State of Albertan Politics
Having just got back from vacation (we visited the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida), it’s time to get a bit more back into blogging. I posted the following as an extended comment for Crommunist who recently discussed the Alberta election.
Successful in Ottawa, Religious Right turns to Edmonton
My shortage in blogging lately hasn’t been for lack of topics.
This past week has seen blow up and scandal plague Alberta politics, as the boobs come off the Wildrose bus. First, we have a compilation of quotes by Danielle Smith shaping her as a Christian Libertarian, then we have her denouncing established climate science, plus she has refused to chasten her candidates for slandering the Edmonton Public School Board and damning homosexuals to burn in “the lake of fire” or for saying that being white is an advantage.
It’s well established that Conservative Party of Canada insiders, like former strategist Tom Flanagan and past Edmonton-Strathcona candidate Ryan Hastman, are working closely with the Wildrose Party. So we shouldn’t be surprised to see the social conservative forces, fresh off their recent Ottawa takeover, are feeling threatened by a new Albertan premier who started to put a bit too much emphasis on the progressive in Progressive Conservative.
Alberta’s next cabinet: Bigots and Theocrats?
After Naheed Nenshi became mayor of Calgary and Alison Redford won the Progressive Conservative leadership race, becoming Alberta’s first female premier, I thought things were turning around for my homeland.
Moderate, pragmatic, and relatively progressive ideas were starting to take hold. Plans were on the way to improve the Alberta School Act and mass transit was taking precedence over freeways.
But now polls are suggesting that Danielle Smith and the Wildrose Party are on track to a majority government. Of course, polls can be wrong, and things can still turn around for Redford (or for that matter for Brian Mason or Raj Sherman), but we’re sitting in dangerous territory.
Much ink is starting to spill on Smith’s dangerous flirtations with so-called conscience rights whereby marriage commissioners and physicians would be free to discriminate against gays, lesbians, interracial couples, and women. Dave Cournoyer took a closer look at some of the candidates carrying the Wildrose flag, showing that a Wildrose government could very easily put homophobes, Christian extremists, and bigots into cabinet.
I think the key to understanding Albertan politics is that it’s not so much about left or right, conservative or liberal, but about pure populist tribalism.
In over 100 years, the province has been represented by 4 different governments. The leaders change, but the governments are routinely re-elected, so long as they maintain the air of competence (actual competence is not required).
When government change occurs, it seems a bit like dominos falling. Once a certain threshold of legitimacy is crossed by the opposition – or perhaps illegitimacy by the current government – voters move en masse to the new choice.
This is why the federal Conservatives win with more than 60% of the vote in many Alberta ridings and arguably even how Linda Duncan increased her share of the vote in 2011. It also explains the quick rise of Naheed Nenshi, the rising support of Stephen Mandel, and the lasting strength of other mayors like Dave Bronconnier and Al Duerr.
It’s this key that also worries me most. With the Wildrose is seen as the alternative and the PCs looking like corrupt crooks, it could very well shift even more. Hence, my bets (and fears) for the final result are Wildrose – 50%, PCs – 19%, Liberals & NDP – 11% each, Alberta Party/EverGreens – 4% each, others – 1%.
Obligatory Budget Post
Today the NDP surpassed the Conservatives in the polls and the Chief Electoral Officer testified to a House of Commons committee about the potential electoral fraud in 200 ridings in the last election, but all of that was overshadowed by Stephen Harper’s first majority government budget, which includes the newsworthy* decision to kill the penny.
Here’s what a majority Harper Conservative budget looks like.
Convention live-blogging #ndpldr
Follow this stream on Friday and Saturday for my Twitter thoughts and comments on the NDP Leadership Showcase and voting.
I'll be starting the feed at 10:00 AM PDT on Friday and ending on Saturday afternoon when the voting ends.
The NDP responds on the Office of Religious Freedom
It’s rare to get a response from a politician when you send them an email. It’s even rarer to get anything more than a form letter.
But I’ve never seen anything where an MP from across the country takes the time to read my concerns in their entirety and responds in kind to each point.
Last week, I mentioned that the NDP are still chasing down leads on the Office of Religious Freedom and after writing the post, I sent an email to Hélène Laverdière, NDP MP for Laurier – Ste-Marie, and Official Opposition Critic for Foreign Affairs. My email and her eloquent and detailed response are below the fold.
Alberta Education: An election bomb?
Alberta is ramping up for an election and while busty buses and money-for-nothing schemes are dominating the scandals, the new Education Act may be the thing that pisses enough people off to actually care about how this election turns out.
Alberta’s education laws haven’t been updated in decades and given last year’s slow resolution of bring secular schooling to Morinville, it’s long overdue. Yet the proposed act is drawing criticism on all sides.
The Catholic School Trustees Association fears that this is the first step to destroying their century-long privilege. Specifically, the act will allow the government to force secular and Catholic schools to share space when necessary and to amalgamate school boards.
Meanwhile, homeschoolers rallied 1500 people for a protest because they don’t want to have to teach they’re children to obey the Alberta Human Rights Act (seriously). To placate these religious homeschooling extremists, the education minister caved and “offered an amendment on Monday to the preamble of the bill, recognizing parents’ right to raise their children within their ethical and religious traditions.” This was not enough to satisfy those who believe we can simply put two words like parents and rights together and suddenly have a codified law.
Nevertheless, the Alberta Liberal Party (who are the fourth party in terms of the number of candidates nominated) is skeptical of the government and fears it will further surrender to the Religious Right.
Kent Hehr, MLA for Calgary Buffalo, asked the education minister , Tom Lukaszuk, whether the province would soon provide “public funding of a school of Scientology or Druids or a school for witches and Wiccans?” Lukaszuk parroted the standard lines of “choice in education” in response.
Hehr pressed further asking if Lukaszuk was “comfortable with parents teaching that homosexuality is a sin or that evolution is not real?” Sadly, the education minister either dodged the question at best or admitted that parents have a right to poison the minds of their children.
Please, listen to the answer. I am comfortable with the fact that parents have the right of teaching their children and passing on their family values, their religious beliefs, and their morality. This is what we do as parents. Whether my daughter comes from a public school or whether she stays at home all day long, I still take responsibility for teaching her what is right and what is wrong, so that aspect has nothing to do with homeschooling. That is what we all as parents have the primary right to do, and we continue doing that.
Choice in education is a smokescreen for wasting money on inefficient two-tiered school systems. Alberta (and BC) currently grant ridiculous amounts of money to private schools, which can discriminate in enrolment and hiring under this absurd system. Furthermore, the United Nations Human Rights Committee condemned the separate school system in Alberta, Saksatchewan, and Ontario as discriminatory and called for the ending of separated school funding.
It will be interesting to see if the majority of Albertans (represented by neither the Homeschoolers or Catholic schools Associations) will stand up for secular, adequately funded education. Hell, it will be interesting alone to see if any party is that brave – the Alberta Party already missed that boat with their platform [pdf].
NDP fights for secularism
With the recent robocall scandal, upcoming budget, and NDP leadership race, it’s easy to forget some of the other controversies that Stephen Harper’s Conservatives have thrown us over the past year.
Luckily, we have representatives like NDP foreign affairs critic Hélène Laverdière, who continue to work to uncover answers. Specifically, she submitted an Order Paper question on the Office of Religious Freedoms that has been mired in mystery since Harper’s election promise and subsequent founding.
According to CBC correspondent Kady O’Malley (who you must follow on Twitter), these are designed to ask “all manner of questions on the administration of government – specifically, questions that, by their very nature, were simply too technical or otherwise unwieldy to be answered during [question period].” Basically, boring stuff that still merits some investigation. It’s less theatrical than question period but often equally important.
Who’s winning Google? #ndpldr
Despite the random number of polls and media speculation, there’s really only one way to know who’s doing the best in a race like the NDP leadership race – the final ballot.
But until then we can make up all kinds of metrics to see how well everyone is doing. For example, Google offers their search insights which lets you track how many people are searching for different terms. By comparing the leadership contenders over the course of the race, we can see who has momentum and is generating interest.
Unfortunately, the chart limits me to only 5 terms at a time, so you’ll have to view these results in two separate graphs.
First, the “frontrunners”: Thomas Mulcair, Brian Topp, Nathan Cullen, Peggy Nash, and Paul Dewar. [Click to enlarge]
Here we can see Mulcair' leads the search results – primarily due to a large bump back in October. We see that he and Nathan Cullen are in a tight race for first, with Cullen just overtaking Mulcair in the last week. Peggy Nash isn’t far behind and Brian Topp seems to have maintained a consistent interest, albeit lower than when he lead from November until mid-January. Finally, after a low-searched campaign, Dewar has fallen off the chart.
Google allows us to further break these results down by region (see inset). These show that Mulcair holds a lead in Quebec, while Cullen has a strong lead in BC. In fact, Mulcair is fourth in BC, behind Cullen, Nash, and Topp. Dewar doesn’t appear in Quebec or BC, while Cullen doesn’t appear in Quebec.
To get the rest of the competitors, I’m going to replace Paul Dewar and Peggy Nash with Niki Ashton and Martin Singh for comparison, keeping as many colours constant as possible.
Here we see a big jump for Niki Ashton when she launched her campaign in November, followed by a fairly quiet campaign until early March before it crashed. By raw numbers, Niki Ashton is only slightly behind Paul Dewar and Martin Singh is trailing very close behind. What’s potentially more interesting is Martin Singh’s late jump ahead of Brian Topp in at the end. Directly comparing the numbers, he still falls just behind Peggy Nash. Singh’s jump is likely related to recent allegations of a pact between him and Mulcair.
In the regional data we can see neither candidate gets a hit in Quebec, and Singh is tied in BC with Mulcair. Ahston pulls ahead of Nathan Cullen in Ontario.
Unfortunately, our country is still too sparsely populated for Google to give us much deeper information (like the other provinces). Furthermore this represents search terms, which can be conducted by anyone. This doesn’t necessarily mean NDP members are searching for these people, although it’s likely a safe bet that more NDP members are searching for the leadership candidates than anyone else.
I’ve only included clips of the automatically generated graphs here, but you can follow the links above to the searches and play around with the parameters yourself or download the spreadsheet file.
New #ndpldr rankings
After my initial NDP leadership race rankings I was looking for an excuse to move Mulcair up my ballot.
While I had some worries about the potential for his leadership, I still somewhat agreed with the general consensus that he looked the most prime ministerial and would be one of the strongest to take on Harper. He seemed to have pretty good odds at winning, so my hope was primarily for him to win later on the ballot, which might require him to soften his stance a bit.
Mulcair’s awful video and unequivocal denunciation of any (pre or post) electoral cooperation have made me quite worried though. In addition to this, after watching the Vancouver debate yesterday I have a few more thoughts on the race that have affected my rankings:
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