Point taken. It’s perfect as is.
The CBC has been alerted.
God, no wonder Canadian politics is so boring. We’re arguing over which provinces is considered “Central” or “Eastern.”
I always suspected Alberta was purple.
I’m from Manitoba and I don’t want to be put in a pot with those conservative fucks from Alberta.
So what makes Albertans in general conservative compared to the rest of Canada?
In brief I would guess a variety of factors. First the higher than average amount of American immigration into the province at the start of the last century. Following that the traditional disinterest the Liberals have shown towards the province as we see recently as a clear example, or through the inability for Liberal leaders to connect with Albertans (both Dion and Chretien I think had this problem) and then finally just active moves that have earned them ire - the NEP under Trudeau.
Also the inability of third parties to have any sort of an impact in Alberta politics - and those that do happen to have some impact like Social Credit merely surplant the ruling conservative basis to become the new basis of conservative power so as to continue what is essentially a one-party system.
Plus for at least the last few decades the economy of Alberta has been good so why kick out the ruling party.
I thought it was because Alberta was a typical extraction dominated economy (mining, logging, agriculture, O&G) that liberals typically rail against and conservatives love? In a very small nutshell.
Also Manitoba girls have a surprisingly hot accent.
Well, indirectly, but it’s not like picking up a pickaxe or touching an oil rigging suddenly releases conservatism-inducing neuropeptides in your brain. As a resource-based economy, Alberta’s success has been pretty stable (even in the busts, the employment rate usually remains above the national average), and you get a fear of change that might threaten that success. Add in “they’re out to leech off our success”-style feelings and the external threats CSL mentioned, and it’s easy to see how conservatism would be appealing.
What kind of accent is it?
This would be my vote.
Haha, are you sure you want to rule out the higher American immigration in 1900?
Alberta is conservative because ignorant small town people are always conservative. My home town of Peace River is up to something absurd like 10 churches for a population of 7000. They love their guns, their pickup trucks, and low taxes.
You’re correct that small town people tend to be more conservative, but that doesn’t explain Alberta’s conservative streak. As of 2006, about two-thirds of Albertans lived in either the Calgary or Edmonton CMAs (urban centres of over a million people each), and over 75% of the province’s population lived in cities of 50,000 or more citizens.
If you’ve ever lived in Edmonton, it’s not significantly different, attitude-wise, from the small towns. I don’t know about Calgary.
Anyway, Alberta’s conservative streak is probably just boomers saying “look at what that crazy ralph klein did for us! we’re out of debt!” But really, they weren’t going to school in Klein’s Alberta. Science classes without labs, sharing textbooks. Whee!
I think people predestined to be ignorant don’t see the problems that this shit introduces. They just see a few highlighted things and ignore the rest. Or buy in to the bullshit that gets spread about liberals. I know that growing up there, a lot of politics was liberals as boogiemen who only care about Ontario/Quebec, and want to screw alberta out of all its hard-earned money, etc etc.
Who the fuck knows.
A recent editorial in the right-wing British magazine The Economist isn’t too happy about PM Harper proroguing Parliament in what clearly is a political move.
Alberta is one of the richer provinces which means it (at least recently) pays out quite a bit in Equalization Payments, given that they probably hate government more than the average province. All of that money comes from resource extraction so they hate people who want to make that go away (generally, liberals).
Maybe it also has something to do with higher American immigration in 1900 as well. They all can contribute.
But I would place my bets on the money reasons, but I’ve never been exceptionally good at judging people’s motivations.
It has that Fargo-esque “abowt” “oh ja!” combined with a more sophisticated French. They were so different from my (Texas) English, though, i almost couldn’t understand them. I was rather amused that north of the wastelands of North Dakota were the garden lots of Manitoba. The unpopulated, undeveloped northern part of ND magically turned into a pastoral and rural Manitoba*with lots of rural houses and even streetlights.
Unfortunately Winnipeg is like a oversized Lubbock or Amarillo Texas.
Hey, maybe Harper’s bullshit will actually hurt him next election.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/01/07/ekos-poll-prorogue.html
58% of 67% isn’t the greatest numbers, but I assume that 67% is probably a similar subset as the people who are likely to actually vote. Maybe people who voted conservative to punish the liberals will switch back.
Either way, I figure this probably locks in another minority. Wheee!
Opposition to the decision was highest among Liberal and NDP supporters and those with a university education.
Conservative voter = ignorant.
A large section of farmers absolutely hate the government because of the Wheat Board. When you have people coming up to you and offering to buy your wheat or other products off of you for 3x-4x times what the Wheat Board is offering to pay you but you have to tell them no because you can only sell to the wheat board because that’s the law. And when that same law doesn’t apply to Ontario, where you have a choice of selling to the wheat board or not, well that also creates some frustration. When the only party who’s promised to change that is the conservatives if they get in power… well you can see one part of why at least farmers want the conservatives in power.
Also, Charles I find your stereotyping rather insulting. I come from a small town and I work in small towns and there are large pockets of people sympathetic for some of the Liberals policies and are disgusted by the conservative’s cuts in education and healthcare.
The Prime Minister admits that yes his government can’t do exactly what every other government in Canadian history has been able to do…
“The fact of the matter is this,” the Prime Minister continued, “the government is going to take advantage of this time – we need the time – to look carefully at our agenda, to continue to deliver the economic measures that are being delivered here and elsewhere across there country as part of the economic action plan. We also need time to re-examine our agenda, to prepare for the next year in Parliament, and to prepare for a very different economy going forward.”
I suppose coming up with ideas on how to govern AND showing up for Parliament while doing so is too hard, too much of a quaint twentieth century notion.