Did Rachel Notley win the Alberta election?

Or is Jagmeet Singh just dreaming?

I watched another episode of The Agenda with Steve Paikin interviewing a PhD candidate in political science discussing the recent Alberta election where Danielle Smith’s UCP party won a majority government with 52.8% of the vote and Rachel Notley was a distant second with 44% of the vote. In Paikin’s world, this was a “tight race” and Notley has a bright future, only having to wait until Smith “self-destructs” based on his and his guests analysis of the election outcome.

I started school in Calgary and in 1986 my chuckwagon placed 10th in the Calgary Stampede. I was for a time the major shareholder of Numac Oil & Gas Ltd., a very well run oil & gas company founded by legendary oil man Bill MacGregor and with industry stalwarts like Vern Horte on his board. Vern was a founder of Transcanada Pipelines as it was then named (now TC Energy). I came to understand the vital role our oil & gas industry has played in Canada, contributing more taxes and royalties to Ottawa since my 1968 graduation from Royal Military College of Canada than Canada’s total national debt of $600 billion when Trudeau came to power in 2015.

Since that time, both Calgary and Edmonton have become home to socialists and Paikin has become blatantly left wing in his attitude, demeanour and choice of guests on his popular show. Paikin is an excellent host for a talk show, well-prepared and able to handle controversial issues will skill. One way to handle controversy is to only ask panelists on his show if they are supporters of his ideology or at least only mildly opposed to the socialist agenda of The Agenda. I often think of his show as the sound of one hand clapping, but still enjoy the dialogue it prompts. For now anyway.

Rachel Notley lost, and lost badly. Her support is confined to Edmonton and Calgary which host over half of Alberta’s population and represent 46 of the 87 seat Alberta legislature and these two cities are infected with socialist ideology from stem to stern with “woke” mayors in both cities. Calgary has had one leftist mayor after another - with Nenshi replaced in 2021 (after 11 years as Mayor) by Jyoti Gondek who took advantage of her new found power to suggest canceling Canada Day fireworks celebrations.

Only 44 seats are needed to form a government in Alberta and the NDP “swept” the 20 seats in Edmonton (meaning added one seat since they held all but one Edmonton seat in 2019) despite the term “swept” having an implication of an upswing in voter sentiment (the one added seat was by a very few votes). All Notley had to do was win 24 of the remaining 67 seats, barely one third, and with the 26 Calgary seats predominantly in NDP ridings, should have been able to cruise to an easy win. Albertans outside of the two major cities (who actually work in the oil fields, mines, and agriculture which form the economic foundations of Alberta) thought otherwise and shut Notley out and she should get the message - no one wants an NDP government except the socialists in the two major cities.

The Alberta NDP embraces Trudeaus’ leftist dreams, promotes his climate change nonsense, and squanders millions of dollars on “renewables” which have yet to contribute any measurable amount of Alberta electricity generation. Millions of dollars have been spent on solar which today comprises about 0.1% of Alberta generation of electricity and wind which has a more impressive 5% of capacity.

Source: Canadian Energy Regulator

Actual output from “renewables” lags capacity by a wide margin owing to the intermittent nature of wind and solar and the lack of any cost-effective way to store energy produced at times of low demand. The claim that CO2 emissions cause climate change is a pretense since the theory is inconsistent with the laws of physics and comprises little more than left wing rhetoric.

Danielle Smith won another term as premier simply because she puts Alberta first and doesn’t suck up to Justin Trudeau like Notley and stands up to the Ottawa intrustion into Provincial jurisdictions, something an NDP government would not. It was not a “tight race” since Smith won 8 percentage points more votes than Notley. All Notley has to do to gain a lot of seats is show up - Edmonton and Calgary will elect a ton of socialists since they have become socialist centres much like the Greater Toronto Area has in Ontario and Vancouver has in B.C. The California disease has been imported into Western Canada and it won’t end well.

Major cities are destinations for hundreds of thousands of immigrants Canada welcomes into our country and many of them come from states where socialism is widespread and seen as a positive force. One wonders why they left these utopias to come to Canada and import their cultural and political values into Canada? But they did, and we welcome them as Canada has done since Confederation. Canada’s rich heritage and cosmopolitan culture has always embraced immigration as a source of strength and should continue to do so for generations to come. Our open arms have been predicated on the view that new Canadians will, over time, embrace Canadian values of freedom of speech, freedom of enterprise, individual responsibility and free markets and most have, many achieving success for doing so - Frank Stronach, Frank Hazenfratz, Tobias Lutke, Mike Lazaradis and even Alexander Graham Bell who were immigrants to Canada who played important roles in building our nation’s industrial base.

Today, Liberals and NDP governments are doing their best to destroy that industrial base with only 10% of Canada’s workforce now engaged in manufacturing.

Leftists in Canada have mounted an outright attack on our extractive industries by Trudeau’s Ottawa government and its Impact Assessment Act which is designed to prevent major pipelines, oil & gas projects or mines from ever coming to the point operation. If they succeed and manufacturing keeps deteriorating, Canada will become little more than a tourist destination bereft of its own source of economic wealth or power. The silliness of the “climate change” narrative is patent, a theory that is an affront not only to physics but also to common sense.

I am thankful Alberta continues to elect Premiers who understand the enormous contribution our energy industry makes to Canada and does not succumb to the “something for nothing” ideology of the Liberals and NDP who want Canadians to be dependent on government as a way to obtain and retain power regardless of the damage to the economic future of our country. Smith was the right choice and Paikin’s platform will lose its audience over time if it keeps shifting leftwards.

In a nutshell, Notley lost and we should all be pleased that she did.