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Tom Monto

BC and Alberta -- very, very different politics

Updated: Oct 27, 2020

We all hear how BC is such a different place from Alberta. But I never gave it much thought until recently.


Investigating how proportional representation might have changed the complexion of the BC Legislative Assembly, I dummied up a chart to show party percentages.


I knew there was a NDP minority government propped up by the Green caucus, with a strong Liberal caucus, but I figured the Conservatives had at least several seats


Then looked at the results of the 2017 election and was surprised to see that while Alberta had a majority Conservative government (elected to a mass of seats with 54 percent of the vote - a clear if not large majority of votes), the Conservative party in BC received an infinitesimal number of votes, and in fact had only run 10 candidates and had elected zero - none - nil.


The BC Legislature unlike the Alberta Legislature was not dominated by Conservatives. The BC Legislature was filled by an electorate that had voted very differently than Albertans ever had. The BC voters had voted 40 percent Liberal, 40 percent NDP and 17 percent Green, leaving a bare 3 percent of the votes for all other parties.


Even when the United Farmers of Alberta had elected majority governments three times in a row, there had always been at least a quarter of the Assembly seats filled by Conservatives and/or Liberals - at that time to a greater degree than at present Liberals in Alberta were anti-farmer and anti-labour - in fact they had been the government that the UFA had turfed out of office.


The complexion of politics in BC today is mind-boggling. But it seems likely the Conservatives poor showing was in part a defensive strategic move. They did not run many Conservatives to allow the Liberals to win against the Conservatives' main adversaries, the NDP or Greens -- the old anti-labour Liberal/Conservative joint effort. And in fact it seems that in BC today the Liberals are the conservative party.


I recall a comment made by the great leftist British Labour Party renegade, Tony Benn, when he spoke in Edmonton in the 1980s.


Talking to the aged and weary lefty campaigners of the old Woodsworth-Irvine Socialist Fellowship who sponsored his talk in Edmonton, he said words to this effect:

Take heart.

It looks bleak in Alberta now [then], but note that conservatives wielding power in Britain, the U.S. and Canada are the last of their kind in the West. In Europe there are no strong conservative parties. Social democrats have power in most of the countries of Europe."


The NDP/Greens in power in BC,

NDP being elected in recent provincial elections from coast to coast to coast (except Quebec, NB, PEI, and strangely Saskatchewan),

the NDP being the Official Opposition, by having the second largest legislative caucus, in each Legislative Assembly from Quebec to the BC border,

a Green MP being elected on the east and west coasts,

are signs that a future of very different politics may be just over the horizon.


If Conservatives become the second, third or fourth most popular party in places, they will be the ones who will need proportional representation to get their fair due of seats. For without it other more-popular parties will reap the windfall of seats that leading parties get under FPTP.


We'll see...


Thanks for reading.

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