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I neglected to cross-post these articles when they were originally published. Since I bet we could all use a little distraction from the coronavirus, I'm posting them here for your reading and ranting pleasure. This one is from January:

When he won Prince Edward Island’s provincial election last year, provincial Conservative leader and new Premier Dennis King talked about the need to be concerned about the environment, and wondered whether that made him a ‘Green Tory’.

At the same time, Andrew Scheer’s resignation as federal Conservative leader has raised debate about the political direction the Tories should take. Pundit Josh Lieblein mocked the idea of going in a ‘Red Tory’ direction, saying the Tories couldn’t ‘out-Liberal the Liberals’. Gerry Nicholls opposed the idea, claiming the Conservatives needed to stand up for conservative principles such as free markets.

There’s a catch, though. What Nicholls claims are conservative principles is arguably up for debate in Canada, both historically and today. Back in 2009, I attended a conference in Cochrane where Preston Manning was the keynote speaker. He said Albertans needed a ‘wake-up call’ on the environment, and called for new ideas on environmental protection. The Calgary Herald covered the event in its May 22, 2009, edition. More recently, Manning argued conservatives should stop retreating from environmental issues, saying it cost them dearly at the polls in past elections. Manning emphasized how the word ‘conservative’ is rooted in ‘conservation’, including conserving the environment. Conservative thinker and church minister Kevin Little spoke along similar lines about how environmentalism can and should be important to conservatism.

There’s a well-worn stereotype that conservatives only care about dismantling regulations and the social safety net (Margaret Thatcher infamously said there was no such thing as society), don’t care about the impacts of markets on the poor or the environment, and are only concerned with profit. Thinkers like King, Manning and Little show Canadian conservatism breaks with that stereotype. It isn’t just with the environment either — there are lots of examples of how Canadian conservatives, from politicians to ordinary citizens, break with it.

There are plenty of examples, even here in Alberta. Every single conservative Albertan I’ve ever asked, without exception, supports a public health care system. When they support private delivery, it’s because they think private care will take pressure off the public system. And Alberta is the only province to have a public bank in the Alberta Treasury Branch. While long gun registration is hugely unpopular in Alberta, nobody seems to mind Canada’s 40-year-old handgun registry. Nor did anybody seem to mind John Diefenbaker working to find new markets for Canadian wheat. In his seminal book The New Canada, Preston Manning asked an audience of Reform party supporters how many of them wanted to abolish the public healthcare system. No one in the audience raised their hands.
Canadian conservatism has a much richer political and intellectual heritage than just the modern neoliberal version we’ve had for the last 35 years. That version focuses too narrowly on markets and individual gain without considering the larger impacts those individual gains have on society.

In the end, returning to more of that heritage might be the way forward both for conservatism and all of Canada.

   

They really should return to the mindset of the past, because the extreme right turn they are making is what's discouraging long time conservatives like myself.

   

Didn't we discuss this a few years back?

The far right reaction you allude to is, for of alot of Conservatives a direct result of the far left turn of the liberals from the 60's and early 70's that's become much more pronounced since 2015. So, for most of us it's become a case of fighting fire with fire especially since in today's society extremism from both sides of the political spectrum sells. Because, if it didn't sell Trudeau would never have been re-elected.


Would I like to see Canada's two main political parties return to middle of the road politics? The answer is unequivocally yes. But, unfortunately until both parties are willing to do that neither side will return to their former positions knowing that the other is going to continue on with their extremist agenda's.

   

When you veer so far left, having an opinion to the right of Mao is considered extremist. It is quite pronounced in Alberta with Rachel Notley and the NDP's ongoing nervous breakdown since their electoral defeat with their continued pushing of conspiracy theories and, most recently, threats from their supporters. It's much like an ideologically inverted and far less entertaining version of Alex Jones.

   

Parties do what their members vote for. But the party elite quash any proposal that brings them more centrist. So voters get further disillusioned until some get together and create a new party in the image they want, then Peter McKay stabs them in the back and moves further right anyhow.

   

There is no more discussion, just the usual collection of extreme leftists
demanding everyone do everything.. except them.

So fuck them.

   

Similar to how Crazy Rachel and the NDP are descending into the far left, thus reducing them to irrelevancy.

   

The last fifty years of our politics have been shaped by the contrasting visions of two Quebec Liberals (if JC could be said to have had something so lofty in his head - a grand design versus an attitude might be more accurate). Pierre Trudeau’s loyal lieutenant created a new consensus on how the country should be run - less ambitious, more pragmatic and certainly more frugal - that endured until the great man’s son came along. Mulroney turned out to be an embryonic Chrétienist, constitutional adventures aside, and Harper definitely was one despite his protests to the contrary. How will this plague affect our politics? It will surely move us left on government intervention towards the Trudeau model - zany libertarianism of the Bernier variety, reminiscent of PT in its radical nature, is unlikely to be popular any time soon. However, immigration and China are going to be issues where Trudeau is vulnerable unless he changes tack and what to do about our resource sector is a debate that could break the country. There are other questions that may well divide voters along partisan lines, e.g. how much support should a province like NL get from the federal government to survive? One other obvious note to Conservatives - stay at least 2 km from the moral values stuff. Harper kept a firm grip on that kind of talk.

   

Jesus Christ, if you think the federal Liberals have swung to the LEFT of their 1960-70s selves, you're completely deluded.
Just like you anti-Notley Albertans too distracted to notice Kenny's promoting infrastructure policies to make jobs, exactly like Notley did so things weren't worse than they were. I bet the Notley days look positively golden compared to Alberta today!

   

Or like the blind as a bat right, who can never offer constructive criticism, but only resort to name shaming people. Usually women.

   

Yup. She had her growing pains, but wasn't too terrible overall. Unlike the openly corrupt UCP. Let's bail out the 4th largest employer in the province, because partisanship! Let's kill the largest medical testing lab under construction that will improve results and decrease costs, because partisanship! Who needs a state of the art medical testing lab anyway? Let's take all the people who could develop at-home learning for all the children who are forced to be at-home, and lay them off because partisanship! Let's cancel the contract with all the doctors in the middle of a pandemic, because, because partisanship! Let's run up the deficit for our partisan "War Room" and the comitee to investigate and find what we tell them to find because the people of Alberta are too stupid to realize what we are doing, because partisanship!

Notley isn't looking too bad right now, is she?

   

Kenney is doing quite well on Covid, even admirable on most of it. I'll give him that much at least.

   

Let's not forget the brilliant idea (#sarcasm) to cancel construction of a new provincial emergency operations centre:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton ... -1.5355196

I worked at the existing centre during a previous crisis and it is nowhere near adequate, no matter what Minister Madu claims. During a recent winter emergency, staff were forced to use port-a-potties outside (at minus 20) because the entire centre only has TWO washrooms for 100+ staff.

But hey, Alberta not's going to have any more emergencies, no after the 2011 Slave Lake wildfires, 2013 floods, 2016 Fort Mac wildfires, 2019 High Level wildfires, and the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, so why invest in emergency management capabilities, amirite?

   

He is, and so is Ford in Ontario. I think all the Premiers have stepped up to the task.

   

I'd say he's doing a barely passable job (maybe 55% or so), but in the past couple weeks, he's had a bunch of gaffes that significantly reduced his crediblity.

Like his one hour press conference on the possible COVID-19 outcomes on Thursday - why was he explaining medical terms and not a medical professional? It's fine for him to start off the press conference by announcing what the government is doing to fight COVID-19, but until then, he always let medical professionals talk about medical issues.

His donation of PPEs to Ontario and Quebec has now been shown to be a pathetic attempt at a quid-pr-qou for a pipeline east. And why did he send those east, when just last week he said Alberta had a shortage?

And the biggest is why hasn't he fired Shandro after all of his stupidity over the past month (confronting a doctor in front of his house, threatening constituents who write letters to him, doing end runs around privacy laws and getting physician's private cell phone numbers, as well as cutting doctor's fees in the middle of a pandemic)?

I usually laugh my ass off at Doug Ford, but he seems to be doing a better job than Kenney during this crisis.

   

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