Smith, Justice, And Relationships Of Obligation

On Alberta

There’s been a random surge in news in Alberta this week, with two polls saying very different things coming out, and Danielle Smith being caught on video trying to break the very concept of prosecutorial independence for a pastor who broke COVID lockdown rules.

Let’s dispense of the polls – Angus Reid has a UCP +3 Calgary sample, and Mainstreet has a NDP +11 in Calgary. Plainly, I don’t believe Mainstreet’s number, and if we were closer to the election I’d focus more on this, but the only thing giving me pause in being too definitive about this is I wrote a piece last year about Ontario where the basic premise was “Mainstreet is off their rockers”, and it was actually the leading indicator that Del Duca’s pitch had no purchase in the province. Should that be read as me saying that Mainstreet is therefore gospel truth? No, but it’s worth remembering.

The other thing worth remembering is that this is before today’s scandal – and I do think a Premier trying to overtly influence prosecutors is a big scandal – which means the NDP has a better chance now than they did last week.

The problem is, both the NDP and UCP seem to want to lose this election, and do so for the same reason – appealing to Calgary is a relationship of obligation for both parties, and that’s why, in part, the polls in Calgary are all over the place.

…

What Danielle Smith did – I’d say accused of, but since there’s fucking video, it seems hard to deny it – was not just an attack on the rule of law and basic Canadian division of powers, it’s a pretty big fuck you to Calgarians, too. Smith, who remarked her surprise that Alberta Premiers don’t have US Presidential-style clemency powers, tried to overrule a prosecution because it’s someone she doesn’t think is a bad person. And the reason she thinks that is pretty antithetical to the other half of her coalition.

It’s worth always remembering that Alberta is 3 roughly equal political traditions, two of which were held together by a shitty voting system and mutual self interest from 1971 to 2008. The left, whether split between the Liberals and the NDP or coalescing behind one option, the Calgary-Edmonton urban, socially liberal, fiscally conservative group, and the rural, culturally conservative base. Traditionally, the latter two bases stuck together (although, there was often a right wing splinter party that never ended up mattering), and the fact that the left would never unite under one banner never mattered since the right was united.

What ended up happening in 2012 is Wildrose (under Smith) united the third of Alberta that really cares about cultural conservatism under one banner, but the PCs managed to steal 2/3rds of the Liberal vote to keep Smith out of office. Now, the NDP are trying to do a version of the same thing, by stealing the left flank of the old PC wing of the UCP to keep Smith from a majority.

The thing is, we don’t even need to tie this up in abstractions – we know from 2015 where the PC brand of conservatism is strongest, and that’s mostly Calgary. In 2015, the PCs got 31.5% in the city of Calgary proper, while Wildrose got 22.7%. That 31.5% of the vote is the swing in 2023, but Smith is actively trying to alienate those people.

That group is predominantly likely to have supported vaccination, supported vaccine mandates for bars and events, and is generally pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, and at ease with the modern cultural consensus. They’re also likelier than not to be decently well off financially, work a white collar profession, and have personally paid higher tax because of Rachel Notley.

These voters did not like Jason Kenney in large part because of the pandering to the unvaccinated and the incoherent ways he managed the pandemic, and do not love Smith in large part because her focus seems to be on things irrelevant to their lives. Smith hasn’t really done much as Premier – there have been some affordability stuff, but mostly it’s been headlines about fights being picked with Ottawa and various stories of the day about dumb shit she’s said.

None of that has been so far disqualifying, nor would it be intellectually honest of me to say I’m surprised by this when I’m chief of the “It’s Perfectly Reasonable For Progressives To Vote For Trudeau” bandwagon. Especially in Alberta, where the default position of many voters is not neutrality, but Conservative-Unless-You-Make-One-Hell-Of-A-Case-Otherwise. The NDP has to go out and actively win votes, and the opening is there against Smith.

The problem is, the NDP also views Calgary as a relationship of obligation, because there they don’t get to campaign the way they like. In Edmonton, the NDP gets to be as bold and as brash as they want, because the boldness and the brashness works for the voters they need. In Calgary, where the NDP has an economic credibility issue, the voters they need need to be reassured they’re not voting for their own demise.

What the NDP needs to do, and is showing some initial willingness to do, is pitch themselves firmly in the rhetorical centre. I’m not advocating for an abandonment of a solidly left wing government, but how you run and how you govern are not the same and they don’t have to be. What a lot of Dippers seem immune to doing is a form of messaging discipline that the Federal Liberals are eminently fond of. The NDP in Alberta have an opening to pitch themselves as a sort of anti-ideology, technocratic, institutionalist party, and then in government find that the pool of experts they’re fishing in for their technocratic advice happen to be fairly left wing.

What the NDP has to do is a version of what Danielle Smith is choosing not to do, which is present themselves as a party comfortable with and actively desiring the votes of their weak flank. If the UCP were interested in optimizing their chance of victory, they’d pivot Danielle Smith to the sort of cultural left with some gesture – a commitment, perhaps, to repealing Jason Kenney’s bill that would occasionally out students to their parents who join Gay-Straight Alliances – to tell their left flank that they’re not insane. Instead, the UCPer running against Shannon Phillips in Lethbridge is claiming crank conspiracies about teachers showing porn to kindergarteners, seemingly a riff on the insanely damaging and dumb culture wars down south.

The NDP’s version of that needs to be a pitch explicitly to those who worry that the NDP doesn’t get Alberta economics – that they don’t get the importance of oil to the economy, that they don’t have a plan for the economy in the whole, and that they’re going to make ideological choices to make Edmonton happy at the expense of business and jobs in Calgary.

The NDP needs to take the opportunity of a government and a Premier who is fixated on the fringe that will vote for her party anyways – and who are overwhelmingly in seats she will win without even trying – and make a big, expansive offer to the old, PC heart of Calgary. There’s time for them to convert that Mainstreet number – that juicy, Calgary +11 that many wish is true but heavily doubt – into reality, but it will take an NDP that can stop thinking of Calgary and the sacrifices it will take to win there as a relationship of obligation, and think of it as an opportunity. Can they do it? I have my doubts. But Danielle Smith just opened the door wider to them.

For their sake, they better take advantage.