From what the United Conservative Party would have Albertans believe, Jason Kenney’s recent byelection victory was a stunningly remarkable and historic achievement that will herald the beginning of the end for Premier Rachel Notley’s governing NDP.
Even media outlets that are often dismissed by the right as leftist propaganda machines, such as the CBC, labelled the byelection win in the Calgary-Lougheed electoral district as a "landslide” and "resounding.”
However, these stories largely buried the lead, not even bothering to mention until the end the abysmally and embarrassingly low 35 per cent voter turnout that clearly indicates a disengaged and apathetic electorate that remains to be convinced.
Numbers from Elections Alberta showed shy of 11,000 people voted in last month’s byelection — just more than 35 per cent of the district’s 30,023 registered electors. That represents quite a substantial drop from the 51 per cent voter turnout in the general 2015 election, as reported by the CBC.
Granted, byelections have never been known to draw out record numbers of voters — that’s a given and must be acknowledged. But Kenney’s win nevertheless was more indicative of fence-sitting, complacent voters rather than a hard-earned victory that was the result of successfully persuading people through meaningful discourse.
Also, Calgary-Lougheed has historically been a conservative stronghold since the riding’s creation in 1993. So really the byelection was Kenney’s race to lose.
Anyone running under the blue banner would have easily won the riding by basically just showing up and regurgitating the party’s anti-NDP rhetoric.
But the UCP leader’s win was frankly as predictable and unsurprising as the sun rising to the east in the morning.
Meanwhile, the UCP claims the NDP engages in below-the-belt style attacks, while itself frequently using language that essentially describes the government in office as some kind of intentionally job-killing bunch of communists.
With more than a year to go until we head back to the polls, the Kenney Conservatives should consider offering voters more policy substance. If the UCP wants to be taken more seriously by more than its base, the party will have to refocus its efforts on presenting a reasonable alternative to the NDP government’s policies.
But personally, I’m tired of hearing Kenney endlessly droning on about how terrible the NDP is. I want to know — in detail — precisely what his party proposes to do differently, and how those decisions would improve the lives of Albertans.
Of course I’m not about to hold my breath. The former Harper government MP who opportunistically set his sights on Alberta politics has already dismissed putting together a shadow budget, which he previously called a "ridiculous gimmick.”
After all, in the post truth era of alternative facts, why even bother investing a modicum of effort convincing people to vote for you by outlining reasonable policy framework, when you can instead just exploit people’s emotions to rally voters against the governing party?
Simon Ducatel is the editor of the Sundre Round Up.
