Reading the entrails of byelection in Calgary-Lougheed is messy business
Notley, UCP leader will be toe-to-toe when MLAs return
Jason Kenney says his overwhelming victory in the CalgaryLougheed byelection Thursday night sends a clear message to the NDP government.
He’s right.
But what is the message? According to Kenney, it is, “Stop quadrupling our debt. Stop your policies that have killed hope and jobs for so many Albertans and start putting commonsense solutions ahead of your NDP ideology.”
And furthermore, “If we stay humble and work hard, we are on track to defeat this job-killing, socialist government and to renew Alberta as a place of opportunity.”
But that’s not what the NDP thinks the message is.
According to the NDP’s candidate, Phillip van der Merwe, the byelection result has no significance beyond demonstrating the extent of voter apathy.
“The voter turnout was around 30 per cent, which still tells me that there’s so many voters out there that are disengaged, disenfranchised and not engaging in the process of democracy, and that concerns me.”
As far as Premier Rachel Notley is concerned, the byelection merely gives Kenney a seat in the assembly.
“I look forward to debating you in the house,” she said to him in a congratulatory tweet.
The NDP, understandably, is trying to downplay the significance of its loss. Or, more accurately, its drubbing.
Kenney won almost 72 per cent of the 11,000 votes cast.
Van der Merwe was such a distant second with 17 per cent that you’d need a search and rescue team to find him.
Yes, the NDP has a point when it says you can’t read too much into byelection results. They routinely go against governments. And the provincial election is more than a year away. A lot can happen between now and then.
But the NDP can’t ignore the gore when reading the byelection’s entrails.
Kenney’s victory was onesided. It was as if the NDP didn’t even show up. Come to think of it, maybe that would have been better for the party.
Perhaps it should have simply handed the byelection to the leader of the official Opposition unopposed like they used to do for party leaders in the days of yore (Premier William Aberhart, for example, won his 1935 byelection in Okotoks-High River by acclamation).
That would have saved the NDP the embarrassment of Thursday night.
Conversely, Kenney and the
UCP should remember byelections are not always bellwethers.
The Progressive Conservatives won four byelections in October, 2014, but then lost the general election in May, 2015.
A lot can happen in the next year. The price of oil might rise, the economy could continue to recover, and construction of the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion to the West Coast might get underway. All would help the NDP.
But the NDP really has to focus on the economy in 2018 and show Albertans it is serious about cutting government spending, reducing the deficit and unveiling a plan to pay off the debt.
It’s all well and good to pass legislation to protect consumers and workers, as the government did in the fall sitting.
But it’s not as if Albertans have been marching in the streets demanding the government force Ticketmaster to do something about bots buying all the good concert seats.
Albertans are worried about the economy as the province crawls out of a devastating recession.
The NDP’s social-justice agenda is noble, but it’s the icing on the cake. The problem is we don’t have much cake.
The economy is experiencing a jobless recovery where companies are doing better but are afraid to hire back staff. Unemployment is still around 7.3 per cent in the province (compared to six per cent in Saskatchewan and 4.8 per cent in B.C.).
That’s why Kenney keeps hammering at the NDP on economic issues.
And why the hammering is so effective.
Some observers wonder if the NDP should now slow down its agenda, maybe roll back its carbon tax or cancel hikes in the minimum wage.
That’s unlikely to happen. The NDP would be risking a backlash from its own supporters if it began reversing course.
What the NDP has to do is convince Albertans it deserves to be in government more than the UCP — but it must do more than simply bash Kenney at every turn. Notley and the NDP need to present a clear, positive plan for the future.
They didn’t do it in the Calgary-Lougheed byelection.
They have just a bit more than a year to do a better job.
Political analysts say United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney’s byelection victory fires the starting pistol on an unofficial 16-month election campaign that will be defined by the skills and personalities of party leaders.
“We’re dealing with two political heavyweights going head to head,” said Mount Royal political scientist Duane Bratt, referring to Kenney and NDP Premier Rachel Notley.
“We have a full sitting premier going up against a former federal cabinet minister. We haven’t seen that sort of dynamic ever before.
“Instead of having separate press conferences sniping at one another, they’re going to be two swordlengths away in the legislature,” he added.
Kenney took 72 per cent of the vote to soundly defeat all challengers in Thursday’s CalgaryLougheed byelection. He will sit front and centre on the official Opposition benches when the spring sitting begins, likely in late February.
Lori Williams, political scientist at Mount Royal, said the dynamic of Kenney versus Notley is crucial.
The NDP has been governing for 21/2 years after a lifetime in opposition, while Kenney’s team is partly composed of former Wildrose members who have never been in government.
“The focus is going to be primarily on the leaders and their visions,” said Williams.
“There isn’t enough to distinguish the two in terms of bench strength to lean (a voter) one way or the other.”
Kenney was a longtime Conservative MP and cabinet minister under former prime minister Stephen Harper.
His win caps an 18-month campaign that saw him successfully unite the centre-right Progressive Conservative and Wildrose parties under one new United Conservative banner.
Observers say the decisive byelection win in a longtime conservative stronghold doesn’t necessarily translate into broader support for Kenney’s party or a rejection of Notley’s NDP.
Calgary pollster Janet Brown said there were different reasons to vote for Kenney in the byelection.
“Maybe because you do want him to be the next premier of Alberta. Maybe you’re not sure you want him to be the next premier of Alberta, but you think we’d have better government if he was in the house (as Opposition leader).”
Kenney declined an interview request Friday.
In his victory speech Thursday, he cited Alberta’s fragile economy as the fulcrum of the provincial election which Notley must hold sometime in March, April or May of 2019.
“We don’t want to close hospitals,” Kenney told cheering supporters.
“We want to build hospitals and schools, and we know that won’t happen unless we have a dynamic and growing economy — and we understand that we cannot tax and borrow our way to prosperity.”
Notley’s NDP inherited a government heavily reliant on the swings of oil prices, which had plunged by half in and around the 2015 election she won.
Her government’s response has been to borrow heavily for building and spending while working to diversify the economy. The NDP argues that drastic budget cuts would only worsen Alberta’s precarious situation and thwart any recovery.
This year’s deficit is $10.3 billion, with the debt expected to rise past $42 billion by the spring.
But Alberta’s economy is projected to grow by four per cent this year, fastest in Canada, and other signs suggest the financial picture is rebounding.
The direction of the economy will go a long way to dictating the NDP’s fortunes in 2019, Bratt said.
“If there was an election today, the NDP is going to lose because the focus is on the economy, and the economy is still not where it should be,” he said.
“But let’s see where we are in May of 2019.”