B.C. VOTE WILL BE CRITICAL

A win by the province’s NDP will kill a major pipeline and Notley’s electoral future with it

Is this the end of the beginning for Alberta’s NDP government, or the beginning of the end?

I pose the question because we are, of course, at the halfway point in the government’s mandate.

It was two years ago, on May 5, that the untried NDP won its firstever election victory over the geriatric Progressive Conservatives.

If the NDP follows Alberta’s fixed-election-date law, the next provincial election will be held sometime May-ish 2019.

Then again, as we saw in 2015, when PC premier Jim Prentice called an early election, that law is as malleable as Silly Putty.

Indeed, Alberta’s opposition parties already suspect Premier Rachel Notley will call an early election to catch the Wildrose and Progressive Conservatives with their pants down, so to speak, as they try to consummate a political merger.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Before we look at where the NDP government might be going, let’s look at where it has already taken us.

And what a ride it has been.

In the past two years, the government has banned political donations from unions and corporations, revamped (somewhat) energy royalties, introduced an Alberta Child Benefit, and reduced school fees.

It has also consulted Albertans, with varying degrees of success, on a litany of issues, including farm safety, climate change, energy efficiency, grizzly bear protection, the municipal government act, the Employment Standards Code, the Labour Relations Code, and the Workers’ Compensation Board.

This is a socially conscious government that came in to office with the intent to fix stuff broken or ignored by 44 years of PC government.

“There was a lot of work that needed to be done, sometimes referred to as ‘pent up governance,’” Notley told journalists Thursday when asked if her government was moving too far too quickly with the pace of change.

“There was just a lot of stuff that had frankly been ignored by the previous government not just for the 44 years, but as you know, there had been several years of instability under the constant changing of the premiers under the previous government, and there was just a lot of stuff to do.

“And there was a lot of stuff that in my view was desperately needed. It was just not acceptable that we were in a province, an energy leader in the world, still walking around questioning climate change. We had a responsibility to be a leader on that issue.”

For NDP supporters, the past 24 months has been a fast-moving, but relatively tame roller-coaster ride with plenty of ups as they watched the government borrow billions of dollars to spend on education and health, raise the minimum wage, introduce workplace protection for farm workers, and as part of a narrative to take manmade climate change seriously, introduce a carbon levy.

For NDP critics, the ride has been more like the Drop of Doom as they watched the government borrow billions of dollars to spend on education and health, raise the minimum wage, introduce workplace protection for farm workers, and as part of a narrative to take man-made climate change seriously, introduce a carbon levy.

The success or failure of this government is very much in the eye of the beholder.

Reasonable critics of Notley say her policies have made the oilprice-driven recession worse.

Her unreasonable critics pretty much blame her for the collapse in the price of oil.

Notley’s response has been to keep chugging along, despite the drop in energy prices and her government’s popularity. Even though she’s running another $10 billion deficit this year, she’s hoping Albertans will realize she’s doing that so she can keep building, among other things, more schools and hospitals – and keep paying the teachers and nurses, among other public sector workers, needed to provide government services.

That’s why whenever cabinet ministers open their mouths, they’re pretty much guaranteed to say, “This government is making life better for everyday Albertans.”

It is a slogan that became a mantra that has evolved into a verbal tic.

Fiscal constraints have forced Notley to scale back some of her social justice promises. A school lunch program for all children has devolved into a pilot program for inner city schools.

Her universal $25-a-day daycare has also been whittled back to a pilot program.

But not all social justice causes need an influx of government cash. The government is pushing ahead with plans to revamp the Employ- ment Standards Code and the Labour Relations Code. It’s pretty much a given that Notley will change the codes so that Albertans, for the first time, can take a job-protected sick day off work without being fired.

However, it’s not so clear how far she’ll move ahead with a proposal to make it easier for unions to organize in the workplace.

One of Notley’s biggest blunders the past two years was pushing through Bill 6, the Enhanced Protection for Farm and Ranch Workers Act, to give workplace protection to paid farm workers.

When Notley talks about “a lot of stuff that had frankly been ignored by the previous government,” she’s referring in part to quasi-Dickensian conditions on some farms.

As far as she was concerned, she was on the side of the angels with Bill 6. But then all kinds of folk with pitchforks turned up at the legislature to complain that she had moved too far too fast without consulting with farmers.

The government passed the bill, but it’s still in consultations with farmers on how to introduce regulations. And there’s no time frame to get that work done. On that file at least, Notley the hare has become Notley the tortoise.

Notley has learned some hard lessons her first two years in power.

But is it the beginning of the end for the NDP?

Well, that depends a lot on two factors beyond her control.

One is the British Columbia election campaign where the antipipeline Opposition NDP is neck and neck with the pro-pipeline governing Liberals.

Part of Notley’s narrative the past year is that her climate leadership plan — with the carbon tax — helped convince the federal Liberals to give conditional approval to the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline to pump Alberta oil to the West Coast for shipment to Asia.

If B.C.’s NDP win on Tuesday and make good on their promise to hold up the pipeline, Notley will be in big trouble.

And then there’s the whole unification movement between the Wildrose and PCs. A united conservative front could pose a major hurdle for Notley in 2019. If unification does not go smoothly, might Notley be tempted to call an early election?

She says, “No,” that she will live by the spirit of Alberta’s fixedelection-period legislation: “I’m a law-friendly person.”

After two years in power, it’s fair to say we have seen the end of the beginning for Notley’s neophyte government.

Next week’s B.C. election will help determine if we’re seeing the beginning of the end.