Tonight was the leaders' debate for the 2008 general election. I saw another ad for Elections Alberta tonight - I think it's the second time I've seen it. While I applaud their efforts to encourage people to vote, I can't help but notice that there are more ads for the Junos Fan's Choice Award (sponsored by Doritos!) than there are for the provincial election. Just watch, the Junos will probably get better voter turnout. Anyway, this is just another cynical digression from your trusty blogger.

The real meat of this post is a discussion of the debate. I didn't see any real zingers get tossed out there tonight, but I couldn't help but notice that Ed Stelmach used every tactic in the Tory playbook this evening:

Call your opponents socialists

In Alberta, "socialist" and "liberal" are derogatory terms. Stelmach was quick on the trigger for these ones; I think he unloaded the s-word at Mason and Taft during the first open debating session.

Play the experience card

Some might call 37 years of one party rule stagnant; the PCs call it experience (which one it truly is I'll leave as an exercise for the reader). In nearly every statement and nearly every rebuttal, he was emphasizing that he is the premier now, and (presumably in his opinion) is better suited for the job because he's already there.

Don't answer the question

Throughout this writ period, Stelmach has been responding to environmental protesters with a threat that Alberta would shed some 335,000 jobs if aggressive environmental measures were put in place. When asked where that number came from, he completely sidestepped the question and went on about some fuzzy commitment to the environment. The other leaders were no better - in their rebuttals they didn't even call him on it. Talk about toothless!

Finally, we have the granddaddy of them all:

Remind Albertans that the federal Liberals are out to take Alberta's money

I'm no fan of the Liberal Party of Canada, but I find this tactic to be disgusting and yet another example of Alberta's juvenile political culture. It worked for Ralph, and Ed's hoping it will work for him. There's nothing that sends voters running to the PCs faster than raising the spectre of a federal Liberal resource grab (and they're not even the government!). The fact that they share a name with a political opponent at the provincial level doesn't hurt either.

An honourable mention goes to the Wildrose Alliance, who took this one from the PC playbook:

Equalization steals Alberta's resource revenue

We also saw (from Paul Hinman, I believe) another distorted description of the federal equalization program. Alberta politicians (and to be fair, some politicians in other provinces do this too) like to characterize equalization as a transfer from the provincial treasury (or of resource wealth). Say what you want about equalization, but it involves the redistribution of money collected from federal taxes -- the Alberta treasury (and hence resource revenue) are not tapped for the equalization program. As a "have" province, we just don't receive any equalization payments back from the feds like the "have-nots" do.

I love Alberta. I was born here, and have spent four fifths of my life here. Yet when I returned from a five year university jaunt in Ontario I could not help but notice that something in Alberta was making me tremendously uncomfortable. My feelings about it have gotten progressively worse since I returned in August of 2005, until they finally boiled over with the release of the "Our Fair Share" royalty report.

It's the political culture.

To truly understand what I am about to write in the following posts, one must understand what my political stance is. I am a pragmatic conservative. I believe in a cap on health care spending. I believe that levels of government should stick to their jurisdictional knitting. I believe that the innocent should be protected from the guilty, and I eschew the false mythology and the moral superiority that many Canadians exhibit when discussing our place in the world. I believe that Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes both had something to say, and I dispel any notion that equates Keynes with uncontrolled deficit spending. I believe that debt is acceptable for capital projects but not for operating expenses.

I've always been aware of the general political leanings of Albertans, and I am acutely aware that Alberta's political culture skews to the right. This is not a bad thing. Unfortunately our mainstream provincial opposition parties attempt to align themselves in a similar fashion to political spectra in other Canadian jurisdictions and generally are not considered viable alternatives. They are victims of their own leadership, and to a certain extent their organizational structures are to blame as well. Alberta's right, however, suffers from its own problems, and since Alberta's spectrum is skewed, the right wing's cultural problems become Alberta's cultural problems as a whole.

"Redneck and Proud of It!"

Sometime in the late nineties I received a phone call from a sales representative at the now-defunct Alberta Report magazine. She was doing a sales pitch for magazine subscriptions, and her summary for the magazine was that Alberta Report was so conservative that they were, as she put it, "redneck and proud of it!"

I lived in Ontario through two federal elections filled with Liberals slandering Alberta. I put up with snide remarks made by job interviewers and rude comments from other students. I remember a newspaper columnist in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record that once implied in one of his columns that Alberta is less than civilized¹. For five years I defended Alberta vigorously against the redneck stereotype. I am saddened to see that some organizations on the right actually find this moniker to be appealing.

Redneck is not today's Alberta, but some of the stuff flying around on the rightmost fringe unapologetically is. The Alberta Alliance and the Wild Rose Party are cut from the same cloth as Alberta Report, so for the purpose of my discussions I will refer to them as the rednecks.

In my next post I will discuss the National Energy Program and Equalization. I will also explain why I consider Alberta's political culture to frequently exhibit childish immaturity.

¹ Etherington, F. (2004, March 15). Restaurant gouging turns your wine to sour grapes. Kitchener-Waterloo Record, p.B1.

When discussing a proposed Ontario law allowing restaurant patrons to bring their own wine, Etherington remarks that, "Even Alberta -- not the most civilized province in the country -- allows people to bring their own bottles into licensed restaurants and take home unfinished booze."

The other night I was pondering current events and I got to thinking about the Kalan Porter incident. Then, in a flash of inspiration, it hit me: the next great Medicine Hat fight matchup!





Wait for it....







Wait for it...













Kalan Porter vs. Prince Harry! Pure genius!