student loans.
Personally I think the province would be much better off with a small sales tax of some sort.
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I moved to Alberta in 1996, mostly because the government decided that me and 400 close personal friends didn't like it in Chilliwack any more. As soon as we crossed into Alberta, it was effectively a 5% pay raise due to the pst. Gasoline and food staples were cheaper. This was in an era where King Ralph was making cuts to health care, and let me tell you, I'd take a cut down Alberta health care system over what was going on in BC at the time. There seemed to be a medi centre about every 8 blocks. I have an autistic son, and the difference in supports for him between here and in BC was startling. To the election, I live in a rural farming area that butts up against the oil patch. I have never heard so much anti gov talk out here as I have in the last 6-12 months, and this is a VERY conservative area. PC may very likely get back in, but not by a large majority is my feeling.
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Keep in mind that Wildrose was effectively the right wing of the PC party after the left wing of the PC party was hi-jacked by Alison Redford's teachers.
In some senses Danielle Smith achieved the goal of seeing off the Redford faction and leaving it open for Prentice to try and reunite the factions.
I expect Prentice to be in the mold of Peter Lougheed - a centrist/pragmatist who would normally (pre-Redford) have had a pretty easy ride.
But the Laisser-Faire right wing (the Klein Faction) who have always been at odds with the more activist Lougheed Faction smelt red meat when the Wildrose was formed. They sensed the opportunity for an ideologically pure government. With Smith going over to Prentice - Opportunity Denied! They are not going to forgive her or her associates anytime soon.
Lougheed and Klein both succeeded as Alberta politicians because they never got too far ahead of the crowd. They stayed in contact and moved the crowd where and when the opportunity presented itself.
Stelmach and Redford didn't Grok* that. The jury is out on Prentice.
*Grok - Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein, 1961.
In some senses Danielle Smith achieved the goal of seeing off the Redford faction and leaving it open for Prentice to try and reunite the factions.
I expect Prentice to be in the mold of Peter Lougheed - a centrist/pragmatist who would normally (pre-Redford) have had a pretty easy ride.
But the Laisser-Faire right wing (the Klein Faction) who have always been at odds with the more activist Lougheed Faction smelt red meat when the Wildrose was formed. They sensed the opportunity for an ideologically pure government. With Smith going over to Prentice - Opportunity Denied! They are not going to forgive her or her associates anytime soon.
Lougheed and Klein both succeeded as Alberta politicians because they never got too far ahead of the crowd. They stayed in contact and moved the crowd where and when the opportunity presented itself.
Stelmach and Redford didn't Grok* that. The jury is out on Prentice.
*Grok - Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein, 1961.
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What made Ralph so popular here, and such a joke in th rest of Canada, is that he wasn't afraid to walk onto a farm and get shit on his shoes, or sit in a hotel bar and slug down a Pil with the great unwashed. The ROC likes it's politicians starched and pressed, but out here Ralph looked like one of us. Nobody has been able to pull that off since, and as I said before, you could dig up his cold moldering corpse and he'd get a good share of the vote.
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Schindler's Lift said:
Compared to every other province, Alberta has an embarrassment of revenue. More and they would piddle it away and borrow some more. Despite the incessant whining, Alberta has an amazing healthcare system. The largest problem in Alberta is that doctors, nurses, teachers, etc. are paid 20 % more than the Canadian average. All the leaders since Ralph were too busy buying off the unions to properly manage the economy. Looks like a 3 way race with the NDP in Edmonton, the PCs in Calgary, and Wild Rose in most of the rest.
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Malcolm Mayes (Edomonton Journal) opines:
Source: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CCbM8SfW8AAaiYH.png:large
Source: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CCbM8SfW8AAaiYH.png:large
Oldgateboatdriver
Army.ca Veteran
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I have no doubt you can use this cartoon and substitute the faces by those of the last six Premiers of any province, or of the last six Prime Ministers, and it will still work. 
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Oldgateboatdriver said:I have no doubt you can use this cartoon and substitute the faces by those of the last six Premiers of any province, or of the last six Prime Ministers, and it will still work.
:bravo:
Very true ... we, all of us, are swamped by platitudes when what we really need is sound, even if unpopular, leadership.
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Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Coopyright Act from the Globe and Mail is an interesting report:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/alberta/alberta-election-polls-painting-a-bleak-picture-for-prentices-tories/article23999141/
My emphasis added
So are angry voters sending a warning to the Tories via the polls or is the dynasty dead?
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/alberta/alberta-election-polls-painting-a-bleak-picture-for-prentices-tories/article23999141/
My emphasis added
Alberta election polls painting a bleak picture for Prentice’s Tories
ALLAN MAKI AND JUSTIN GIOVANNETTI
CALGARY and EDMONTON — The Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Apr. 17 2015
They are numbers to be celebrated or ignored, dichotomized or adjusted. And right now, those numbers are not working for Jim Prentice or his Progressive Conservative party.
With 18 days to go until Albertans vote, the polls are painting a bleak landscape for a party that has been in power for more than 40 years. A poll released on Wednesday sampled 3,121 people and found the Wildrose Party and the NDP arm-locked in the lead, each with 24 per cent of the voters, while the PCs came in third at 18 per cent.
The poll was conducted by Mainstreet Technologies, a Toronto-based polling and research company. Surveys done by ThinkHQ and Forum Research have tabulated how Albertans feel about the election and Mr. Prentice as premier. Forum Research indicates Mr. Prentice’s approval rating has sunk to 22 per cent. Four months ago, it was at 50 per cent.
“Angry people are answering polls and giving answers designed to put the PCs on notice,” Calgary-based pollster Janet Brown said by e-mail. “But when push comes to shove, will anger prevail or will Albertans once again default to the status quo?”
Interpreting polls can be tricky, as Canadians saw in the past few years when parties that were thought to be leading in the late stages of campaigns came up short on election day. Parties publicly dismiss poor results. Good numbers are mentioned, but not so enthusiastically that the parties appear to assume the campaign is over. That is why all the major political parties have their own polls done. Political insiders say the PCs will spend $300,000 to $600,000 for polls and market research.
Mr. Prentice has given his critics enough material to undermine his bid to stay on as premier. There were the orchestrated defections of 11 Wildrose members, including party leader Danielle Smith, who crossed the floor to strengthen the PCs. There was the new budget that critics said made too many cuts in child care and not enough to the province’s deficit. There was the “look in the mirror” comment scolding Albertans for overspending.
There was also the call for an election, which prompted Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi to say that “if we’re in a world where it’s difficult to find $200,000 to investigate the deaths of children in care, to then find $30-million to run an election – it’s a tough argument for me to make.”
On Wednesday, Mr. Prentice promised a Conservative government would not negotiate public-sector raises and would cut the number of agencies, boards and commissions to eliminate duplicated services. The move appears to be aimed at persuading enough people to stick to their Tory-voting ways to give his party victory, as they did when Alison Redford was leader in 2012.
In the buildup to that election, all the buzz, almost all the polls had Ms. Smith and the Wildrose knocking the Tories for a loop. But the PCs handily won their 12th consecutive majority government.
“I keep going back to the lessons of 2012,” Ms. Brown said. “And in 2012, I believe the public did have a strong desire to send the PCs a message. But, in the end, they didn’t have the nerve to defeat the government. I think the same thing may be going on in this election.”
So what happened with the polling?
“When I was with Redford, we made the decision to portray Danielle Smith and Wildrose as extreme,” said Stephen Carter, who worked for the former premier as campaign manager and chief of staff. “People are motivated more by fear than opportunity. The hyper-engaged know how they’re going to vote. The less engaged make their decision in last 72 hours to 72 seconds before marking their ballot. It is those people who can decide an election.”
The undecided made up 20 per cent of the more than 3,000 Albertans who responded in the survey released on Wednesday. That poll had an overall margin of error plus or minus 1.76 per cent, 19 times out of 20.
“In the next couple of polls,” said Quito Maggi, the president of Mainstreet Technologies, “we’re going to ask three questions: Which way are you leaning? How you voted the last time? Who do you think is going to win?’ … The window of opportunity to convince the undecided people is quickly closing.”
The veracity of polling has become a subject for debate, because much of it is now done using a technique called Interactive Voice Response, which is automated calls to people at home or on their mobile phone. Critics and some pollsters believe only angry people who want their opinions to be heard are willing to remain on the phone with an automated voice.
“If the results are, in fact, skewed toward angry voters, and voters who are satisfied with the PCs are under-represented, it would be faulty logic to conclude that the findings are more accurate because numerous polls have similar numbers,” Ms. Brown said. “Skewed results are skewed. And adding skewed numbers together makes them even more skewed, not less skewed.”
So are angry voters sending a warning to the Tories via the polls or is the dynasty dead?
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1848 ERC - same problem in Britain and Europe.
Something is happening but all we can do just now is wait and see. There are way too many moving pieces just now. I wouldn't even begin to hazard a guess on any election just now.
Something is happening but all we can do just now is wait and see. There are way too many moving pieces just now. I wouldn't even begin to hazard a guess on any election just now.
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The dynasty is dead. It is interesting that close to 100 % of rural constituencies will vote Wildrose. The Conservatives lost touch with the third of the province that was their core support that despite the ups and downs could be relied upon to always be there. Without going into specifics but the lies and broken promises simply piled up. As soon as the election was called the promises for schools, roads and hospitals we have been hearing every election for 25 years started hitting the local papers. Too late. Can't trust them.
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Thucydides said:
You ask that question as if you actually believe that the politicians run the government. The bureaucrats run the government and for the most part tell the politicians what to do. Brian Jean has been an MP for 10 years and a businessman and lawyer. Sure he's ready. Rachel Notley has been a union organizer and a lawyer. UUuugghhHH!
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Something very interesting has been going on in Alberta of late. For the past several months, the political reportage here has risen from the depths of mediocrity and has, for the first time in my life, actually held the government to account.* Klein and even Stelmach could have gotten away with Prentice's mistakes, and indeed did, and Prentice seems to think he can; however, there must be some degree of believing one's own BS going on in the PC camp. Literally no one, listening to the radio, reading papers, or listening to people for the past few months would have still thought this coming election a PC repeat (and if this is true in Calgary, you can only imagine in rural Alberta and Edmonton). The massive levels of disapproval attached to his name are perhaps the best indication of what Albertans feel, and he's done nothing so far to improve upon it. The PCs look like they've marched into a trap, and they may not get out of it.
*The Sun papers in 2012 did a reasonable job, but considering their closeness with Mrs. Smith, it's more suspicious than it is professional.
*The Sun papers in 2012 did a reasonable job, but considering their closeness with Mrs. Smith, it's more suspicious than it is professional.
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Wildrose 35.1 % - close to majority. Estimated 41 of 44 required seats.
http://www.threehundredeight.com/2015/04/wildrose-moves-ahead-in-new-poll.html?spref=tw
This time Wildrose might be the safe vote for non-communists. NDP strength is concentrated in Edmonton where they will win almost all the seats but virtually none elsewhere.
http://www.threehundredeight.com/2015/04/wildrose-moves-ahead-in-new-poll.html?spref=tw
This time Wildrose might be the safe vote for non-communists. NDP strength is concentrated in Edmonton where they will win almost all the seats but virtually none elsewhere.
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Rocky Mountains said:
That's funny. The website says the Alberta NDP (not the wild rose party) have 35.1 percent and are on track to win the election.
There is every chance the PCs and Wildrose could split the vote and actually let the NDP come up middle. Interesting times.
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