where they've got all hell for a basement...
So. Provincial election was on Monday. Went and voted. Nothing changed.
This is the 11th time the Tories have gotten a majority government here. And it wasn't a matter of a charismatic leader -- people weren't voting for Ed Stelmach (hell, half the province didn't actually know who he was until his face was plastered over billboards every-freakin-where, I'd bet money on it). They were voting for things not to change. Because if there's one thing Albertans hate, it's change.
Alberta is a province of resources and wealth. Mining, logging, farming, ranching, and of course, the oil sands. These are corporately owned, and the money they make is corporate. A vote for a Conservative government is primarily a vote for Big Oil. Their policies are environmentally unsound, beneficial to big business rather than the average citizen, and completely untenable in the long term. And yet. Here we are, going on the 37th year of Conservative government in Alberta. They've been in power since before I was born -- since 1971. And unless something world-shattering occurs, it isn't going to change.
The Alberta political scene is a study in obstinacy -- we've been a province since 1905, and we've had a grand total of four ruling parties, none of which was in power less than 10 years. With this election, the PCs have set a new record, beating out the ultra-conservative Social Credit's reign of 36 years (1935 - 1971). The shortest term in office was the United Farmers with 14 years (1921 - 1935).
For the non-Canadians on my f-list (if any of you have read this far -- admittedly, Alberta politics matter only to Albertans, save for providing a good place for mockery and eye-rolling from the rest of Canada, to whom we've continually proven ourselves to be Texas North), elections here work a little differently. We don't vote for our premier, and we don't have proportional representation. The province is divided into 83 electoral districts, and each district votes for the person (out of a total of 5 or 6 different parties running for the seat) who will represent them in the Legislative Assembly. The party that ends up with the most seats becomes the ruling party. This means that even though a party has a majority government (more seats in the Assembly than all of the other parties combined), they may not have had the majority of the province's population supporting them.
Right now, the Conservatives have 72 out of those 83 seats (and a system which holds that members have to vote supporting their party, or they get expelled from said party -- 72 out of 83 votes in favour of whatever the Conservatives want), which means -- to put it bluntly -- that they can do whatever the hell they please without having to worry about accountability. It's been like this for THIRTY-SEVEN YEARS. Is it just me, or does that sort of blow democracy out of the water? There's no way a party which has been in power that long isn't corrupt. No. Way.
And the sad thing is? Albertans keep doing it to themselves.
There are a lot of bigoted rednecks out there who are terrified of change and it's blinding them to the long-term consequences of what our government is allowing to happen to our environment, infrastructure, and social services. Not to sound like a tree hugger here, but we're breeding a wasteland by clear-cutting and the use of freshwater to extract the bitumen in the tar sands (which, without being capped, will in the next five to seven years become the single largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in Canada). And what is our government, the one we've faithfully handed power to for the last thirty-seven years, going to do about it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. "Develop long range plans" and "introduce incentives" doesn't mean a thing.
There are days when I seriously fucking hate this province. Why can't we afford to move to BC yet?
This is the 11th time the Tories have gotten a majority government here. And it wasn't a matter of a charismatic leader -- people weren't voting for Ed Stelmach (hell, half the province didn't actually know who he was until his face was plastered over billboards every-freakin-where, I'd bet money on it). They were voting for things not to change. Because if there's one thing Albertans hate, it's change.
Alberta is a province of resources and wealth. Mining, logging, farming, ranching, and of course, the oil sands. These are corporately owned, and the money they make is corporate. A vote for a Conservative government is primarily a vote for Big Oil. Their policies are environmentally unsound, beneficial to big business rather than the average citizen, and completely untenable in the long term. And yet. Here we are, going on the 37th year of Conservative government in Alberta. They've been in power since before I was born -- since 1971. And unless something world-shattering occurs, it isn't going to change.
The Alberta political scene is a study in obstinacy -- we've been a province since 1905, and we've had a grand total of four ruling parties, none of which was in power less than 10 years. With this election, the PCs have set a new record, beating out the ultra-conservative Social Credit's reign of 36 years (1935 - 1971). The shortest term in office was the United Farmers with 14 years (1921 - 1935).
For the non-Canadians on my f-list (if any of you have read this far -- admittedly, Alberta politics matter only to Albertans, save for providing a good place for mockery and eye-rolling from the rest of Canada, to whom we've continually proven ourselves to be Texas North), elections here work a little differently. We don't vote for our premier, and we don't have proportional representation. The province is divided into 83 electoral districts, and each district votes for the person (out of a total of 5 or 6 different parties running for the seat) who will represent them in the Legislative Assembly. The party that ends up with the most seats becomes the ruling party. This means that even though a party has a majority government (more seats in the Assembly than all of the other parties combined), they may not have had the majority of the province's population supporting them.
Right now, the Conservatives have 72 out of those 83 seats (and a system which holds that members have to vote supporting their party, or they get expelled from said party -- 72 out of 83 votes in favour of whatever the Conservatives want), which means -- to put it bluntly -- that they can do whatever the hell they please without having to worry about accountability. It's been like this for THIRTY-SEVEN YEARS. Is it just me, or does that sort of blow democracy out of the water? There's no way a party which has been in power that long isn't corrupt. No. Way.
And the sad thing is? Albertans keep doing it to themselves.
There are a lot of bigoted rednecks out there who are terrified of change and it's blinding them to the long-term consequences of what our government is allowing to happen to our environment, infrastructure, and social services. Not to sound like a tree hugger here, but we're breeding a wasteland by clear-cutting and the use of freshwater to extract the bitumen in the tar sands (which, without being capped, will in the next five to seven years become the single largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in Canada). And what is our government, the one we've faithfully handed power to for the last thirty-seven years, going to do about it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. "Develop long range plans" and "introduce incentives" doesn't mean a thing.
There are days when I seriously fucking hate this province. Why can't we afford to move to BC yet?