Sunday morning, Mount Royal University Professor Duane Bratt took to the social media site previously known as Twitter to observe, “There has been some snap election speculation in Alberta (as there always is).”
Dr. Bratt, who is probably Alberta’s best known and most frequently quoted political scientist, went on to add, rhetorically, I presume, “Hopefully the events in BC show the risks in that strategy.”
The events in B.C. referenced by Dr. Bratt, in case any of you slept through the weekend, involved that province’s NDP premier, David Eby, foolishly having called an early election and paying a steep price for it at the polls on Saturday. A Conservative named Lorne Doerkson is now the premier-elect of our westernmost neighbour, and since I have paid very little attention to British Columbia politics for the past several years, I am going to resist the temptation to bloviate at length about how that may have come about.
Still, tired as we all have grown of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s separation nevendum and its collection of cartoon-like supporters, someone in a field like political science shouldn’t be hopeful that there won’t be a new political drama in our neighborhood. For those who must publish in order not to perish, topics for new scholarly papers should always be welcome.
Surprisingly, some commenters took issue with Dr. Bratt, pointing out that Alberta has a fixed election date enshrined in law. Alas, as we have already seen with Ms. Smith’s government, that doesn’t mean very much. This is especially true, now that we Albertans are staying in Canada, in a Parliamentary system required by the nation’s fundamental law to have “a Constitution similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom.” (It was written in the 19th Century, so of course they capitalized every third word or so.)
That means, at Dr. Bratt patiently pointed out to one of his critics, “Alberta has a fixed election law which is meaningless to prevent a snap election.” What’s more, he continued with another argumentative tweeter, Alberta’s legislation is “a law which says that the election date is fixed but nothing precludes the LG from calling an election. Either because the govt lost a confidence vote or based on the advice of the Premier. We had a similar law when Prentice went early in 2015.”
Indeed we did, and that is something with which Premier Smith should be familiar, even if she happened to sleep through the events in British Columbia over the weekend. After all, as the floor-crossing leader of the Wildrose Opposition in 2014, she played a key role in the circumstances that led to premier Jim Prentice’s disastrous early election call in 2015.
That, in turn, resulted in the election of an NDP majority government led by Rachel Notley, something that came as a surprise of virtually everyone in Alberta, including the NDP.
British Columbia also had a fixed-election date law at the very moment Mr. Eby asked the Lieutenant-Governor of that province to call an unfixed election, thereby unmooring his NDP from government two years before he was required to do so.
Despite all this history, I can confirm that I too have heard the buzz Dr. Bratt referenced, although it might have been better described as a low hum.
It does seem apparent, as Dr. Bratt suggested, that an early election in Alberta would be an extremely bad idea for Ms. Smith’s government just as it was for Mr. Eby’s, notwithstanding their ideological differences.
It could also be argued, though, that Ms. Smith would have a slightly better reason, given the need to heal the rifts in her own ruling coalition caused by the recent referendum campaign and her sinking personal approval levels. An early election just might be the Hail Mary pass that could unite her fractious supporters and nail down another mandate now that she’s just blown to smithereens the one she was trying to get by using a referendum.
Premier-elect Doerkson has reportedly promised that one of the first telephone calls he makes after being sworn in will be to Premier Smith to tell her that he supports the Pacific Link Pipeline project.
Pipeline supporters in Alberta are entitled to take hope from this, but it pays to remember we live in an era when politics is no longer the art of the possible, but the art of the confrontational. It is not difficult, therefore, to imagine a scenario in which, given the makeup of his party and caucus, Mr. Doerkson might be tempted to pick a fight with First Nations over treaty negotiations about B.C.’s vast swathes of unceded territory.
As Vancouver-based economist Jim Stanford observed on social media Sunday, “The BC NDP govt supported the pipeline (since a big quid pro quo deal with Ottawa in July). First Nations are the most consequential opponent. The new Conservative govt’s attacks on DRIPA & other Indigenous issues make a deal with them less likely.”
It would be ironic indeed if the election in British Columbia of a government on the same ideological wavelength as Alberta’s UCP resulted in a situation that led to the demise of the Pacific Link plan.
If nothing else, this should be a reminder to those in UCP circles who have grown impatient with long-ago-established Treaty obligations, that there are advantages to the fact all of us here in Alberta live on Treaty land, where the pathway to agreements is settled, even where that presents a legal risk to a government’s policy.
For her part, Premier Smith was apparently too busy to attend the historic meeting of Canadian first ministers and First Nations leaders in Ottawa yesterday.
The Canadian Press reported Sunday that Alberta’s premier “said she will not be attending because the meeting overlaps with the resumption of question period in her province as well as the aftermath of a historic referendum on separation.”
That statement may be half true. After all, Ms. Smith does have work cut out for her to repair the crumbling UCP coalition in the face of her foolish referendum. However, she certainly hasn’t been unwilling in the past to head to another jurisdiction to evade difficult questions in QP. As we say here in Alberta, when the going gets tough, the tough get out of town.
I’ll leave the last Alberta word on B.C.’s election to former Alberta NDP leader Brian Mason, an experienced politician who is in retirement a permanent resident of the beautiful Okanagan Valley.
“I said at the outset that David Eby was running a big risk by calling an election half way through his term,” Mr. Mason wrote on Facebook not long before the polls closed.
“Eby has shown bad political judgement throughout his Premiership,” Mr. Mason continued, “including the hard drug policy, wanting to scale back DRIPA, support for Carney and Smith’s pipeline, and ultimately calling a snap election that nobody wanted.
“Many excellent NDP projects remain incomplete, affordable child care being the most obvious example. Now we face a Conservative government that will inevitably roll back many of the gains made by the NDP over the years.”
Mr. Mason summed up: “I’m pretty discouraged by the B.C. NDP to say the least. And don’t get me started on the NDP in Alberta and Nenshi’s liberal party. I still have high hopes for Avi Lewis and the federal party though. We will see. But from now on, my support for the NDP will no longer be automatic. They will need to win it each time. They can start by electing a new and progressive leader in B.C.”
I’m sure a lot of New Democrats in British Columbia feel the same way. Good luck to them with that.