In the day, Alberta became a place for Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau to fly over on his way from Ottawa to Liberal constituencies in British Columbia’s Lower Mainland.
Unless his son Justin wants to land to pose for selfies, after the federal election Alberta will again be a place that won’t see the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada very often.
Like the White Russians in London after the revolution, die-hard Alberta Liberal loyalists will gather around their samovars and share dreams of the Tsar’s return.
In 2015, a new brand of Trudeaumania gave the Liberals four seats in Alberta, the same number as they won in 1968. In 1972, the party lost them all as they will in 2019.
Next fall Canadians are expected to elect their next federal government in the 43rd general election since Confederation.
Alberta is Canada’s orphan.
Let’s face facts. Alberta is no longer seen as the driver of the national economy. Ontario now has that precarious perch.
New oil pipelines to markets and oilsands investments have been effectively sanctioned, and investors, big and small, are fleeing to sunnier climates.
The National Energy Program of 1980 looks like small change compared with the federal Liberal government’s energy illiteracy and ineptness.
Calgary, the once-vaunted oil capital, is now an economic ghost town.
As the 2019 federal election campaign opens, the current Prime Minister Trudeau has a 58 per cent disapproval rating in the most recent poll.
The Liberals have 38 per cent of committed voters, compared to 33 per cent who support the Conservatives and their leader Andrew Sheer. Taking into account the three per cent margin of error, that’s a dead heat.
A minority government is in the making.
The Liberals have no growth potential.
Andrew Sheer and the Conservatives do not yet have the knock-out punch to sweep into majority government.
Sheer has been rejected by the national media as a milquetoast, the same national media who also trashed Prime Minister John Diefenbaker as a renegade. Can any good thing come out of Saskatchewan?
The federal New Democratic Party made a huge mistake, dumping its most-able politician, Tom Mulcair for the Gentlemen’s Quarterly front cover Jagmeet Singh, the best dressed man on the Hill, but not a national contender.
So Canada doesn’t get to a minority government by a three-way vote split with NPD as the third party.
Elizabeth May, after eight years as the Green Party’s caucus of one, may ride B.C.’s anti-oil, anti-pipeline activism to more seats in the Lower Mainland, which will be take-aways from the Liberals.
However, a minority government would be made because Trudeau loses seats to Andrew Sheer.
Alberta’s opportunity in this election is to elect strong Conservatives who are cabinet material.
If Jason Kenney is elected the United Conservative Party’s first premier this spring, he could help with that outcome.
– Frank Dabbs is a veteran political and business journalist and author.
