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Calgary Under the UCP

There may be a few Calgarians lamenting their voting choice. I think many who voted UCP thought they were going to turn the economy around and are now wondering if they made the right choice.
 
I hope so. But I fear that many Calgarians will continue to vote for the UCP as an "F-you" to Ottawa so long as Trudeau is in power - no matter what they think of the UCP's actual policies. I don't think its a coincidence that the Alberta PC party's 40-year rule disintegrated under a Conservative, Albertan Prime Minister. There was no one left for Albertans to blame but the Conservatives and corporate sector.

The UCP's multi-billion dollar corporate tax cut, plus all of the cuts to popular public services (health care, education, police, transit), plus the subsequent behaviour of the corporations (layoffs, relocations) - these would be political suicide in any other province.
 
There may be a few Calgarians lamenting their voting choice. I think many who voted UCP thought they were going to turn the economy around and are now wondering if they made the right choice.
The number of people who thought the province and federal governments have a magic wand that can fix things continues to amaze me.
 
The UCP have only been in power 5+ months!!! Anyone expecting a dramatic turnaround in a short period of time is unrealistic. That is not what the UCP promised. Not helping things is the continued lack of leadership at the federal level on energy, which has caused more apathy on the part of Eastern Canada.
The recent budget cuts were necessary. Unless you are the Alberta NDP or the federal Liberals, you can't have an under performing economy, and continue to pile up debt. That is fiscally irresponsible and puts the province in an even deeper hole long term.
Of course Calgary is going to be impacted by budget cuts. So are other municipalities. :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
 
The UCP have only been in power 5+ months!!! Anyone expecting a dramatic turnaround in a short period of time is unrealistic. That is not what the UCP promised. Not helping things is the continued lack of leadership at the federal level on energy, which has caused more apathy on the part of Eastern Canada.
The recent budget cuts were necessary. Unless you are the Alberta NDP or the federal Liberals, you can't have an under performing economy, and continue to pile up debt. That is fiscally irresponsible and puts the province in an even deeper hole long term.
Of course Calgary is going to be impacted by budget cuts. So are other municipalities. :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

I must say I am surprised to hear you defending the UCP Furry. They did in fact run a campaign of lies and disinformation using all kinds of magical thinking about how we would get our fair share if only Jason Kenney screamed loudly enough at the Feds.They also claimed their tax cuts would keep businesses here and miraculously lead to a recovery through trickle down economics. This has proven to be a complete farce.They are also actively trying to undermine healthcare services to try and make privatization more palatable. AHS found savings without cutting services before the budget and UCP completely ignored this and made the cuts anyways. They voted in their AGM for 2 streams.
 
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The amount of corruption and ineptitude in the UCP government surpasses even what I feared when they were originally elected. It almost brings me to tears that $120 million in public funds are being spent on the War Room, which is set up in a way that we'll never know how that money was actually used. So far as we can tell, all it has produced is a really terrible twitter account that has to keep retracting its own posts. The War Room and the Anti-Alberta Activities Inquiry look like nothing other than vehicles for transferring millions of dollars in public funds to a small group of well-connected conservative supporters. And at a time when equivalent amounts of money are being cut from the province's universities!

The blatancy of this corruption leads me to believe that the UCP has made a basic calculation for the next election: that the only way they can possibly lose an election is if there is another Wild Rose-style insurgency that splits the rightwing vote and allows the NDP to win a plurality of the vote. In other words, so long as the UCP keeps throwing red meat toward the rightwing fringe (by stoking separatist and anti-Trudeau fervour), they are pretty much invincible and don't need to worry about how corrupt or ineffective they appear.

I really hope that this theory is wrong and that centrist Albertans, particularly within Calgary, remember that the NDP governed very moderately and without any major scandals.
 
The angry anti Trudeau mob will vote for Kenney every time as long as he’s our PM and oil prices are slumping.

The question is, are those people a majority? Or will there be enough swing voters who care more about the corruption and failed economic policies? The NDP needs to flip 20 of 87 ridings to win. The 2019 election was a lot closer than it seems. I believe there were at least 10 seats that went to the UCP with only a plurality, and another 10 that went to them with 50-55% of the vote. Basically, if the NDP can draw about 15% more of the vote just within Calgary and the Edmonton suburbs (taking maybe 10% from the UCP and 5% from the AP through some combination of changed minds, voter turnout, and demographic shifts), they will win the next election. That is not an unrealistic scenario.
 
I want to share your optimism but am surrounded by far too many angry conservative voices to have any faith. I think that if the UCP continues to venture down the road of privatized healthcare though it could blow up spectacularly in their faces. I just saw an article in the Red Deer advocate that was slamming them for increased drug costs for seniors. Jason Kenney just needs to be emboldened a little bit more before he starts making "Albertans need to look in the mirror" Prentice style comments. I really hope he gets so drunk on power and corruption that his true colours shine through and Albertans turf him.
 
Speaking of alienating their base, my crazy conservative uncle works in the film industry and has been going after the UCP on social media for their cuts to tax subsidies for the industry. They've obliterated a burgeoning non O&G sector for seemingly no reason at all as it is a negligible amount of extra tax dollars and film productions are avoiding our province altogether now. Manitoba is picking up the slack with increased incentives.
 
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I want to share your optimism but am surrounded by far too many angry conservative voices to have any faith.

Probably most people I know are left or centre. I've run into quite a few people who supported the UCP in 2019 out of some vague notion that they would be "better" for the economy, which would in turn result in more funding for social services, and they believed that the UCP would keep its promise not to make cuts. Now they're questioning their vote.

The angry Wexit conservatives are a lost cause. They are just voting based on identity politics at this point. The real question is whether all these centrists in Calgary can get over two common knee-jerk assumptions: first, that Conservatives are always the "best" party for the O&G sector, and second, that everyone and everything in the province depends on a strong O&G sector now and forever. It's time for nurses and teachers, for example, to stop believing that their jobs are some luxury that was given to them by the O&G sector, and start realizing that their work provides real economic benefits that are far more beneficial for Calgary in the long term than the O&G sector.
 

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