National Post (National Edition)
A political post-mortem
Ain Edmonton fter four decades of Conservative rule, Albertans on Tuesday handed a landslide victory to Rachel Notley’s NDP, shattering the Tory dynasty and leading many to wonder: How did this happen?
In the days leading up to the election, even the most seasoned political observers refused to call it for the NDP, despite overwhelming public-opinion polls.
This was partly because the polls proved so wrong in the 2012 election and partly because it was impossible to guess what voters in such key battlegrounds as Calgary would do.
Mainly, though, it was because nobody could believe they were about to witness the death of a dynasty.
And it was a spectacular demise. The NDP won a 53-seat majority. The Wildrose will form the official Opposition with 21 seats. The Conservatives have been reduced to 10 seats, one of which is now vacant following the resignation Tuesday of leader Jim Prentice. One seat is undecided because of a tie. The Liberals and Alberta Party have one seat apiece. Now, the post-mortem begins. “This was not about 2015,” Mount Royal University political scientist Duane Bratt says. “This was about the last 10 years of Alberta politics all catching up to them.”
The stunning collapse can be traced to 2007, when then-premier Ed Stelmach called a controversial review into the energy sector. The expert panel concluded Albertans weren’t getting their “fair share” from energy development and recommended an increase in royalty rates.
Alberta’s oilpatch was outraged, but Stelmach went ahead and hiked rates in January 2009, the peak of the global recession.
Angry oil companies poured money into the upstart Wildrose party. Donations skyrocketed from $230,000 in 2009 to $2.7 million in 2011. The party elected Danielle Smith as leader and by late 2010, she had the Wildrose leading the Tories in rural Alberta.
With a credible alternative entering from the right, Stelmach’s caucus splintered over a proposed deficit budget and he resigned in January 2011, making way for Alberta’s fifth consecutive Conservative premier — Alison Redford.
In late 2013, Redford spent $45,000 to fly to Nelson Mandela’s funeral in South Africa, a price tag that included a $10,000 charter home to swear in her new cabinet — money she paid back only under threat of caucus revolt.
Ultimately, her travel and controversial use of Alberta’s taxpayer-funded fleet of airplanes triggered an auditor’s investigation that condemned her administration and her “aura of power.”
By the time Redford stepped down in March 2014, the script for the party’s downfall was largely written. Through sheer force of repetition, Albertans had begun to believe that Peter Lougheed’s natural governing party was corrupt and in need of a good, clean sweep.
Jim Prentice knew this when he inherited the mantle on Sept. 6, 2014.
As oil prices continued their precipitous slide, Prentice started warning Albertans that tough times were coming.
Infuriated, Albertans pointed out the that the Tories had governed for four decades and set nothing aside from our energy wealth for a rainy day. Then Prentice called an election a year early.
The Wildrose, with newly minted Leader Brian Jean at the helm, was supposed to be decimated, but polls immediately showed the party remained strong in rural Alberta and the south. And Notley’s NDP appeared to have Edmonton sewn up as early as the first week.
In the leaders’ debate, Prentice misstated the NDP’s corporate tax figures and, when Notley challenged him, he told her: “I know math is difficult.” Social media exploded with recriminations.
All the while, Notley was promising Albertans a populist platform: rollbacks to health and education cuts, school lunches for poor children, more seniors’ beds, a ban on union and corporate donations to political parties, more upgrading of bitumen, a royalty review and an increase in corporate taxes.
There is something else, however, that is far more difficult to articulate: Alberta has changed.
Last month, Notley noted the province is young, diverse and cosmopolitan. Polls show that on issues ranging from human rights to public services, “Albertans are as or more progressive than many other parts of Canada,” she said.
She said that voters’ “values, hopes and aspirations” have diverged from those held by the PC party and that Alberta is no longer the small-c conservative stronghold it once was.
“I had one senior Tory tell me, on the eve of the 2012 election: ‘ We’ve done all this polling, and Albertans don’t know it, but they actually are New Democrats,’ ” she said. “We are a different province than we were 20 years ago.”