National Post (National Edition)
ALBERTA VOTES
Jen Gerson on how to shake a dynasty in 10 steps,
After 43 years in government, one would imagine that Alberta’s Progressive Conservatives could demonstrate more organizational aplomb than a pen of sad puppies begging for adoption. Regardless, they limped into Tuesday’s general election dogged by scandal and missteps on the campaign trail. For future reference, the Post’s Jen Gerson shows you how to shake a dynasty in 10 easy steps.
PICK WRONG SYMBOL OF GENERATIONAL RENEWAL
1 Alison Redford was supposed to be the leader who would revitalize the Tory government. She was a symbol of the province’s generational change, and its desire to play a more active role in Confederation. Unfortunately, she suffered from serious managerial deficits and entitlement problems; her tenure lasted about two years. She resigned last March amid a series of spending scandals.
IGNORE YOUR GRASSROOTS
2 The first experiment a failure, the PCs brought in Jim Prentice. A steady hand to right the keel. A respected Conservative MP and cabinet minister with none of the apparent sense of self-importance that plagued his predecessor, Prentice was the best on-paper leader the party could have asked for — and he was elected to the head of the party with only 23,000 votes, a fraction of the number that supported previous premiers. This should have been the first sign that the PCs were in trouble, and that their base had jumped ship during the reign of Redford. Prentice needed to fix his party; instead the lead-up to the election was dogged with infighting and questionable disqualifications of popular candidates, which further alienated devoted supporters and volunteers.
HAND-PICK CABINET MINISTERS. PUT THEM IN THE WRONG PLACES
3 In a bid to consolidate his base of social conservatives, Prentice found Gordon Dirks — a former Saskatchewan polit ic ian with deep roots in the religious community. He then placed Dirks in one of the reddest of the Red Tory ridings in Calgary. After last October’s surprisingly compe ti tive byelection, Dirks, then education minister, was called out by the ethics commissioner for punting modular classrooms in his riding to the top of the waiting list.
CHEAT TO WIN
4 Under the auspices of a de facto “merger” of right-wing parties, Prentice’s team orchestrated a hasty agreement between his party and the struggling remnants of the upstart opposition Wildrose. In Decem- ber, nine Wildrosers crossed the floor to the governing Tories, a collapse of opposition that was unprecedented in Canadian political history. Prentice failed to understand the significance of Wildrose to Albertans; for voters, that opposition represented the only real check on the PC’s ancient, entrenched and farreaching power base. The Wildrosers’ defection was seen as opportunistic and underhanded. Furthermore, the move alienated the leftleaning coalition that came together to vote PC in 2012 to keep Wildrose out of power.
BLAME ALBERTANS
5 Prentice responded to a catastrophic drop in oil prices by telling Albertans they needed to “look in the mirror” to understand the cause of the province’s financial woes. Albertans had been enjoying the oil-plumped fruits of government spending for far too long, he said. This may be true, but it failed to acknowledge that the actual controllers of that spending have been, for two generations, the PCs themselves. The only action Albertans need to look in the mirror about is the habit of voting the PCs to power.
OVER PROMISE, UNDER DELIVER
6 After January, Prentice went on a doomsday blitz to warn every Albertan within two feet of a radio or a television that an austerity budget was coming. A once-in-a-generation budget. A transformational plan. After Albertans became resigned to massive hikes and rollbacks, Prentice then dropped a bit of wishy washy weakness that neither raised taxes and spending enough for the left, nor cut deeply enough for the right. Add a raft of unpopular tax increases that let corporations off the hook, the PC’s remaining right-wing base was not only alienated, but also betrayed.
ANGER? WHAT ANGER? IS THAT ANGER?
7 Prentice ignored the quiet competence of the NDP’s Rachel Notley until it was too late. He chose to dismiss the fact that of the nine Wildrose floor-crossers, most quit before they could face doomed nomination battles. Of the six who stuck it out, only three survived. Angry PPs (and a few angry Wildrosers) turfed Danielle Smith in her Highwood nomination battle, casting her from political life. The control panel was beeping. Angry red buttons everywhere.
GO TO THE POLLS ANYWAY. YOU’RE THE PCS, RIGHT?
8 Prentice disregarded his party’s own fixed election date to call the vote a year ahead of schedule. He dropped the writ on April 7. Ostensibly, he said, this was about the transformational budget that wasn’t. In reality, the economy was tanking along with the oil price, and this was his moment to secure a four-year mandate in the face of a weakened opposition.
CHANGE YOUR BUDGET. BUT NOT ENOUGH
9 Any pretence that the election was about that budget was destroyed on April 21, when Prentice rolled back an unpopular plan to reduce a charitable tax credit. What he didn’t touch were those corporate tax rates, despite the fact that raising corporate taxes remains widely popular. This gave the NDP a real policy stick. The beatings commenced. Two days later, Prentice challenged Notley on those corporate taxes and, after misstating the party’s figures, told the personable, likable female leader that “math is difficult.”
WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS, TRY PANICKED FEARMONGERING
10 Terrifying the bejesus out of Alb er tans over the prospect of an NDP economy might have worked if the PCs hadn’t been so bad at managing the budget themselves. There’s material there: the NDP is proposing a royalty review, and its plans for corporate tax hikes will put Alberta closer to Quebec and Ontario’s rate. That said, the PC’s entire campaign strategy missed the plot; when he came in, Prentice had a year and a half to fix the party, build a rapport, and establish trust with voters. He failed on every count, instead rushing a vote on a record that he hadn’t yet established.
Even if the PCs secure a majority government on Tuesday, faith in the party’s latest saviour will have been irrevocably shaken. Now all that’s left is to dance to the sound of the sad trombone music in the distance, and to await the end.