Oh, no?
How do you feel about election fraud, identity theft, money laundering...?
"Well that's bad, but nothing has been proven. And anyway, if Kenney's team cheated, it doesn't matter because he would have won the leadership anyway. It's just a matter of making it a really big win."
Or
"Nothing has been proven, and anyway, Kenney wouldn't have known anything about it. He has said so."
Or
"The more moderates will keep Kenney in line."
Sure. That has worked so well with Trump and Ford, hasn't it?
So, if you recognise that the UCP is basically run by sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic haters who also cheat, who are you going to vote for?
"Well, um... the UCP."
So, you're not sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic and filled with hate, and you personally would not commit election fraud, but you're OK with all that?
"You don't understand! We have to vote conservative. The commies have been destroying the province!"
Aha!
I shake my head in bewilderment. These are, presumably, not stupid people. They have seen the reports that Kenney made back-room deals with car dealers, promising to reduce consumer protection regulations. That, potentially, will make the roads less safe for all of us, but it's A-OK because those car dealers deserve to make more money.
The UCP platform is a carefully worded thing. Let's break it down.
The UCP voted against increasing RCMP presence in rural areas, and then while unvieling their "tough on crime" platform, cited crime statistics from while the PCs were in power to back up their claim that there was a "rural crime wave" because of the NDP. They want to explore a "Repeat Offenders Policy", which sounds an awful lot like a ramp-up to an American style three-strikes-and-you're-out policy.
Meanwhile, crime in Alberta has decreased since the NDP introduced their law enforcement policies in early 2018.
The UCP wants to make special exceptions in the law for people living in rural areas. They want it to be ok to "defend your property" (aka shoot tresspassers) if you are in a rural area. They also want stiffer penalties for offenders who commit crimes in a rural area.
Can you say "pandering for rural votes"?
The UCP's platform also contains an all-out war on workers. They are offering a tiered minimum wage plan that will see people who are young or "of lower human capital" earn less for the same work. It feels reminiscent of the TFW plan.
"But, my kid is looking for work. He will have a better chance of getting a job if the employer can pay him less!"
Do you even hear the words coming out of your mouth?
You seriously want your kid to be exploited? That's fantastic. Good luck to your kid.
The UCP will make it so employers can pay out for overtime banked hours at a non-overtime rate. So, instead of paying time and half for overtime, they get to pay straight time.
The time and a half for overtime rule is in place pretty well across Canada. Well, now in Ontario, Ford is going to scrap that too. Ford and Kenney are working off the same playbook. But the policy is in place for a reason. It is meant as a deterrent, so employers don't take advantage of workers and force them to work a lot of overtime. It is meant to help workers have some kind of work-life balance. Getting rid of the incentive to not have employees work unreasonable hours rolls back workers rights by decades, by the standards of most provinces. It's a race to the bottom, folks. Do you want to work all the time? Because if employers don't have to pay time and half, they can make employees work and work and work. And if the workers refuse, they will see their regular hours cut or, even worse, they could be out of a job.
One big truth of unfettered employer/employee relationships is, without government regulations protecting workers, employers can always find someone more desperate, someone who will work for less money and less time off. This is Great Depression stuff. Industrial Revolution stuff.
They want to repeal Bill 6, which put in place protections for agricultural workers, which brought Alberta up to par with the other provinces. Apparently, agricultural workers don't deserve protection, in the eyes of the UCP.
The UCP says they will cut corporate taxes and corporate red tape (code for reducing regulations that protect workers, consumers, and the environment).
The UCP will repeal the carbon tax. Never mind that this will cause the federal carbon tax to come into effect.
"Oh, but Jason Kenney is committed to fighting the federal tax in court!"
And what will that cost? Alberta taxpayers are going to make a bunch of lawyers really rich doing that. You know that right? And they won't win. It's like taking your money and putting it in a fire pit and setting it alight. But, you know, you do you...
The UCP are going to repeal Bill 24, that protects kids who join GSAs from being reported to their parents.
"But, parents have a right to know what our kids are doing at school!"
Do you need a phone call if your child joins the chess club? Or the yearbook committee? Or the basketball team? No? So why do you need a call if your child joins a GSA? Is it because you think there's something wrong with that? If you think there is something troubling or bad about your child participating in a GSA, that is exactly why Bill 24 is necessary.
Additionally, the UCP will halt the rewriting of curriculum and re-introduce 50% provincial exams for graduation. In short, a return to the classroom of the 1950s. Also, encourage people to take their children out of the public school system and put them in private schools, charter schools, or home schooling. Because we can't have our precious progeny rubbing elbows with people we don't like.
"No. It's not like that! We send our kids to charter schools because the education standard is higher."
Why is that, do you suppose? Could it be because the funds being diverted to charter schools from public schools are starving the public system, providing less opportunity for kids from less affluent families who cannot manage to send their children to private or charter schools?
And, honestly, while there are valid reasons for home-schooling, such as isolated location, health concerns, bullying... Simply not wanting your offspring exposed to different people and viewpoints is not one of them. Eventually these kids will be adults. They will be released into the general population. If you have kept them from experiencing diversity and planted your own beliefs and biases in their heads, how are the rest of us to cope with them? And also, if you have only a high school diploma or less, what on earth makes you imagine you can do a better job teaching them than people who have been trained to educate?
Health care. The UCP appears ready to open the door to private medicine in Alberta. Which is a stepping stone to full-on US-style medicine. This is vastly more expensive and excludes people without the means to pay for it.
If you are wealthy, the US health care system is lovely. If you are poor and you get seriously sick, you will probably die. Even people who have insurance have told me they had an accident or got sick and then had to fight their insurance company to cover it. And once it goes to court, you aren't really getting that much back after the lawyers are paid. People in the US are using GoFundMe to pay for cancer treatments and other health conditions. Is that really what people want?
"I just feel that I should have the right to decide if I pay for my health care myself. If I can afford it, why shouldn't I get put to the top of the list?"
I honestly have no way to explain to people why they should feel compassion and empathy. It seems so unnatural to me to not feel for people who are less fortunate or facing difficult challenges. I don't even know how to begin to explain why other people should matter. Why we should be our brother's keeper. How we are all in this together, this thing called life. Shouldn't we work together for things to get better for everyone? How can that be bad?
There is so much more. I will do a detailed breakdown of the UCP platform, and the platforms of the other parties, over the next while.
I am just so infuriated and bewildered. I haven't even begun to delve into the sketchy stuff around the UCP leadership campaign. How can you think of voting for someone being investigated for election fraud? I mean, one investigation, you can reasonably make an argument for "innocent until proven guilty". But multiple investigations? Really?
"Well, it doesn't matter because he was going to win anyway. Besides, the NDP commies are destroying the province."
So, corruption is ok with you?
"No! That traitor Turdough should be charged with treason!"
I think you do not understand the meaning of "treason".
Anyway, I am fed up. People are hell-bent on voting against their own best interests, believing that they are doing the best thing for themselves and their families.
People are prepared to vote for a candidate and a party that they say doesn't represent their views.
So.. is it willful blindness? Or secret agreement with all the sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, and hateful pronouncements from UPC candidates?
I don't get it. I just don't. The Albertans I know are, by and large, very nice, decent-seeming people. So, I am having a big problem getting my head around the disconnect. That nice, decent people could decide the best thing they could do for their province is vote in a government that demonstrates through its platform that it only cares about the wealthy and business owners. That it doesn't care about equipping our children, Alberta's future, with the best learning methodologies. That feels, somehow, that the wealthy are deserving of better health care than the poor. That stands behind candidates who have expressed sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, and hate-filled views. What are they thinking?
"It will be fine. The moderates in the party will control the out-of-control leader."
Sure. What could go wrong? (Spoilers: check out what Doug Ford is doing in Ontario. Check out what Trump is doing in the US."Moderates" were going to control them too)
I could argue myself blue in the face trying to explain that the Alberta NDP is not a communist party. They aren't even very socialist. They are more centrist. Albertans, of course, will not believe that. This is because their frame of reference is skewed right. Four decades of right-wing rule will do that. It's like in the US. Their starting point is so far to the right that Americans who saw themselves as progressive viewed Harper as suspiciously left-leaning.
The bottom line is, if you really feel you are not sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic and full of hate, how can you vote for a party that attracts and supports so many that are all those things?
"But... pipelines! Jobs!"
What about children, vulnerable populations, the elderly, the environment?
"The moderates in the UCP will make sure it's ok."
Just keep telling yourself that. You do realise Kenney can't do any more than Notley has to make the pipeline happen, don't you? He can't do anything about a carbon tax either, and isn't a made-in-Alberta and provincially controlled carbon tax better than one imposed by Ottawa? The job situation in Alberta is heavily influenced by external forces which Kenney has no magic to control. The world is gravitating away from fossil fuels. Automation and off-shore cheap labour are taking jobs out of the province. We need to diversify our economy, not double down on a dying industry.
But, you know... Go ahead and put a party in power that is going to be seriously hard on women, the LGBTQ+ community, the elderly, the sick, the poor, those of "lower human capital", the young, people of colour... If you look at Ontario under Ford you can see what that future looks like. But, if it's ok with you...
Make a man premier who is under RCMP investigation for corruption in the form of election fraud, money-laundering, and identity theft. What could go wrong?
After all, it's between you and your conscience. Because you aren't sexist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, and full of hate.
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