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The Alberta election is over. In this episode Dave and Ryan discuss the election results, who Jason Kenney might pick for the United Conservative government cabinet, what is next for Rachel Notley and the New Democratic Party in Alberta, if there is a future for the Alberta Party and the Liberal Party, and offer some thoughts about what might happen next.
Thank you for everyone who listened and subscribed to our weekly Alberta Election editions of the Daveberta Podcast. We will be back on regular schedule soon and have a few episode out after next week. And a big thanks to everyone who sent in Elections questions for the past few episodes – they were great and we love answering questions.
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And thanks again to our producer, Adam Rozenhart, for making us sound so good.
Thanks for listening!
3 replies on “Episode 35: The big UCP win, an Alberta Election Recap”
There’s been a lot of talk about the challenge the UCP caucus will have to maintain unity, but Dave makes a good point that the NDP will have some pretty strong tension too.
On the one side, you’ll have believers in Notley’s vision of a moderate party that can govern. On the other side, MLAs that put up with her when it gave them real power, but who would prefer to be hard left ideologues and maybe cement themselves as a permanent 10-20 seat opposition that plays the hits for an Edmonton base.
One of the unusual outcomes of this election is that there will now be much more experience on the opposition side now than on the government side. Kenney has virtually on one with any cabinet or government experience.
I think these days there is an inclination to just shout louder if your political message does not get across. I think the NDP will have to think carefully about how it will approach its role in opposition. For instance, why did Lavscam seem to hurt the Federal Liberals so much, but the Elections Alberta investigations did not hurt the UCP as much?. I would argue that it was the media coverage that caused most of the damage Federally and not the what the other party did or not say or do. Similarly it will be revelations or mis-steps, not attacks that might damage the UCP.
The NDP should also study and pay attention to what happened to the Alberta Liberals in the early 1990’s. They too had a strong opposition to Klein, but each election after that they seemed to get further and further from power. Fortunately for them, I don’t think Kenney connects with people like Klein did, but it would also be a mistake to underestimate him.
I think what we all should focus on, is exactly what the UCP told us was most important. Jason Kenny promised that the UCP would improve the economy by implementing 1980’s style supply side socioeconomics. So. I would suppose that our measure of his success should be: 1. Will the cancelling of laboratory services improvements result in better healthcare outcomes? 2. Will cutting the least expensive healthcare management expense in Canada produce even a fraction of the cost savings he promised or will it just de-stabilize and undermine a critical service? 3. Will cutting the corporate tax to 8% produce more revenue or more shareholder profit offshore? 4. Will charter schools and P3s improve education or further entrench inefficient duplication of management overhead? 5. Will senseless nuisance legal challenges produce results or entrench opposition? 6. Will turning off the taps hurt us and them will producing nothing or magically open the doors to prosperity? In aggregate, are his promises leading us to Sam Brownback and Kansas, or yo some as yet to be identified unicorn of success for fiscal and social policies that are often referred to as voodoo? Maybe a watch list spreadsheet might help. A report card if you will.