Although Alberta has had Conservative governments in all but one term since 1971, it is wrong to say that a majority of Albertans are Conservative.
In many provincial elections the Conservative government was elected without getting a majority of votes.
in 2012 Conservatives won a majority of seats although they had received only 44 percent of the vote. The rest was split among several parties.
And that was not unusual.
In 1989 Conservatives got 44 percent of the vote but 71 percent of the seats.
In 1993 Conservatives got 45 percent of the vote but 61 percent of the seats. In 2004 Conservatives got 47 percent of the vote but 75 percent of the seats.
And three times, Conservatives were elected to majority government with razor-thin majorities of votes. That is almost as many voters voted for the other parties as voted for them, but in these cases too like above Conservatives received a massive majority of the seats: In 1986 Conservatives got 51 percent of the vote but 80 percent of the seats. In 1997 Conservatives got 51 percent of the vote but 76 percent of the seats. In 2008 Conservatives got 53 percent of the vote but 87 percent of the seats.
Thus the First Past The Vote system that we use elected far too many Conservatives to be proportional and thus inflated the Conservatives' popularity in the popular imagination.
This led to the myth that Alberta is massively Conservative while in many cases more voters voted for "anyone but the Conservatives" than voted for Conservatives.
In each of the elections of the last 30 years more than 35 percent of the voters voted for the NDP and Liberals. In 1989 a majority of voters -- 54 percent of the voters - - voted for the two parties taken together. But they received a scant 24 seats, less than 29 percent of the seats. Not at all proportional!
Having an effective vote is just as important as having the vote in the first place.
Meanwhile Jen Gerson's article "The Myth of Alberta Conservatism" (The Walrus, Feb. 4, 2019) misses the mark. Although the headline promises to reveal Alberta's progressive labour and left past (see my other blogs for information on this), the article diverts the reader into believing that all of Alberta' governments since 1921 came out of a wildcat maverick-style mindset (see my blog "Alberta Conservatism is not just Populism" for fuller argument against this proposal).
Gerson: "Albertans’ long-standing commitment to conservatism is, in many ways, a matter of factional allegiance born of an accident of history—the outcome of regional rivalries far more than political beliefs. It’s not that Alberta is bereft of any conservative bent—most Prairie provinces drift to the pragmatic right on government spending, for example—but rather that left versus right isn’t the best framework for understanding the place. For most of the province’s history, it has been conservative politicians who have been the ones promising to defend the province against the presumptions and overreaching of a central Canadian elite." The emphasis may have been on the word promise as far as defending the province unless you believe that Alberta is composed entirely of wanabbee millionaires one good boom away from massive wealth.
Because conservative politicians have proven that they do defend the interests of these greed-inclined speculators, but that they do not defend the interest of he province's workers and every day people. Their life goals are security, peace and better than average standard of living. The province's history of fluctuations of full-blown panicky booms and pretty drastic panicky crashes, its history of low minimum wage and low unionization rates, its history of hamstrung public services and reliance on private provision of necessary services do not serve these working families' interests.
As will be mentioned again below, it was the United Farmers and the Social Credit governments that stepped in to put a moratorium on farm foreclosures. And it was the conservative politicians who argued against this protection.
It was the Social Credit government under Aberhart that defaulted on bond issue in 1936. And it was the conservative politicians that argued against this, asserting the big Eastern investment banks' rights of return on investment over the needs of struggling Albertan families in the dustbowls.
In these cases and many more it was the conservative politicians with his eye on the bottom line who rejected pro-people policies that helped Albertans.
Gerson: "Kenney rejects my suggestion that Alberta is not as conservative as he imagines; that won’t bear out, he insists. “I always believe that demography is destiny, and Alberta’s political culture was established by the people who came here,” he says. “Southern Alberta was settled by Americans from the upper Midwest who came up here for better land and by rebellious third sons of British families who fell in love with the eastern slopes and started ranches.”
Of course, southern Alberta holds no more than half of Albertans, despite Kenny apparently thinking the province starts and ends in the south.
There has historically been a divide between north and south Alberta:
South Alberta dominated by capitalistic ranching empires such as Pat Burns and north Alberta by small farms.
the south has Blackfoot the north Cree.
the south has capitalistic CPR; north has Canadian Northern , government-run railways.
the south in territorial times (being WASP) voted Conservative, the north Liberal because the Liberal government was (relatively) pro-immigrant.
when Alberta voted in a referendum on proposal to put Alberta electric-generation corporations under provincial government control, the north voted in favour of government ownership, the south to preserve the power of capitalistic Calgary Power.
When the UFA and the Social Credit governments were first elected they swept most of the south districts at first, later their popularity spread north, and the SC later made strong inroads into the cities as well. (The SC lost in 1971 because it held the countryside but had lost the cities, same as the Conservatives did in their turn in 2015 to the NDP.)
Of course the south in the past had more clout because it had more seats than the north in many cases not because it had more people but because it had more seats. The relatively densely populated south had smaller districts (by population and land area) than the sparely-populated north which were larger both by population and by land area. (Now this unfairness is mostly eradicated - districts can fluctuate by not much more than 10 percent in population.)
And of course Kenny overlooks that when family farmers from the U.S. moved into southern Alberta, they plowed off the grass cover and opened the soil to the raging winds of the 20s and 30s. The Dustbowl was created and families faced multiple years of crop failures and dust storms. And it was the pro-people UFA and Social Credit governments that stepped in to put a moratorium on farm seizures by creditors. And it was the government (not private corporations) that used government money to haul thousands of farm families out of the dustbowl to farm better land in the north. The farming experience in the south was not a shining example of the benefits of capitalist, although those that survived there due to deep pockets are like Kenny says conservative.
The system works for them - and the Conservative government works for them so why should they not be Conservative/conservative? No reason but Kenny should not expect us all to support his government because it satisfies those far away in the south living lives we do not have and do not want to have.
As for Kenny's statement "Alberta’s political culture was established by the people who came here,” he should recall that much of Alberta's political culture was created by Eastern Europeans fleeing militaristic, right-wing monarchies, slum dwellers from the British Isles fleeing extreme hardship and exploitation in textile mills, and home-grown leftists who recognized through study and personal experience the inefficiencies of the capitalist system in its use of people and resources, and its uncaring attitude to workers and farmers, the old and young, the sick and injured.
These are the Albertans who elected the UFA government, who founded the CCF, who elected the Social Credit and supported its banking reform and "funny money" policies, engaged in the Edmonton general strike a hundred years ago, defended city and provincial public services and business enterprises such as utilities and transit services for decades against the raging greed of those who would see them run for private profit and to serve shareholders and management outside the province.
It was conservatives that pushed for privatization of liquor stores, depriving Alberta taxpayers of assistance from their profits and union workers of union jobs.
It was conservatives that privatized Edmonton telephones (EdTel) and AGT and now its customers pay their money to headquarters outside the province.
These moves did not defend Alberta from - what was it did Gerson said - "against the presumptions and overreaching of a central Canadian elite". These moves did serve to defend the assets of Alberta from its citizens.
Perhaps by "central Canadian elite" Gerson meant the federal government, a democratically elected body of all Canadians. Then for sure conservative politicians did pursue the interests of their wealthy supporters in Alberta, including U.S. oil companies, over the interests of the federal government.
In the privatizations, wealthy investors (not all of them in Alberta) got the benefit of decades of government support for these utility companies. And conservative politicians were thanked for that - by some - the rest of us have little to thank them for.
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