SAINTS PRESERVE US

 

Careful What You Wish For

 

This morning in Alberta black is white, up is down and left is right. The entrenched, bulletproof Progressive Conservative Party (PC) has ruled Alberta since 1971. That is, until provincial election ballots were counted last night. The Tories, rotted by complacency, were decimated, unable even to muster enough seats to qualify as the official opposition in the legislature.

 

Our premier-elect is Rachel Notley, leader of the left-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP). Alberta will no longer be governed by its Bible belt and the oil patch for the next four years at least. Calgary and Edmonton, the province’s two major urban centres have experienced explosive growth over the past two decades, with growth came diversity. Power now resides where the vast majority of citizens live. Given human nature and this era's infatuation with instant gratification, the electorate's expectations of a magical and immediate reboot erasure of yesterday's staid, redneck Alberta may be absurdly high.

 

Change is good though the transition from PC to NDP could prove a little awkward. Just how Tory blue is the civil service after 44 years? Will there be a flurry of NDP patronage as the new kids review the pedigrees of government suppliers? More worrisome is the depth of the NDP’s talent pool. Beyond Ms Notley’s obvious expertise and acumen the ranks of experience behind her appear frighteningly thin. They are in fact a party of rank amateurs.

 

It began to snow last night after the results were tabulated. It snowed all night. It’s still snowing now. A spring storm can’t be an omen, can it? Are we to endure four years of an economic winter? For some reason as I watched the snow swirl this morning I recalled a plank from the election platform of the satirical Rhinoceros Party who maintained it was more ideologically correct for Canadians to drive on the left and if elected they would change the rules of the road, albeit in phases, beginning with trucks and buses.