Alberta, I Cry For You

ALBERTA, I CRY FOR YOU

Dismal times are nothing new for practising democracies. Like wieners, we accept them without really wanting to know what goes into their makeup. In North America, democracy is practised with an ignorant electorate, a self-serving plutocracy of wealth, a compliant media, and, most discouraging of all, a feckless education system geared to providing that plutocracy with a steady supply of unquestioning drones. All this has been said before, of course, and to little effect.

But one jurisdiction excels above all others as a gathering of myopic souls totally undeserving of any right to vote. The jurisdiction is Alberta, a province of roughly 3 million people situated just north of Montana. It's a beautiful province, with the Rocky Mountains on the western edge, magnificent foothills leading away from the mountains, fertile farming and ranching country throughout most of the southern half and extensive forests and lakes in the northern half. It has much to be proud of.

But not its politics. When I was an undergraduate political science student at Spokane's Gonzaga University in 1962, the dean of the department, a Father Twohy, pestered me to bring any written material I could regarding the Social Credit party, at that time the party in power (for 27 years and counting) in Alberta. He was disappointed that I, who was born and raised in Alberta, knew so little about my governing party. All I could tell him was that my father had been a lifelong Liberal and summed up pretty much any discussion of the Social Credit party as a bunch of morons who were lucky to find oil. I knew this was something of an overstatement, him perhaps bitter from being trounced in a 1955 provincial election, and oil not being discovered until the SC had been in power for 12 years. There has to be more to them than that and here I was 20 years old before, at Father Twohy's insistence, beginning to examine the party more closely.

Not so easy. I uncovered all the old positional data concocted by Major C. H. Douglas, a stance he called 'Practical Christianity', a melange of marginal economic theory, monetary policy, and antiestablishment vitriol. This wasn't much help because the politics I saw being practiced in Alberta were, although distinctly fundamentalist in makeup, exceedingly orthodox (in the North American sense). I opposed them because of their religious views (fundamentalism can tear a community apart) but had to concede they weren't steering the ship of state into an iceberg.

Political theory was hard to come by in personal interviews. The general response was about as pragmatic as you could get - 'We'll try anything that works'.

Father Twohy shook his head. I think he was hoping for something more bizarre and the 'we'll try anything that works' summation could only leave him shaking his head. I told him how lopsided provincial elections were, how compliant our daily newspaper was (1955 headline - 'God Gave Us Ernest Manning', the then premier), how the government gave everyone 20 dollars in 1952, and how scandal of any type managed to elude the party in power. Father Twohy was unimpressed but I began to question just how our provincial government worked and how distant it seemed from public involvement.

The intervening 47 years have not been as enlightening as I might have hoped. The bare facts are that Social Credit was finally ousted in 1971 by the Progressive Conservative party which has ruled since -38 years (and counting) versus 36 years.

Here I sit, well over the age of retirement, an almost lifelong resident of a land I love and it's 'democratically-elected' government has changed ONCE. ONCE. Very few tyrants survive for over 30 years, much less one 'democratically-elected' government. Add to this astounding anomaly the equally indigestible fact that scandal has never rocked the current government. Oh, there was the little matter of a government-paid party house back in the 70's but that's it. Think for a moment what this means.

A government which, under the first-past-the-post system, garners considerably less than 50% of the vote, but with zealous gerrymandering controls over 70% of the seats in the legislature; presides over one the richest oil deposits on the planet (and has done so since 1947); campaigns on a platform that would be nonexistent if it weren't for the words 're-elect' and 'trust us'; habitually delivers a roster of mental midgets the like of which is seldom seen outside of a remedial math class; and yet, YET, has NEVER come under serious scrutiny for misconduct, malfeasance, misfeasance, conversion, dereliction of duty, or gross stupidity.

If you think that such a egregious abuse of democratic responsibility is impossible to fathom, we would agree. If you likewise accept that it all, nonetheless, is true, we also agree. But here we are. And the electorate, such as it is, shows no sign of maturing. I think I have some idea of how a parent must feel when a beloved child, for whatever reason, turns out badly. Your love is strong but the object of your love is so screwed up you have to look the other way. That's how I feel about Alberta.

So why are the voters of Alberta so lemming-like? Surely, this is the stuff of several doctoral theses, but are there one or two theories that might help? Perhaps, but every time I think I'm onto something, I contrast us with Saskatchewan and Manitoba and the theory dissolves. Like our populist background. An anti-east bias, born of decades of real and imagined slights emanating from Ottawa, Toronto, and Montreal, is surely an integral part of the Alberta mindset, one that led it to embrace nonmainstream ideas like Social Credit. Our brief and mainly untaught history, if nothing else, absolves the voter from any generational loyalty to old political affiliations. But these things are also true for the other two prairie provinces and they change their governments regularly. Why is Alberta unique? Maybe it is the oil. It surely is today, what with siege mentality surrounding the tar sands and pipelines. But isn't this too simplistic? Aahh, maybe that's the word - 'simplistic'. Maybe this whole subject is no more complicated than admitting the province is nothing more than a bunch of self-absorbed materialists, grubbing for next year's pickup truck and ATV and too 'busy' to consider either the future of this province or why they think the way they do. I hope not.