Dynasty proves stronger than winds of change
So the empire survives intact. Alison Redford’s premiership is safe from her party critics. The PCS roll on with another huge majority, all because of the most singular, screeching turnaround in any recent Canadian election.
The PCS saw it coming over the weekend, as their rolling polls revealed an abrupt halt in growth of Wildrose support, and then a sharp drop.
As of Sunday night, the PCS had been ahead of Wildrose in Calgary for six of eight days. On Monday morning, one party insider warily predicted 48 PC seats. That proved to be pessimistic.
None of this means earlier polls were wrong; just that Alberta’s ruling party staged the most specular salvage operation since the discovery of the Titanic.
The national media and most Alberta toilers in the political pits raced to Highwood for the amazing Wildrose victory.
At Calgary’s Metropolitan Centre, the PCS had unbooked media seats — probably the first time that’s ever happened to them. And the last, I would guess, for many more years. What happened, the PCS felt, is that voters pounded the hell out of them for two weeks, expressing their numerous and fully justified grudges.
Then the public began to look at Wildrose seriously. At that moment Danielle Smith had the government in the palm of her hands. She rolled out policies that had serious appeal with their focus on citizens rather than government systems.
But the PC scandal miners were hard at work, and they came up with a pair of classics; Edmonton candidate Allan Hunsperger’s church rant about gays heading for an eternal lake of fire if they don’t mend their ways; and Ron Leech, the sahib of Calgary-greenway, with his opinion that a white guy is best able to mediate among ethnics, who only speak for their own communities.
One fellow in Leech’s riding, as we pointed out here, was Muslim Mayor Naheed Nenshi. After tweeting his discontent for days, the mayor never did get the clear action he expected from Smith.
Edmonton Mayor Stephen Mandel was equally distressed by her refusal to spray foam on the Lake of Fire. In retrospect, the disapproval of two popular bigcity mayors was a sign of serious danger.
I still find it hard to believe Smith wasn’t personally appalled by the comments from Leech and Hunsperger. But she’s a libertarian who believes, as a matter of firm principle, that people should be able to speak their minds as long as they accept the consequences.
The trouble was, she never defined any limit for her MLAS. When the PCS kept crying booga-booga, be frightened, it started to work.
Essentially, the PC war room forced a head-on public collision between libertarian and social conservative wings of Smiths party.
That was one strange way to lose, and win, an election.
But Alberta politics has still shifted sharply
Not so long ago, Wildrose would have been thrilled to win 20 seats. Then the stakes rose and 20 looks like a loss. But this party is just over four years old. It had elected only one MLA before. Now it has a firm platform to build on.
“Change might take a little longer than we thought,” Smith said with a surprisingly cheery smile. A lot of that growth, if it’s to come, will depend on how she and the party develop.
The PCS face some dangers too. By pulling this off, they might succumb to some of their old habits — arrogance, entitlement and elitism, for starters.
But for four more years, they’re top of the heap. Canada has no survivors like them.