Alberta voters are running out of patience with the UCP

The Alberta government is pushing policies it never campaigned on, fuelling political consequences that are becoming harder to ignore

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Alberta is entering the new year with its politics visibly fractured and its voters increasingly restless. Voter patience is wearing thin as the government advances policies it never campaigned on.

There are several things I’d like to see change in Alberta’s politics and governance, even if I’m struggling to find the sort of starry-eyed optimism needed to make miracles come true.

Here are the ones that matter most.

1. I’d like the United Conservative Party (UCP) of Alberta to realize that its campaign to flirt with provincial independence is not only folly but a course that will lead to trouble at the polls. Voters are eager for a chance to express their frustration with UCP MLAs advancing an agenda the party never campaigned on, including an Alberta pension plan that would see the province withdraw from the Canada Pension Plan and the dismantling of Alberta Health Services, the province’s centralized public health authority.

This is not principled defiance. It is political self-sabotage.

Governments are elected on consent, and when they stray too far from the promises that secured that consent, voters push back. Tainted by the purchase of a faulty Tylenol substitute, the scandal-plagued government has little time to turn things around, particularly if it intends to call an early election in May, as some rumours suggest. If it hopes to win back disenchanted voters, it could start by helping Alberta lawyer and separatist activist Jeffrey Rath and his friends pack for their move to their spiritual home, Mar-a-Lago.

2. The same lack of judgment shows up in the Alberta government’s divisive push to force coal mining in the Eastern Slopes of the Canadian Rockies. Singer Corb Lund, whose family has ranched in southern Alberta since the turn of the 20th century, is gathering signatures in a campaign to stop it. The government remains stubbornly committed to the idea, even though science shows the watersheds serving southern Alberta are at risk of contamination.

This is reckless governance, plain and simple.

Once watersheds are compromised, there is no reset button. The cost of getting this wrong would not be borne by politicians but by communities that rely on clean water and stable landscapes.

3. Energy policy is another area where ideology has overtaken common sense. I’d like the Alberta government to end its war on EVs and renewable energy. Despite well-known teething problems, EV technology is advancing rapidly. If the UCP can’t bring itself to subsidize purchases, a position I don’t disagree with, then it could at least stop erecting barriers such as a $200 annual EV tax, justified as a replacement for fuel taxes.

Oh, you only drive around town in your EV? You still pay the full shot. And severe restrictions on wind and solar farms to avoid visual pollution? I don’t see comparable limits on the thousands of pump jacks across the province.

This is ideology masquerading as policy.

Alberta has always done best by adapting to markets, not by pretending change can be legislated away.

4. I’d like NDP leader Naheed Nenshi to take up jogging to boost his weight-loss program. Voters itching to punish the UCP want to know the leader of the Opposition has the stamina to do the job, should fortune fall the NDP’s way.

Anger at the government is not enough. Opposition leaders win by convincing voters they are ready to govern on day one, under pressure, with the province watching.

Taken together, these choices point in one direction. This feels like a watershed year for Alberta. The province can continue down a path of grievance, distraction and ideological experiments, or it can refocus on competent government and practical outcomes.

That choice now rests with Alberta voters, and they should exercise it without hesitation.

Alberta has always done best when it remembered what it was good at and stopped picking fights that don’t serve its own people.

Let’s get to work on the future.

Doug Firby is an award-winning editorial writer with over four decades of experience working for newspapers, magazines and online publications in Ontario and western Canada. Previously, he served as Editorial Page Editor at the Calgary Herald.