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Last Updated: Jul 2nd, 2008 - 20:21:03
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If Alberta had just two parties — the Progressive Conservatives and, say, everybody else left of centre — how different might the provincial government look?
Around these parts, based on the last election results, not much different at all.
In the rural southern Alberta ridings of Livingstone Macleod, Little Bow and Cardston-Taber-Warner, the PC candidates had such a gigantic edge in votes that even combining the votes cast for the Greens, Alberta Liberals and New Democrats left the hypothetical ABC Party (Anybody But the Conservatives) seatless. The outcome in Cardston-Taber-Warner would change only if one could suspend disbelief and lump Wildrose Alliance voters with the few hundred people who voted Green, Liberal and New Democrat, a premise that’s hugely unlikely given their ideological differences.
The outcome might have been a different story in Lethbridge West under this two-party scenario. The Greens, Liberal and New Democrat votes combined would have put this singular left-of-centre candidate about 600 votes ahead of the Progressive Conservatives. But if the Wildrose Alliance were merged with the Conservatives as an all-encompassing right-of-centre option (if it’s good for the left goose, it might good for the right gander), the Tory/Alliance candidate would still have won.
Lethbridge East, home to the lone Alberta Liberal elected south of Calgary, would have still won her seat, with or without the support of the Green and New Democrat voters.
This scenario, to eliminate vote splitting among left-of-centre voters, was pitched in an discussion document written by Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, in the wake of the last election which left the Alberta Liberals and New Democrats licking wounds and winning just 11 seats.
As McGowan says, the Tory majority followed public opinion polls that found a majority of Albertans were dissatisfied with the Conservatives and wanted a change. Yet voters delivered an even bigger majority for the Tories.
The results, he wrote, make it “increasingly apparent that neither the Alberta Liberals nor the Alberta New Democrats as currently constituted will ever be able to defeat the Conservatives and form a new government.”
His proposal pitches a “co-operation pact” between the Alberta Liberals, NDP and Greens. They’d agree to “divvy up” ridings and not run candidates against each other; the parties would remain separate entities throughout the election, but they’d agree on core priorities upon which they’d take mutually agreed upon action if they’re able to form a government (“voters would know if they voted for any united alterative candidate, they would be voting for a united platform”); and all three would agree, if they formed government, to establish a citizens’ assembly to investigate a form of proportional representation for Alberta.
The co-operative arrangement would no longer be necessary if proportional representation were adopted, the document states.
Organized labour, meanwhile, would broker this co-operative and sweeten the pot by committing its resources to campaign organizing and advertising for this united alternative.
In the last election, AFL was one of a handful of labour organizations which spent heavily on advertising under the name “Albertans for Change,” ads that attacked the Conservative record. The spending was reportedly double what the NDP and Liberals spent on their election ads combined.
McGowan identifies the mistrust between Liberals and New Democrats as one of the primary challenges to this proposed co-operative venture.
But that’s not the only challenge. Voters want choice. They want a strong slate of candidates from across the political spectrum vying for their support. And they won’t take kindly to feeling as though they’re being herded like sheep to a single candidate by virtue of some deal-making. Faced with the possibility a vote for someone other than the Conservatives could lead to a new government that has three heads (NDP, Liberal and Green), the voter fearing a three-headed monster might well endorse the beast they know — the Tories.
To his credit, McGowan, recognizing that a weak opposition makes for weak government, is trying to get some dialogue going about how to breathe life into Alberta politics. His provocative paper should help do just that, but as an answer to the unhealthy political culture in Alberta, the proposal still leaves something to be desired.
© Copyright by Lethbridge Herald.com
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