National Post (National Edition)
GO HOME, ALBERTA
You’re drunk
At roughly the moment Premierdesignate Rachel Notley began her triumphant election night speech in an Edmonton ballroom, the Calgary Flames scored in overtime to defeat the Anaheim Ducks at the Saddledome. There could no longer be any doubt about it: Notley is Hermione Granger. Traffic lights will turn green at her approach. Will and Kate will call to inquire if it’s too late to change that royal baby name to Charlotte Elizabeth Diana Rachel. She’d done the impossible. Until now, it was believed you could only pull off this kind of thing with dragons. Her gracious acceptance speech was missing only Joe Biden to whisper, “This is a big f’ing deal.”
And that it was. The Alberta election set a new Guinness record for most gobs smacked. The NDP win a majority in Alberta? Even more astounding: the pollsters were right? Go home, Alberta, said the nation. You’re drunk.
Some opposition reactions were televised; remarkably, none of them involving ritual seppuku. Others we can only speculate about. Around Alberta, many frightened residents likely stayed indoors fearing a sudden deadly rain of flying pig manure. Perhaps here and there in hidden vales and darkened woods, muttering oilpatch executives with peg-legs and eye patches were burying treasure chests and marking “X’s” on secret maps. Meanwhile in Pyongyang, North Korea, nervous minions were surely afraid to tell Kim Jong Un of this stunning setback for one-party rule.
And the initial reaction of defeated premier Jim Prentice? That too can only be speculated on. “OK, I lost,” he might have said. “So how does this work: do I have to wear an NDP jersey at the next cabinet meeting? No? What, then?”
At least Prentice did not take to a podium to announce he was joining the NDP, an event that by current Alberta political standards might rate as a page-three item. Instead, he resigned his Calgary-Foothills seat before the ballot counting was even finished: so quickly, they could simply have swung the poll doors back open and just kept going. Or it could have been handled Survivor- style with Prentice whipping out his immunity idol so votes cast for him would not count.
Anyway, Biden is right. This was a big bleeping deal. Not so long ago, the NDP could only look on in frustration as Alberta’s disenchantment with the PCs led to a formidable challenge from the right. If Albertans wanted change, it seemed, they would bring forth the Wildrose Party as though from Ralph Klein’s rib. Alberta voters suffered from some sort of collective psychosomatic neck pain that prevented them from even turning their heads to the left. Being the NDP in Alberta was like being the Catholic Church in Saudi Arabia.
But then came Premier Alison Redford’s spot-on Marie Antoinette impersonation, and Wildrose leader Danielle Smith’s sudden coaching decision to call time out and run across the field to join the other team — a strategy that may still represent the last, best hope for the Flames but which proved less than wise for Team Smith. Oil prices collapsed, making Alberta’s financial picture look something like Michael Jackson’s Neverland after the hits dried up. Which, according to new premier Jim Prentice, ought to make Albertans look at the man in the mirror. When at last voters had been though all the fumbles and frippery and missteps Joe Biden could not describe in a family newspaper, there stood NDP Leader Rachel Notley, looking just as cool and collected as she did at the podium on election night.
And that’s when we found out that magic is real. The NDP won Alberta. The lion will lie down with the lamb. The Flames will crush the Ducks. Thomas Mulcair will spin that whole “Dutch Disease” thing into a hymn of praise for Holland and its wonderful tulips and such. Why not? As of Tuesday, it looks like anything is possible.
The only thing missing on Tuesday night was Joe Biden showing up to whisper that this was a big bleepin’ deal