I was going to vote “no to the nine” anyway.
Before I even took the time to digest the questions, I was voting “no”.
Not because— as my aunt suggested— I have “Danielle Smith Derangement Syndrome,” but because this should have been an election.
My favourite thing to do (which is also the thing that keeps me from succumbing to DSDS) is ask myself if Conservatives in Alberta would think it was fine if the NDP decided to ask for a new mandate without calling an election.
If the NDP was spending $130 million because they wanted a “mandate from Albertans,” without doing what every governing party should do if they want a mandate— that’s “call an election,” Lauretta— I don’t think Conservative Albertans would be thrilled.
Sit with it, though, and get back to me if I’ve got that all wrong.
I was initially calling it a “freebie” where the governing party could run a campaign with public funds and, if people don’t support the options, could just be like, “welp, guess it’s not popular; no harm, no foul!”
Except… it’s costing almost three times more than a general election and some of these questions unfairly target an incredibly small percentage of the population who can neither vote nor have democratic representation.
Certain Conservatives still refer to a saying that was super popular in the 18th century: “no taxation without representation.”
Yet, it’s exactly what this government is proposing for people who legitimately come here to work on our farms, in hospitals and senior’s centres, meat plants, and yes, our retail sectors.
Intended consequences
What’s worse is that by putting these questions to Albertans, the UCP is just looking for another scapegoat. The Premier will absolutely shrug off accountability and say “Albertans wanted us to target temporary workers and businesses who hire them.”
The obvious problem with forcing additional costs on businesses who hire temporary foreign workers is that they will push those costs onto consumers if they can; I’m not sure what the farms will do with it as they mostly sell at global commodity prices. But do we really need meat getting more expensive? Or our healthcare costs going up again?
I could pay more for my large double-double once a month without feeling the pinch, and I’m sure people who hire nannies aren’t going to balk at an extra $1900 per year, but do you know who can’t afford to absorb the costs? Seniors.
Healthcare aides, housekeepers, and kitchen staff from the Philippines are incredibly popular in both the long-term care facility and senior’s lodge in my town. If those businesses have to start paying additional costs for their employees, who do you suppose is actually going to pay for it? The people on fixed incomes.
Almost as if they know how this works, the governing party has floated an “Alberta-approved immigrant status” to exempt certain businesses from paying the additional fees for their employees.
According to the host at one of the separatist events I went to, some UCP MLA’s are saying they have no idea what the “Alberta-approved immigrant status” means or what the legislation would look like.
I believe that to a point; the leadership in the governing party seems unconcerned with the impact of their haphazardly written legislation. Just look at how many times they had to amend their Citizen-led initiative legislation to help the separatists even get their petition started. They don’t seem to think about consequences overmuch.
I do think about consequences, though, and the only benefit to this so-called “Alberta-approved immigration status” I can see is for the political party. Not “the governing party” per se, but the political party itself, whose leadership rewards friends and donors with heaps of public funds.
If we can afford to cover access to public services for “Alberta-approved” workers, then it’s not really about the cost, is it?
Targeting people here to help us… doesn’t help “us”
Today’s OpEd in the Calgary Herald by Yedlin & Parry should be required reading for every voter.
Alberta has been striving to diversify our economy since Peter Lougheed. We are finally seeing progress; yet we are seriously thinking of blowing it all up by erecting new obstacles in the form of this referendum - including all 10 questions.
A diversifying economy needs two things: talented labour from around the world, and foreign capital investment. We don’t have enough of either here at home to realize all of the current opportunities. And there is plenty of competition for those two assets from other jurisdictions. People and money have choices.
As angry as I frequently get at Ottawa (especially the Trudeaus - both of them), it just isn’t worth tanking our economy by closing doors and creating turmoil just when diversification is actually happening. Put the gun away before we shoot our collective feet.
Former PC volunteer and advocate
The Yedlin & Parry article is titled “Province could score big with global investment; or self sabotage.”
Again, it doesn’t make sense to even float this from a provincial opportunities standpoint, or even a cost standpoint. What does the business community hear? Alberta will be more expensive to run your business if you can’t hire locally.
Even if I try to be charitable about their motivations, if the province isn’t bringing in enough money to cover public services for a small number of people working here who might use them, the Premier is highlighting another problem entirely: maybe having the lowest corporate tax rates in the country isn’t working out.
The narrative usually goes to some form of “low taxes support investment” or “taxes on profit are unfair to businesses.” And, sure, if you believe that corporate taxes don’t support things like roads and infrastructure businesses rely on, or education to get the staff they need, or healthcare to keep their staff healthy and productive, then I guess that’s a reasonable argument.
However, they do, and it’s not.
Most economists will say that it’s not about having the lowest taxes, it’s about finding the sweet spot where taxation levels are not a deterrent to investment but also still manage to cover the costs associated with them. Their employees, wherever they came from, benefit from the same access to high quality public services. If their business taxes are too low to cover $1900/year for some of their employee’s healthcare access, or $10,000/year for a few students (who they would have to sponsor to move to Canada, by the way), the problem seems to be the province’s corporate taxation structure.
Not that this government would admit it.
The United Church in High River, Danielle Smith’s old stomping grounds in her Wildrose days, came up with a decent message: does this strengthen our community?
How does it strengthen a community to refuse to educate the children who live there? How does it strengthen a community to punish local businesses and employers for hiring people to do jobs that Canadians aren’t rushing to do themselves?
When people say they want jobs to go to locals first, they mean the good ones— not the ones who have to empty bedpans and cut other people’s toenails, or spend their day around recently skinned animals. I hear people saying that our youth could be working at Tim Horton’s or McDonald’s yet three out of my five didn’t want to work in fast food and never applied. The fourth applied to one and got hired elsewhere.
If those businesses can’t get staff, they don’t stay open.
Getting Kenney’d
As Ken Boessenkool pointed out on the Rob Breakenridge Show, politicians usually try to find wedge issues for their competition; not themselves. He also reiterates his previous argument that Danielle Smith is not conservative and with her separatist-lite platform, should have been disqualified from running for the leadership in the first place.
Have I mentioned lately that I hate political parties and think they should be banished from existence? Just add that to the list of how they are not accountable to the public and keep providing reasons for me to dislike them.
As if to underscore Mr. Boessenkool’s point, too many of the UCP’s referendum questions take aim at traditionally conservative support.
Businesses? Check.
Patriotic Canadians? Check.
Newcomers to Canada? Check.
“Fiscal responsibility” conservatives? Check.
All to placate the separatists in her party who are also unhappy because they didn’t get what they wanted, either.
One of the spokespeople for the separatist cause, Jeffrey Rath, is calling on separatists vote “no” to the constitutional questions because they’re just separatist-lite, too.
In a recent poll by Ipsos, the “meritocracy” argument reared its head in response to the suggestion that Albertans should be prioritized for jobs.
Albertans who think this is a distraction are mad. Albertans who wanted to separate are mad. Albertans who never wanted to separate are mad. Albertans who can think of better ways to spend $130 million dollars are mad. Albertans who don’t think the government should be spending $130 million dollars are mad.
You see the common thread, I’m sure.
That’s what getting Kenney’d looks like. In an effort to appease a small group of people who have unrealistic expectations, they manage to piss everyone off, including the people who were led to believe that what they wanted was even possible. With Jason Kenney it was an end to restrictions on public gatherings during a pandemic. With Danielle Smith it was promising a separation referendum.
Same audience. Same attempt to cajole them along. Same outcome of hitting a wall of reality. For Premier Kenney it was hospitals bursting at the seams. For Danielle Smith it was the law. Reality doesn’t care about your feelings.
Overcoming the rurban divide
From the loss of the Calgary-Shaw by-election, to the Premier’s— and with that, the UCP’s— potentially growing unpopularity, I think it is even more likely they will now attempt to gerrymander the electoral boundary map in their favour.
With all of the other chaos the Alberta government is creating, we haven’t talked as much about the ace up their sleeve to keep them in power without having to win over voters. One woman I spoke to recently was surprised that they were going to do that “again.” After the by-election result, it was almost guaranteed.
At a town hall last week in Strathmore, the Premier tried out some messaging on the topic. Her riding of Brooks-Medicine Hat, she noted, was rural with a “chunk” of the city and she claimed that it was good because it allowed her the opportunity to represent both rural and urban.
“That’s how it should be,” she said.
In response to a question about the by-election result, she said “that’s how it is all across Canada, people urban centres will eventually vote Liberal and NDP.”
Not that Conservative parties are alienating voters with their culture war crap and constant victimhood, but that being in an urban centre long enough will turn people into progressives— even in Alberta.
It had a real “the bogeyman will get ya” feel to it.
She offered that it’s still possible for the UCP to win in cities, because conservative voters have the same values, but that their priorities can be a bit different and the party messaging will have to reflect that difference.
“I’m not saying we would try to win Calgary-Buffalo,” she laughed. “I don’t even know what we’d have to say to try.”
It is certainly easier not to spend any time wondering why they’d be so against voting Conservative, at least.
Timing is everything
To have done as much work as they did to get a separatism question in front of Albertans in this political climate is beyond obtuse. That alone is probably souring Albertans on the rest of her questions, too.
It’s ironic.
Not only did the UCP not require a referendum to do any of the things the Premier says she wants “a mandate” for, but I not only think they would have probably eked out enough support without the separation question, I’m quite certain they only threw the rest of the questions together in an attempt to provide some political cover for putting the separatist question forward.
At this point, support for the questions they could have won support on is actually dropping, according to Janet Brown’s latest for the CBC’s Road Ahead series, and 49 per cent of respondents said they were unsure how they were going to vote on the other nine.
Those numbers, just over three weeks away from E-Day on October 19, is a terrible place for the Premier and the UCP to be with Albertans, but the numbers are actually worse within their own party.
It perhaps explains why none of them are out campaigning for it— they don’t want it to stick to them a year out from the election.
Even with the separatists campaigning to “send Ottawa a message,” Ottawa is not on the ballot. The Liberals are nowhere on the ballot.
This referendum is entirely Danielle Smith and the UCP and these numbers suggest that they are not even flirting with majority support in their own party right now.
Frankly, I hope every elected official is mulling over their choices, too.
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Great read. Good insight on the ‘Alberta approved immigration status’. One more subsidy for Smith’s O&G sponsors.
Bingo.
Danielle Smith never says the quiet things out loud, much less call an election on them.
She calls this nonsense citizen initiative-driven , but it comes straight out of UCP AGMs & their Town Hall meetings.
It will not strengthen the community where you live, much less the province.