Posted on 06/10/2018 1:13:54 AM PDT by goldstategop
Don Ford's Victory a five-alarm warning for Alberta NDP
DON BRAID, CALGARY Doug Ford likes pipeplines.
That's the end of the good news for Premier Rachel Notley.
For her, Ford’s success is a five-alarm warning that a populist wave could swamp Alberta in the election next spring.
It’s been a strong possibility since Alberta’s conservative parties united. Now, the UCP has a potent role model.
Leader Jason Kenney certainly sees the future in this new Ontario premier who wasn’t the ghost of a possibility three months ago.
Ford didn’t even lead the fractured PC Party until March 10. He remains vague about details. Despite promises, the new premier never delivered a platform detailing costs.
But he won anyway — 76 seats, for an all-powerful majority over the NDP, which captured 40.
Notley has also lost a major ally, exiting premier Kathleen Wynne, on issues like carbon pricing and climate change policy. Ford doesn’t believe in any of it.
Wildly energized, Kenney’s UCP crew rushed out a long, ecstatic statement minutes after Ford was declared the victor.
The election means “we will have a huge new ally in the next government of Ontario,” said Kenney.
He adds some of the populist, anti-elite rhetoric that resonates from Europe to the U.S. and now Ontario.
The election is “a repudiation of Ontario’s liberal elites who spent months viciously attacking the Ontario PC Party and its leader Doug Ford,” Kenney said.
“The same sort of attacks that your new United Conservative Party faces every day from the increasingly angry and intolerant voices of the left.”
Then came the request “for a small donation or whatever you can afford.”
There will be much more of this. It’s working.
Many Alberta conservatives have always liked the Fords, partly because they appalled the Toronto media.
There was an uproar in the federal campaign of 2015 when Prime Minister Stephen Harper spoke at a rally promoted by Doug Ford and his brother, former Toronto mayor Rob Ford, who later died of cancer.
Nobody could have imagined that Doug would become Premier.
But now, you can well imagine him campaigning with Kenney next year.
David Taras, political analyst at Mount Royal University, attributes his victory to “this anti-elite rage, a feeling of being left out and ignored. It’s something you just can’t capture in the (opinion) polls.”
Ontario has its rust belt of small towns and cities with shuttered industries. There is wide income disparity between much of Ontario and sovereign Toronto.
Alberta has its own centres decreed obsolete by the NDP coal phase-out, as well as the shrunken oil and gas towns and general anger at political and economic devaluing of the oilpatch.
The UCP, like Ford, routinely attacks provincial debt and promises to reduce it.
Alberta’s debt-to-GDP ratio, about seven per cent, is actually puny compared to Ontario’s disastrous 37 per cent.
But it’s historically high in Alberta terms, and seems truly enormous to those who remember the debt-free province of a decade ago.
There is a possibility that Ford might be so draconian about slashing programs that Notley will be able to portray him as Alberta’s miserable future under Kenney.
But the truth is that many Alberta conservatives want just such drastic action.
It’s fascinating to note that the Ontario election showed progressives are still a majority in that province.
The Liberals and NDP together pulled 54 per cent of the vote. Because of their split, Ford won with only 40 per cent.
In 2015, Notley also captured her majority with 40 per cent, while the PCs and Wildrose totalled 52 per cent.
And now those two Alberta parties are joined in the UCP.
The point is that Alberta’s natural majority is conservative, and united, while Ontario’s appears to be liberal-progressive, but still divided.
Conservative Ford rode minority rage to victory. Kenney has a majority behind him.
If there’s anything good for Notley in this picture, it’s not visible to me.
Alberta’s Jason Kenney is undoubtedly elated at the improbable Doug Ford victory in Ontario.
It demonstrated the NDP can be defeated and the first test of Alberta’s united conservative party’s ability to take back power from the Alberta NDP is in next year’s provincial elections.
Above all, in the Trudeau era,the message is conservatism in Canada is strikingly robust. Plently to look ahead to and the omens are quite encouraging, indeed.
Alberta Premier Rachel Notley should not rest easy.
What the elites forget is that their attacks are an endorsement for those they are attacking. They broadcast loudly to the world who the next deplorable candidate is.
Justin Trudeau and the federal liberals are scared to death of a Trump inspired populist movement. So much so that the CBC radio and TV broadcasts negative news and opinions about Donald Trump, impugning his mental ability and his successes.
Wake up Canada, Vote for a party that will end economic regionalism in Canada, Unite the Country. We are summarily tired and exhausted of Quebec dictating to Eastern Canada what we will be allowed.
I hope Trudeau is similarly run out of office and replaced by anyone who will bring the benefits of populism to Canada’s wounded economy, and a highly overtaxed people.
The liberal elites won Urban Toronto but lost everywhere else.
It does sound familiar.
True.... if you are lumping the NDP in with the Liberals... https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ontario-election-results-2018-a-map-of-the-live-results/
Nutley got lucky. Wild Rose party split the vote.
Neo-Marxist Nutley is d-o-n-e done just like the dyke in Ont.
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