Alberta PC's Ousted. Or...Socialism comes to Alberta.

a reply to: JohnnyCanuck

Very well said. I can say, however, that I didn't expect the butthurt I've been chuckling at all day to spill over onto ATS.

Oooohh noes, the world has ended, the sky has fallen, the PC's 44 year hold on Alberta has been ended!!1

originally posted by: Monger
a reply to: JohnnyCanuck
Very well said. I can say, however, that I didn't expect the butthurt I've been chuckling at all day to spill over onto ATS.
Oooohh noes, the world has ended, the sky has fallen, the PC's 44 year hold on Alberta has been ended!!1

I recall a bumper sticker (that's what we had instead of internet memes) from when I lived in Alberta in the '70s:
"Please God, bring back the oil. This time I won't piss all my money away!"

Seems somehow appropriate today.

I live in Alberta, and wow, was this a shocker to everyone. We were all pissed at the PCs, but even so, people kept voting for them, either because they're good little sheeple, or because the other parties were all disorganized and even crazier. Finally, though, apparently enough was enough. People voted NDP not because they actually like the NDP (well, most of them, anyway), but voted NDP as a 'screw you' to the PCs and try to get a bit of opposition in and hopefully get a minority government in. Nobody actually expected the NDP to win a majority; most people thought it would be a PC or NDP minority. (which would have been much better in my opinion, because one party wouldn't be able to dominate)

I'm not sure how this will play out. The PCs were in power here since 1971. (not a typo) I'm 33 years old, and I've never known another provincial government until two days ago. Oil company stocks took a bit of a dive, because they're afraid taxes and royalty rates will go up. (they promised that taxes would increase 2%, so that's likely) As for the royalty rates, I really hope they adopt a Norway style system; they've managed their oil money extremely well and have an incredible amount of revenue banked from it, yet still manage to keep the oil companies happy and profitable.

Historically, Alberta has had five governments, (since 1905 when it was created) all majorities, all for lengthy periods of time (on the order of decades) and all disintegrated in spectacular fashion when voted out. (no party has ever recovered after being voted out here)

I'm both hopeful and afraid for our province at the same time. Things are going to change, but will they change for the better? It's hard to imagine any worse economic mismanagement than we already had, with the PCs virtually giving away our natural resources to the big oil companies; the royalty system is a joke.

I did read two interesting things the NDP have said they want to do, one good, one bad. The good thing; they want to scrap the carbon capture program, which is a colossal waste of money and reinvest the money into useful things. The bad thing; they want to raise the minimum wage to $15 by 2018 (it's like $10-something now I think, so almost a 50% increase) which sounds good for the poorest workers, but what it will probably do is hurt a lot of businesses employing lower wage workers, and those workers might lose their jobs. In addition, with such a huge wage increase, cost of living will probably skyrocket in response, both because more money is out there, and because businesses will need to charge more to compensate for the higher wages they are paying out. Meanwhile, people like me who are making significantly more than middle wage but significantly less than enough to own a home, will probably suffer the most; we won't get more money, unlike the poorest, but we'll suffer higher prices we will be ill equipped to handle, unlike the richest.