How Rachel Notley ushered in a new era

ON TRANSITION. BUT CONSERVATISM IS FAR FROM DEAD IN THE WEST

It’s impossible to say if Rachel Notley can win again. But she has already put her stamp on the country and changed the image of a province that was supposed to be stuck in time, write Sydney Sharpe and Don Braid in Notley Nation. being defeated by the NDP.

As Notley approached the finish line, she was met with large, enthusiastic crowds.

She declared to avid listeners: “It’s time for renewal. It is time for change. It’s time for new people with new ideas, better ideas, ideas about making things better instead of worse. And I say this to every Albertan in every community of this province: you don’t have to repeat history. This Tuesday you can make history.”

That they did, to the shock not only of the PCs but of the entire country. The climate for change had created a swell that Calgary’s Naheed Nenshi rode to the 2010 mayor’s chair. In 2013, it swept Edmonton’s Don Iveson into his mayoralty spot. Notley caught the same rising waves that would go on to crest with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s victory.

On the night of her victory, a euphoric Notley reflected on the historic win. “I believe that change has finally come to Alberta,” she told the boisterous crowd in the Edmonton Westin Hotel’s bulging ballroom.

“New people, new ideas, and a fresh start for our great province.”

She was right — to a point. People finally wanted a change from the PCs. But for that change to happen, the PCs had to run the worst campaign imaginable, and the NDP had to run the best.

As new governments always will, Notley chose to see her mandate as a full endorsement of every line in her policy book.

The reality was much more complex; her support was a combination of yearning for the new, a desire to move to younger leadership, a visceral rejection of a staledated party, and an embrace of a fresh direction that ranged, depending upon the voter, from enthusiastic to tentative.

But conservatism itself was far from dead in Alberta. The NDP won 40.6 per cent of the popular vote; the PCs and Wildrose together took 52 per cent. Talk of a conservative merger began almost at once. The provincial economy quickly sank. Notley had taken office in the toughest circumstances faced by any new premier since William Aberhart became the first Social Credit premier in 1935, during the Great Depression.

Rachel Notley was premier. She’d earned the job. But nothing would be easy for her, especially after it became clear that she was intent on driving through the most aggressive social and economic changes ever seen in Alberta.

By late 2016, less than two years into her term, Notley was facing criticism even from lifelong New Democrats who felt the government had done too much, too quickly, without properly preparing the public for one huge change after another. The economy kept shrinking even as the taxpayers faced a comprehensive carbon tax set to take effect Jan 1, 2017. The conservative right was fomenting a sense of almost hysterical crisis as it edged toward a merger of likeminded parties in time for the next provincial election in 2019.

Notley’s own government had been consistently shocked by the length and depth of the economic collapse. The 2016-17 deficit, first projected at $10.4 billon, was expected to total nearly $11 billion. The Fort McMurray wildfire had sucked further billions out of the economy. And yet, the NDP seemed stuck on every detail of its election platform and program.

But signs began to emerge that the NDP would adapt. Notley hinted that her bigborrowing, big-spending program would be adjusted if the economy didn’t turn. Her government was hoping to announce major investments. Approval of a major pipeline still seemed possible. And there was always hope the Alberta economy would soar again.

One thing Rachel Notley would not do was stop being a New Democrat of fiercer temperament than most Albertans anticipated. “It’s time for the public interest to govern what the government of Alberta does, and not private interests,” she told a cheering union audience in Ottawa on Aug. 24. “We got rid of a backwardlooking, climate-change denying, deficit-offloading, austerity-loving, failed conservative government.”

It’s impossible to say if Notley can win again. But she has already put her stamp on the country, changed the image of a province that was supposed to be stuck in time, and fundamentally altered Alberta’s way of dealing with the federation.

With more than two years left to govern, it’s likely Notley and her NDP will create an Alberta so fundamentally altered, with the traditional power structure so scattered to the wind, that conservatives will never be able to put the old egg back together again.