What's your reaction to the Alberta election?
Alberta turn-around: Never before did results so widely predicted, catch everyone by surprise. Forty-four years of Tory rule is over. Six months ago nobody imagined the NDP would emerge with such a stunning victory.
What are your thoughts on the Alberta election?
GUESTS & LINKS
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INTRODUCTION
It's not often that one party endures as long in power as the Progressive Conservatives did in Alberta. Forty-four years seems like an impossible reign in democratic politics anywhere. But when such an edifice finally crumbles, it deserves the term historic. That's what this week's victory of Rachel Notley's New Democratic Party is ...historic. Six months ago nobody imagined the NDP would emerge with such a stunning victory. From fourth party in the legislature to a majority government.
Some say Albertans were fed up with the Tories and disappointed with its new leader Jim Prentice. He arrived back in Alberta annointed to lift the party from the mire generated by the failure and fall of the previous leader, Alison Redford. But Mr. Prentice stumbled a couple times: the surprise merger attempt with the Wildrose opposition party ...and the bad news budget which raised taxes for everyone in the province, except corporations.
Former Wildrose leader Danielle Smith might have reaped the benefit of such disappointment had she not jumped ship. Rachel Notley represented a new face with strong political credentials and coming from a family with political history in the province. With an inexperienced slate of candidates, Ms. Notley nevertheless presented the most credible alternative for those who wanted to vote anyone but PC. Some said it happened because a new Alberta has been slowly growing eager to shed its past... a more progressive Alberta, keen to strike a different direction.
Was the NDP victory born from hope for a radically new direction in Alberta politics? Or, is it a house cleaning by a province tired of being governed by a party that has too long reeked of entitlement? Is it a risk for Albertans whose oil-dependent economy has been shrinking?
Is the rise of the NDP in Alberta in the same vein as other Prairie NDP successes in governing where a kind of Prairie pragmatism takes precedence over more ideological considerations?
What does this victory mean - if anything - for federal politics?
Our question today: "What are your thoughts on the Alberta election?"
I'm Rex Murphy ...on CBC Radio One ...and on Sirius XM, satellite radio channel 169 ...this is Cross Country Checkup.
GUESTS
Kathleen Petty
Executive producer of CBC news in Calgary
Twitter: @kathleen_petty
Peter Stockland
Publisher Convivium magazine, former editor-in-chief of the Montreal Gazette, former editorial page editor of the Calgary Herald.
Twitter: @stockland_peter
Anthony Sayers
Policial Science Professor, University of Calgary and author of "Parties, Candidates and Campaigns in Canadian Elections" and the Canadian Elections Database.
Janice MacKinnon
Former Finance Minister of Saskatchewan, now Professor of History and Public Policy at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon.
LINKS
CBC.ca
- Premier-designate Rachel Notley tells energy industry it'll be 'A-OK'
- Alberta NDP election triumph: What people are saying
- NDP win a different kind of 'miracle on the Prairies' by Kathleen Petty
- Energy sector braces for change with NDP win
- NDP win in Alberta 'frightening' for energy sector, business watcher says
- Rachel Notley's win echoes in Ottawa as NDP, Liberals try to rock same tune, by Chris Hall
National Post
- Rachel Notley, Alberta's new premier is a giant killer with deep NDP roots
- Rachel Notley was in right place at right time, but now is not the federal NDP's time, by John Ivison
- The Alberta election and why it all went wrong for the Progressive Conservatives, by Jen Gerson
- A good night in Alberta, by Rex Murphy
- Alberta never really was all that conservative, by Andrew Coyne
- Five of the worst electoral defeats in Canadian history
- Rachel Notley will have to wrangle a lot of fresh faces with 49 out of her 53 MLAs brand new to the job
- The next four years in Alberta don't necessarily have to be bad for business, by Dany Assaf and Goldy Hyder
- Rachel Notley and her newbie caucus must avoid the 'Bob Rae scenario' to get second mandate
- Socialist Alberta? Hardly. NDP surge has absolutely nothing to do with ideology, by Michael Den Tandt
Globe and Mail
- An NDP victory changes everything Canadians think about Alberta, by Gary Mason
- The Alberta NDP's Rachel Notley: 'She is a child of the party', by Gary Mason
- Why we might have seen the last of the Alberta PCs, by Duane Bratt
- How Notley can avoid becoming a one-term wonder, by Tom Flanagan
- Alberta election's message to Ottawa: incumbents, be careful, by Bruce Anderson
- NDP in Alberta: This is the campaign that Jack built, by Campbell Clark
- Notley wants to channel Manitoba and Doer, not Ontario and Rae, by Jack Mintz
- Will Notley refine Alberta's oil royalty regime or her election promises? by Konrad Yakabuski
- NDP majority means it's back to the pipeline drawing board
Macleans
- Why the Orange Revolution is not about Rachel Notley, by Colby Cosh
- 'My name is Rachel Notley' by Paul Wells
Calgary Herald
- Notley's NDP rises from the wreckage of epic PC disasters, Don Braid
- Notley can learn a lot from other NDP governments
- The forgotten hero of the Notley aircraft tragedy
Edmonton Journal
- Notley must build a government from the ground up, by Graham Thomson
- Courage, brains and heart give Alberta a chance at a new chapter, by Paula Simons
Ottawa Citizen
Toronto Star
Cardus