At first glance, Alberta’s historic election of Rachel Notley’s New Democrats Tuesday looks a lot like the Orange tide that swept Quebec and carried the federal NDP to official opposition status in 2011: a telegenic, charismatic leader and a slate of young candidates that replaced seasoned ministers with Poli-Sci students and just brought down the average age of Alberta’s legislature from 52 to 36.
A yoga instructor and probably Canada’s first rapper MLA are also among the neophyte candidates elected. While polling stations closed, people were even tweeting the same “Starbucks will be understaffed” joke heard four years ago.
But deja vu often brings up false memories.
Notley’s personal appeal had a lot to do with the NDP win. But this election was more about punishing the scandal-plagued conservatives that had become arrogant after 44 years in power – not to mention, the PCs’ economic mismanagement and its failure to account for the massive slide in oil prices.
The last straw for many was Premier Jim Prentice calling an election a year before he had to and after barely eight months in office, assuming the PC leadership from Alison Redford (who was forced to resign amid an RCMP investigation into her office’s use of taxpayer-funded planes and other questionable expenses). So, will Notley’s win really translate into federal election votes for Thomas Mulcair’s New Democrats or even Justin Trudeau’s Liberals come the federal runoff in October?
“The federal Conservatives will definitely be on the defensive in some ridings where they never had to be,” says Dave Cournoyer, an Edmonton-based political observer and commentator. “That’s simply because the NDP have resources – 53 MLAs on the ground, they have new volunteers and will be able to fund raise.”
But it’s doubtful we’ll see a similar shift in Alberta in the next federal election.
Alberta’s conservative movement that kept the PC party in power practically unthreatened for more than four decades, is still strong despite PCs being badly crippled and relegated to third party status.
More than half of Albertans cast their vote for the two conservative parties in this election. The PCs’ conservative cousins Wildrose party enjoyed a substantial hike in seats in the legislature to become an even stronger official opposition.
The New Democrats won handily in Edmonton, as expected, and made breakthroughs in the conservative hotbed in Calgary, but the margin was tighter than the seat count would indicate. The NDP won 33 per cent of the popular vote in province’s financial capital, just over a percentage point more than the PCs. But for the NDP that translated to 15 seats to the PCs’ eight.
The 44 per cent of Albertans who voted NDP and gave the party a 53-seat majority weren’t exactly voting for Hugo Chavez either, despite the panicked knee-jerk reaction on Bay Street.
Like the PCs, the NDP ran a centrist campaign. Cournoyer dubs it “conservative progressive.” He says, “The platform was one the PCs might have brought forward in the 1970s.” Comparisons have been drawn to Peter Lougheed, the PC leader who has achieved the status of sainthood among conservatives out west.
“If you want to understand Rachel Notley, you have to understand Peter Lougheed,” says Jim Lightbody, a University of Alberta political scientist. Indeed, like Lougheed, Notley stressed the pragmatism of Albertans over political labels during the campaign and in her acceptance speech.
But mostly, Lightbody says, you have to understand how Albertans vote in provincial elections – in tidal waves – to make sense of Tuesday’s outcome.
“We’re a community that changes our minds in plurality and collectively,” he says. “It’s the way we do business here. In each occasion when governments have changed in Alberta –1921, 1935 and 1971 – the party that formed the new government came from absolute obscurity.”
That’s right. Alberta, 110 years young, has only had five governments, and 17 premiers (four in the last 400 turbulent days). And as in times before, this was a noisy uprising that caused change.
The electorate ousted a government that was overrun with cronies, that had grown so entitled that the premier, Harper’s former Minister of Indian Affairs, Prentice, called an election a year early while his opposition was in shambles. So invincible was he, that the party had scheduled a post-election $500-a-plate fundraising dinner for the PC leader May 14.
But the party’s now leaderless. Prentice, though re-elected in his Calgary constituency, resigned shortly after congratulating Notley. And judging from the crowd standing before him – about 25 not including media – the party will be lucky if donors can raise enough to pay off the amuse-bouche being served.
The lesson for federal politicians gearing up for October’s vote, says Cournoyer, is that you can’t take Alberta for granted. “If you push them too hard, if you’re too arrogant, if you’re too out of touch, Albertans will send you a message. The Progressive Conservative party forgot how to be populist.”
Lightbody echoes the sentiment. “It was a rejection of the old ways of doing things. And that’s the message for the [Harper] government. Are they still speaking the language of the people on the street?”
The federal party leaders stayed out of the Alberta election. But a few Conservative Party cabinet ministers waded in, warning against voting for the NDP, but careful not to take sides between the PCs or Wildrose and dividing the conservative base. What’s to become of that base is another question.
Cournoyer says “It might be easier if the PCs disappear into the history books, then I’d imagine the federal Conservatives will rally behind the Wildrose party.” The federal Conservatives seem to have more in common with Wildrose.
The bigger question, he says, is who will the Alberta NDP volunteers who made this victory happen rally behind federally? Will it be Liberal Justin Trudeau, whose party did very well in recent federal Alberta by-elections? Or will it be the federal NDP leader Thomas Mulcair who is not as popular in the province, but scores higher in national opinion polls than his Liberal counterpart on the leadership question?
If Notley’s victory proves anything it’s that Harper’s opposition can now dare to dream. All bets are off in the Conservative heartland.
Omar Mouallem is an Edmonton-based, National Magazine Awards winning writer who has contributed to The Walrus, Wired and Eighteen Bridges.
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