Experts see parallels between 1970s inflation crisis and today

CALGARY — Winnipeg's Barry Prentice was in his 20s when the spiralling inflation of the 1970s followed by double-digit interest rates in the early 1980s put home ownership completely out of reach for him and many of his friends.

© Provided by The Canadian PressExperts see parallels between 1970s inflation crisis and today

"I couldn't even consider it (buying a house). My brother did, and his mortgage rate was something like 18 or 20 per cent," said Prentice. "What I remember is that it was a time of great anxiety, a time of great uncertainty."

Now a professor of supply chain management at the University of Manitoba, Prentice has been watching with growing unease what he calls the "eerie" similarities in economic conditions between now and then.

"There is a lot of resemblance between now and the 1970s," he said. "Nobody then had ever seen this before, and there was no clear path to where it would lead to."

For the baby boomers who lived through it, the inflation crisis of the 1970s — followed by sky-high interest rates that peaked at 21 per cent in August of 1981 and then triggered a recession — is burned into the memory.

THIS WAS THE REASON FOR THE CRASH IN THE ALBERTA/TEXAS OIL INDUSTRY IN THE EIGHTIES (NOT THE NEP NOR PETROCANADA / PETRO-CANADA)

But from generation X on down, the majority of the Canadian population has up until now remained unfamiliar with significant inflation as well as the interest rate actions taken by central banks to try to combat it.

That's changing though, as the price of everything from fuel to food to manufactured goods has increased in the wake of supply chain pressures related to the global pandemic and the war in Ukraine. On Wednesday, Statistics Canada said its consumer price index for April 2022 rose 6.8 per cent compared with a year ago, a fresh three-decade high.

And last month, the Bank of Canada raised its key interest rate target by half a percentage point to one per cent, prompting Canada's big commercial banks to raise their prime rates in return. The central bank also warned more interest rate hikes are coming as it works to try to bring inflation back to its target of two per cent.

Bank of Montreal chief economist Doug Porter said it's highly unlikely Canadians are in for a double-digit, '80s-style interest rate shock any time soon. But he cautioned that inflation is spreading rapidly and broadly, and the worst could be yet to come.

"I think there’s a risk that everyone is severely underestimating how much of an issue we have on our hands here, and how high interest rates may need to go," Porter said in an interview.

Part of what makes a comparison between the 1970s and now so "disturbing," said Porter, is what was behind the inflation crisis. At that time, rising inflation was driven by surging energy prices (caused by the OPEC oil embargo of 1973, which led to spiking gasoline prices and shortages across North America) as well as a boom in the price of agricultural commodities.

"Clearly there were some differences between then and now," Porter said. "But the speed we saw in the run-up to inflation, and the direct causes, are eerily similar to today.”

From mid-70s until the early-80s, the average annual rate of inflation in Canada topped eight per cent, said Charles St-Arnaud, chief economist for Alberta Central, the central banking facility for the province's credit unions.

He added that in February of 1974, year-over-year food inflation in Canada peaked at 18 per cent. (That's compared to the latest 2022 Statistics Canada figures, which peg the inflation rate of food costs in this country at 8.8 per cent in April.)

Central banks had no choice but to hike interest rates to combat that type of extreme increase in the cost of living, but it took double-digit rate hikes — and the resulting economic crash they caused — to finally put a stop to runaway inflation, St-Arnaud said.

“The recession of the early ‘80s was what I would call a monetary recession, but it was necessary to reduce the inflationary pressures," he said.

But St-Arnaud added the Bank of Canada may not have to increase rates to 20 per cent to be effective this time around.

"We have an economy that’s way more sensitive to interest rates now than it was in the '80s, because households have never been so indebted," he said, adding the consumer debt-to-disposable income ratio in Canada is at a record high.

"With interest rates increasing fast, suddenly there’s a lot of households who will need to shift their budgets and move discretionary spending toward debt repayment.”

Still, both Porter and St-Arnaud caution the Bank of Canada is walking a fine line as it attempts to engineer a soft landing for the economy and avoid a wide-scale recession.

"The margin of error is low," St-Arnaud said. "Because a lot of what is driving inflation right now is out of their (central banks') control."

“I think the goal this time is to try to cut inflation off at the pass before it can become really embedded," Porter said. "But it’s going to be a challenge.”

For his part, Prentice believes we are headed directly toward "stagflation," a term meaning persistently high inflation coupled with a slowdown in economic growth.

While it won't be a pleasant ride, Prentice said, it's important to remember that those who lived through the economic turmoil of the 1970s and 1980s made it out the other side.

"We did survive," he said. "We made it to here. So I'm optimistic we'll survive this too."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 18, 2022.

Amanda Stephenson, The Canadian Press

THE ALBERTA NDP THE PARTY OF OIL WORKERS

THE COINCIDENTAL BIRTH OF THE NEW DEMOCRATS 

AND THE OIL INDUSTRY IN ALBERTA

Rachel Notley warned New Democrats that adopting the LEAP manifesto which demands the end of oil extraction from the Tar Sands as well as conventional and shale gas plays, and NO pipelines, would put the Eastern arm of the party in direct conflict with a party that is proudly Albertan and directly involved in the oil industry history in the province even more so than the long ruling party the PC’s.

It was the development of oil and energy in Alberta that created new wealth and a new industrial province after WWII. The discovery of oil not only brought the oil industry but also the oil and energy workers union, a small American union that had an arm in Alberta, the Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers OCAW. In Alberta it was beginning its organizing of workers in the field and in the new gas and chemical plants being built between Edmonton and Fort Saskatchewan.

This was the post war boom, the party in power was Social Credit, and while  there was no NDP there was an active labour political movement housed in the AFL and Edmonton Trades and Labour Council, members belonged to the Communist Party, the CCF and some still belonged to the OBU and IWW.

Edmonton had a history of electing labour council members as Mayor, Aldermen (women), school board trustees and Hospital Board members. Elmer Roper  longtime labour activist, CCF activist and candidate, owner of ABC Printing and publisher of Alberta Labour News would be elected Mayor of Edmonton after the creation of the NDP by the merger of the CCF with the newly created post war Canadian Labour Congress.

The sixties saw the growth of the labour movement in Canada and in Alberta, including the creation of an active movement of organizing public sector workers, provincially, municipally and federally. The Federal Workers Union originating in Calgary would merge with the Ontario based National Workers Union to create what we know as the Canadian Union of Public  Employees, the Civil Service Union of Alberta would become a union known as the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees.

But throughout the oil boom of the fifties and sixties the union most associated with the provincial NDP was the Oil Chemical and Atomic Energy Workers Union under the leadership of Neil Reimer and his assistant Reg Baskin

That’s right the party was brought to life in Alberta by Oil Workers in the provinces new Energy market. Its first party leader was Neil Reimer, who would meet a charismatic young politician a contemporary of Peter Lougheed and Joe Clark at the University of Alberta, Grant Notley who would go on to become party Leader and its first elected MLA.

Notley himself did not represent Edmonton but his home region, the oil rich north of Alberta, the Grand Prairie, and Peace River riding.

As it had since 1936 the Social Credit party of Alberta held power in the province as a one party state, under the permanent leadership of Premier Ernest Manning, Preston’s daddy.  The New Democratic Party of Alberta focused its energy not only on consolidating union power in the party as well as the voices of the left and progressives but in challenging that Social Credit domination of Alberta Politics.

This was also the time of the Cold War and the Anti Communist Witch Hunts, a time being anti war, anti nuclear war, pro labour, was considered suspect. Where union members who were left wing were exposed to police spying, where padlock laws in Quebec had been used to raid imprison and steal property belonging to those accused of opposing the Duplesis regime or who were suspect of being Reds.

Duplessis ‘s party in Quebec aligned with that provinces Federal Social Credit Party which was aligned with Alberta’s Party as well. In both provinces the left faced one party dictatorship which reminded many despite their democratic trappings of the forces they had been fighting against in WWII.

As in Alberta it would be the post war labour movement in Quebec under Louis Lebarge that would mobilize politically as well as economically against the Old Regime, his right hand was a young activist lawyer named Pierre Eliot Trudeau. And like Alberta they were building a provincial and national party; the Liberals.

This then is the historical basis for the differences between the left in Quebec and the rest of Canada and why it took so long to breech these two solitudes, as was done in 2012 under Jack Layton and the federal NDP.

Premier Rachel Notley, the daughter of Grant Notley, the first NDP MLA ever elected to the Legislature, the first opposition member elected against the Social Credit party of Ernest Manning  had this rich history as her prologue at this week’s national NDP Convention in Edmonton where the party adopted the LEAP manifesto which challenges the very energy economy that makes Alberta a modern industrial state.

This province created the NDP under the leadership of  Neil Reimer, an oil worker and oil union organizer.  Neil was the first leader of the Party, and Reg Baskin was his right hand in their union and the party.

Neil also created the modern Canadian Energy Workers union,  Neil and Reg first represented oil workers in the new industry in the province with the OCAW  oil chemical and atomic workers of Canada, which had one other base of expansion; Louisiana.  He and Reg made it the Canadian Energy Workers Union, which became CEP merging with the Canadian Paper workers unions in BC, and now has consolidated with CAW to create UNIFOR.

Neil’s daughter was Jan Reimer two term Mayor of Edmonton during the 1990’s and while party labels are not used in Edmonton municipal elections everyone knew that we had an NDP mayor.

Meatpackers, a union that disappeared in the eighties with amalgamation of the meat packing industry into a smaller and smaller oligopoly, was a militant base of union workers and activists including communists and socialists, that was a large base for the party, as was Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 488.

These were the post war unions that were the party’s base in Edmonton and across the province. Federally the postal workers were a strong backbone for the Federal Party, though there were two separate unions at that time, letter carriers and inside workers, the latter being more left wing and militant with OBU IWW communist, socialist and Trotskyist activist workers.

It was the discovery of tar sands oil that led to the growth of the province, the union and the NDP. It was also this discovery and its needed development during the Arab Oil Crisis of 1971 that led to the end of the Social Credit government, its movement, but not its essence. In its place came the newest members of the Alberta Legislature elected in 1967 for the first time, the Lougheed Progressive Conservatives. They would be joined by Grant Notley and the NDP in opposition in 1968, when Grant won a by-election in Spirit River.

The “Progressive” element in the Lougheed PC’s represented the post war Liberal base among the non Anglo ethnic communities in Edmonton and Calgary, such as the recent post war immigration of Ukrainians, Italians, Portuguese, Greek, European, Asian, and Displaced Peoples. The Liberals had no political existence in Alberta since they were wiped out by the United Farmers/ Labour Party coalition in 1921.

Even Lougheed’s conservatism was not the neo conservative Austrian school embraced by the republican lite Preston Manning cons of today, it was classical liberal capitalism, that progressive aspect of capitalism that sought to ameliorate through regulation what short comings capitalism itself may suffer from despite its idealism of being the ‘ideal’ system.

The history of the Alberta NDP is the history of the Oil Workers and the Oil Industry in Alberta, even more than it is for the current batch of Conservatives provincial or federal.  The NDP in Alberta grew up with the oil industry with its workers and their union. For the Alberta NDP to reject both the LEAP manifesto and those call for the end of pipelines is natural and should have been expected by those who know the party history in the province.

For those who fail to understand this historic base of the party in Alberta fail to understand the social democratic politics of the oil industry, the NDP has long supported a form of nationalization under public ownership and increased workers control through unionization.

This occurred in the case of Suncor which was the earliest of the oil sands operators, before the Syncrude conglomerate was created.  In the early seventies after the Lougheed government promoted the oil sands, Suncor began mining operations.  Neil Reimer’s new Canadian Energy and Paperworkers union, CEP, got its birth in a long and bitter historic strike at the Suncor operations.

CEP went on to organize refineries in Edmonton, Sherwood Park and Fort Saskatchewan.

It tried but failed to organize Syncrude due to its conglomerate ownership and its concerted anti union efforts over the decade of the seventies into the eighties. Today unionized Suncor has bought out Syncrude so this situation opens it up to unionization decades later.

The seventies and eighties saw massive growth in the province including growth in both private and public union membership.

This also saw the success of the NDP and the left in Edmonton. While Grant Notley was a lone NDP member in Alberta Legislature, Edmonton saw a left wing U of A Prof David Leadbeater elected alderman.  Notley was joined in the house by Ray Martin, from Edmonton.

The NDP elected Ross Harvey its first federal MP from Alberta in the eighties from the old packing plant and union district of Edmonton Beverly. This was at the height of the Arab Oil Crisis of early eighties, which the Conservatives in Calgary blamed on the NDP Liberal National Energy Plan, NEP, which included the creation of the Canadian Publicly Owned Oil and Gas Company PetroCanada.

PetroCanada was a success and saved Calgary and the Lougheed Government during this oil crisis, it was able to buy up, nationalize, American oil companies like Gulf Mobile, Texaco, Chevron,  as well as smaller Canadian and American oil companies that were going broke or bailing out of Calgary heading back to Dallas and Huston.

And CEP was there to unionize it. Today PetroCanada is no more the Liberals privatized during the Austerity crisis of the Nineties, and Paul Martins Liberal Government sold off the last of our shares prior to the 2006 election.

Ironically it is Suncor that bought them and then bought up PetroCan and absorbed it., just as it has done with its competitor Syncrude.

It would be during the late eighties and early nineties that under Ray Martin the NDP would gain a record number of seats, going from 2 to 23 and status of official opposition. But by the time of the middle of nineties and the Austerity panic of debt and deficit hysteria and the birth of the neo conservative movement that two city Mayors, Ralph Klein of Calgary and Lawrence Decore of Edmonton would battle it out for Premier of the Province, Klein for the PC’s and Decore for the Liberals. Both ran on Austerity budgets, one promised massive cuts the other brutal cuts. It was a close election the losers were the NDP who were wiped out as a third party.

In Edmonton we had a new NDP mayor to replace Decore, Neil’s daughter Jan Reimer, joined by another leftist alderman the bus driver Brian Mason. The NDP centred itself in Edmonton at this time and got elected the enormously popular  team of Pam Barrett and Raj Pannu.

The CEP was critical in supporting the NDP at this time, including having its past president Reg Basking become leader of the Party.

After the shocking early death of party leader Pam Barrett, former alderman Brian Mason ran in her riding, Highlands, which also covers the Federal riding of Beverly that Ross Harvey once represented and won her seat in the house. Raj Pannu became the first Indo Canadian leader of an NDP party in Canada.  After he stepped down Brian Mason became the leader of the party.

The party went from four seats to two to four until Brian stepped down and the party elected Grant Notley’s daughter, Rachel Notley, who had sat in the house with Brian through all those ups and downs in electoral success.

The party base is the labour movement and left across the province and no less important unions such as CEP, IBEW, Carpenters and UA488 all involved in the oil sands and the petrochemical industry in Alberta.

So why are the various wags and pundits surprised when the Alberta NDP does not LEAP off the edge of a cliff named STOP PIPELINES, STOP DIRTY OIL.

In the finest of social democratic traditions, the Alberta NDP will do no such thing nor should it be expected to. It will ameliorate the worst of the environmental damages that the fossil fuel industry has and can be expected to cause. They will create a green plan, and expand the carbon fuel tax the PC’s brought in.

 It will do what the conservatives would not do, and that is eliminating Alberta’s Socred PC dirty energy economic backbone: coal. And that is the real dirty energy in Alberta, coal fired utility plants. These plants are evenly divided between private ownership, with state support from the ruling Socreds and PC’s, TransAlta Utilities, and publicly owned municipal utilities EPCOR and ENMAX. TransAlta is the original P3 funded by taxpayers under the Socred and spun off to become a private company where government cabinet members retire to the board of.

Even Lougheed was tied to the coal industry representing his old employer Mannix Inc, as a board member of Luscar Coal, which during the nineties created a major controversy with its efforts to mine outside of Jasper National Park.

Contrary to Greenpeace and other environmentalists who claim oil sands are the dirtiest energy the real dirty energy on the Palliser Plains of Alberta and Saskatchewan is coal.

Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel that needs to be kept in the ground. There is no such thing as clean coal!

There is however clean petrochemical fuels, that is the nature of refining, creating finer and finer grades of hydrocarbons; ethenes, benzenes, oil and gas for plastic production, diesel etc.

That is the reason for both the Joffre and Scotford massive refining projects and the plan for the heartland refining project, which would allow the province to crack and refine bitumen into secondary and tertiary hydrocarbons.

That is what the future of the energy is in Alberta, stopping the use of coal, refining hydrocarbons and shipping them south, east, and west.

Why would the NDP limit the provinces ability to ship what it processes.

As I have pointed out the pipeline west will probably go through the Peace River Athabasca highway route to Prince Rupert, which coincides with BC Site C dam development and its LNG  pipeline development, giving pipeline companies an alternative to going to Kitimat via the BC Sacred Bear Rainforest.

Energy East will be built and the NDP will promote as it did in the eighties, the idea that Alberta energy for a fair price should go east. What occurred instead was it was shipped to refineris in Ontario and Quebec at discounted prices where it was refined and sold to the US while oil was imported from the Middle East.

This was the original idea of the NEP that the NDP and Liberals promoted to Lougheed, and he agreed to! And like the NDP this was his vision for Alberta oil before he died.

While the LEAP manifesto is suitably left wing green etc, even shudder, anti capitalist ( read anti corporations) it is not something either the labour movement or NDP in Alberta will agree to do much more about than debate. Debate will be welcome, dictat not so much.

LEAP like most environmentalism today fails to take into consideration that even if workers had control of publicly owned energy companies, we would still be producing hydrocarbons, and will be even after the glorious Socialist Revolution.

The dirtiest energy causing climate change is not oil sands in Alberta or Venezuela it is coal and wood burning worldwide.  That is the challenge we face to shut down coal, and wood burning, not to accept the myth of Clean Coal, and to make sure we ameliorate environmental damage caused through hydrocarbon production.

You want to keep something in the ground its coal, and the biggest fight back in Alberta today is the utility lobbies who oppose the Alberta NDP Government ending of coal fired utilities.

In Alberta the NDP is the party of oil and oil workers. Never forget it. The old Social Credit of Preston Manning’s daddy’s day and the PC’s of Lougheed Klein were both parties of coal.

Ignatieff NEP Lite

Liberal Leadership candidate Michael Ignatieff (The Man Who Would Be PET) has announced his Green Plan. Ignatieff proposes carbon tax at pump

In Alberta it reminds everyone, government and NDP opposition of the failed Trudeau NEP....not the NDP NEP which created PetroCanada and which rescued the declining petro industry in Calgary and Fort McMurray. But the Liberals tax and grab NEP....of course for Alberta Liberals, Ignatieff's plan reminds them of the NEP so they have been deafingly silent about it.


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NDP Flip Flops on Afghanistan

NDP Foreign Affairs critic Alex McDonough made a trip to Afghanistan and has returned with a change of heart regarding our troop deployment. On CTV's Question Period today she told Craig Oliver that we need to have troops in Afghanistan and Darfur, as well as Haiti. This is not an either/or position as previously reported by the media. And McDonough was clear that she saw Canada's involvement in Afghanistan as long term. A shift in policy direction for the NDP. Now all she wants is a debate and vote on that long term commitment.

The NDP under Layton has moved to the right when it comes to Canada's role as an Imperialist nation. He abandoned the long historical opposition the party had to NATO and now the party shifts right supporting the coup de dat in Haiti, troops in Darfur (which like Chad is rich in oil, which is why the Sudanese and the rebels are fighting over the region) and now they support the Canadian US Enduring Freedom pacification campaign in Southern Afghanistan. As long as Parliament gets to debate the issue.

This is a far cry from the party that opposed WWII, The War Measures Act of 1971, and the Viet Nam war. What next for the NDP support for the Conservatives plans to militarize the arctic for PetroCanada?



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Petrocan's Arctic Sovereignty

The real reason for the Conservatives insistence on expanding Canadian Forces in the north is for military enforcement of our Northern Arctic sovereignty..... for Big Oil. In this case Petrocan.

Oh and here is the irony, it is global warming that is opening up these vast reserves to potential exploitaion, thus increasing global warming in the Arctic.


Catch 22.

FEATURE-Canada scrambles to assert sovereignty in Arctic

CORNWALLIS ISLAND, Nunavut, April 21 (Reuters) - After decades of virtually ignoring its remote, frozen Arctic lands, Canada is belatedly trying to assert its sovereignty over a gigantic region rich in mineral resources. Ottawa's problem is that it has little idea of what is going on in the North and far too few resources to patrol the area properly. And that could be bad news when climate change and the appetite for energy and commodities mean the world is suddenly paying more attention to an incredibly inhospitable place.

Scramble is on for Arctic oil

British and US scientists are at loggerheads over a plan to work with oil companies in hunting for the Arctic's fossil fuel reserves.

The US Geological Survey (USGS) is lining up a project with BP and Statoil to find oil and gas in the Arctic Ocean, under the auspices of a flagship scientific initiative intended to tackle global warming. But the head of the British Antarctic Survey, which coordinates UK activity at the poles, has said he is "very uncomfortable" with the idea and has questioned its ethical and scientific justification.

Article continues

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Tackling climate change and working out how it will affect the Arctic and Antarctica is a central theme of International Polar Year (IPY) - a high-profile project to start early next year that involves thousands of scientists from 60 countries.

The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet and last September saw the lowest extent of sea ice cover for more than a century. Scientists say the temperature there could rise by a further 4C-7C by 2100, and the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free in summer by 2060.

Documents on the IPY website show that BP and Statoil, a Norwegian company, are "significant consortium members" on a USGS proposal to assess "energy resources in the circumarctic area including oil, gas, coalbed methane and methane hydrates". Geologists estimate that a quarter of the world's undiscovered oil and gas reserves lie under the Arctic, and analysts have predicted a 21st-century goldrush to tap them as the Arctic Ocean's ice cover retreats.

Suzanne Weedman of the USGS said: "This is very much a part of what we do. Our responsibility is to assess the undiscovered oil and gas using geological information." She said the plan built on a project called the Arctic Energy Assessment, which is part of its World Energy Project - a global attempt to map untapped hydrocarbon fuel reserves. ExxonMobil, Amoco, Conoco, Texaco and PetroCanada are listed as members.

Global warming project criticized for affiliation with U.S. oil mapping

The polar year project, scheduled for 2007-2008, is aimed at increasing scientists' understanding of the environment at the North and South Poles. Rising temperatures are having a big impact on both regions, so climate change is an important aspect of the research.

The project, which includes more than 200 studies, last year conditionally accepted the U.S. Geological Survey's mapping effort as part of its research program, said Chris Rapley, head of the British Antarctic Survey and a board member of the committee running the polar year. The committee is likely to give final approval for the U.S. survey's involvement soon, he said.

Rapley said the U.S. Arctic survey program - part of a long-term American effort to map untapped oil reserves around the world - would provide valuable scientific information that could help those trying to understand climate change and figure out how to combat and anticipate it.

Norway sets Arctic oil plan - boom or gloom?
Norway set rules for oil and gas exploration in the Barents Sea on Friday amid major uncertainty about whether the pristine Norwegian Arctic will mean boom or gloom for oil firms.

The U.S. Geological Survey has suggested that 25 percent of the world's undiscovered petroleum resources could be in the Arctic. But some experts say oil may have leaked from the Barents, off the northern tip of Europe, millions of years ago.

Russia's Gazprom Enters Booming LNG Markets with Giant Arctic Gas Field

With gas reservoirs equivalent to Exxon's oil reserves, Shtokman poses an alluring but technically daunting challenge for the five firms shortlisted as possible partners: U.S. majors Chevron and ConocoPhillips, FranceÂ's Total and Norway's Statoil and Norsk Hydro. Gazprom wants help producing gas in the iceberg-strewn seas around Shtokman, pumping it 550 km to shore, liquefying it and shipping it to the United States for re-gasification and sale.

And it's not like this is NEWS either, as this article from 1999 shows, we have known about global warming in the Arctic for years it just that over the past two years we have seen an acceleration in that process. Arctic Meltdown

Alaska natives speak out against Arctic oil exploration

The $500-million Northstar project has been more than four years in development. It is the first offshore development in the Arctic Ocean

April 16, 1999
Web posted at: 2:30 PM EDT

Alaska natives spoke out Thursday against BP Amoco's Northstar project to explore for oil reserves in the Arctic Ocean. The natives say the oil exploration threatens their culture and livelihood in the region.

Three Alaska natives of the Yup'ik and Gwich'in people attended BP's annual general meeting to make their concerns known directly to company directors and shareholders. The three are campaigning with Greenpeace to end the project.

According to opponents of the project, climate change, caused by burning oil, coal and gas, is causing the western Arctic to warm three times faster than any other part of the globe. The survival of many species, such as polar bears, walrus and reindeer, is currently threatened by retreating ice and unseasonally warm weather.

Arctic scientists have found that the Arctic ice pack has been declining at a rate of 4.5 percent in the past decade.

"For countless generations the Gwich'in people, my people, have relied on the land to provide for our survival," said Allan Hayton, a Gwich'in Athabascan from Arctic Village, Alaska. "Already we are witnessing dramatic changes in our Alaskan climate from the burning of fossil fuels, and an oil spill on the North Slope would effectively destroy our abundant wildlife and our native cultures in the process. Sir John Browne, respectfully I ask you, will you cancel Northstar, and commit your company to not drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?"

The $500-million Northstar project has been more than four years in development. It is the first offshore development in the Arctic Ocean. BP became sole operator of the Northstar Unit in December 1995. The company projects its 'first oil' to come between 2000-2001.

The survival of many species, such as polar bears, walrus and reindeer, is currently threatened by retreating ice and unseasonally warm weather

Proponents of the project say Alaskans and the federal treasury would both benefit economically from increased oil production and the environmental impact would be negligible. They argue that expanded oil production is badly needed in the area.

Opponents say the oil industry is only looking at the short-term benefits and not seeing the long-term threats.

"BP is undermining climate protection and threatening subsistence ways of life by pushing ahead with oil exploration," said Greenpeace Climate Campaigner Matthew Spencer.

Also at the meeting were 60 members of the BP shareholder splinter group, SANE BP, who encouraged shareholders to advocate a different direction for the company than that being pursued by current BP directors.

Copyright 1999, Environmental News Network, All Rights Reserved

Also See:

Capitalism's Denial of Climate Catastrophe

Water in your Scotch

Melt Down

Da' Bears Have It

2005 Record Heat Wave

More Thaw

Hot Air Over Climate Change--Business as Usual

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Aren't you sorry you sold your shares

That should be the question going through all our minds as shareholders in fact former owners of Petro Canada, the Liberals sold off the last of our shares to pay for their 2004 election promises. Too bad. Had they waited they could have paid them off on the interest the shares earned this past year.

Petro-Canada earns $1.8B in 2005, plans new upgrader near Edmonton
CBC News - 5 hours ago
CALGARY (CP) - Petro-Canada (TSX:PCA) posted record annual earnings of $1.8 billion Thursday, up slightly over 2004, and announced it will build its new oilsands upgrader just northeast of Edmonton.

Petro-Canada profit rises 62% Globe and Mail

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Alberta Provincial Election 2004

FAIR COMMENT

Below are articles I have written during the Alberta Provincial Election Campaign.

The Election was held November 22, 2004 and saw the ruling PC's lose 17 seats, which still left them with an overwhelming majority of 61 seats in the legislature, returning Alberta again to a one party state.

These stories were also posted on the web at Indymedia, StriaghtGoods, and Rabble.ca, as well as being circulated over a variety of listserves.

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ALBERTA UBER ALLES

(1214 words)

Ralph Klein kicked off the provincial election campaign kicking the disabled while they are down. Ralph is using his position as Premier not just as a bully pulpit, but as the pulpit of a bully. Making a caricature of disabled protestors, who rightly demanded a few crumbs from the Alberta Advantage (oil), Klein instead warned them that they looked able enough and that he would crack down on those abusing the system.
This is the same Premier who while drunk in public entered the single men’s hostel in Edmonton seeking out the poor to shove, berate, and threaten. His excuse then was he had a drinking problem.
No he has a poverty problem, he cannot believe that anyone in Alberta, er HIS Alberta, isn't as well off as the members of the PC's (Party of Calgary). He likes to bully the poor, the disabled, those who protest his decisions or lack of decisions.
Lets compare crooks, there is no evidence that people on AISH are taking advantage of us. For 5 years there has been no increase in AISH payments and for the past decade the number of people on AISH has not increased. 31,450 Albertan’s get $850 a month from AISH, half that is federal funding, excess federal tax credits for the poor get clawed back by the Alberta government. That comes out to over $2.6 million annually, less then the cost of the current Senate election.
If the disabled work their wages are used to claw back the $850. If they do work it will be at minimum wage, which is the lowest in Canada. In Alberta working full-time for minimum wage would earn a you $860 a month. The severely disabled are expected to live on $10,200 a year. That is below the national poverty level, no matter who calculates it Stats-Can or Ralph’s pals at the Fraser Institute.
If there is any financial funny business going on its in the Legislature, not in the AISH program. Take the Health minister's executive assistant for one. He got $400,000 for giving advice on health care projects, work he supposedly did but did not have any evidence of doing, and he got his contract without tender. We call that cronyism if not criminal. But in Ralph's World he calls it good government. Lets see that $400,000 would support 4000 severely disabled Albertan’s on AISH for a year, with spare change left over.
If this were the federal government doing this, Ralph would be joining his Calgary pal Steven Harper calling the Liberals crooks. Wait it did happen, it’s called Adscam.
But this is Alberta home of the longest lasting single party government in North America, if not the world. We are a single party state and have been for over 70 years. First it was 20 years of the United Farmers of Alberta then 35 years of Social Credit theocracy and now 33 of the right wing Tories. That is longer than Castro has ruled Cuba. It is longer than one party state rule in the Soviet Union.
Ralph likes to refer to the mythical volk of Alberta, as severely normal, so there cannot be anyone poor in Alberta, or injured workers, or seniors, or disabled. And woe betides those that insist they are not getting a fair shake in Ralphs Volkstadt. It’s the Alberta Advantage Uber Alles.
Peter Elzinga, a long time PC insider and the un-elected deputy Premier for Edmonton, is still managing this election for the party of Ralph, while he is employed by Suncor as legal counsel as they sue the Alberta Government over royalties they owe us.
And Ralph is going to lecture the disabled on abuse of the system. That’s a clear case of the kettle calling the pot black.
With 74 of 83 seats Ralph can bully anyone he wants from his Teflon pulpit. He can with the aplomb of a King Charles dismiss the legislature as a damned nuisance that gets in the way of his government. Nor does his view of parliamentary democracy include an opposition, they too are a nuisances, just as Cromwell was.
He can walk out of the Federal health care meeting to go gambling, dropping some cold Alberta cash into the VLT's in Quebec. Showing his political solidarity with the Quebec government of his protege; Jean Charest no doubt.
He dropped a wad that would have paid the rent and utilities for at least one person on AISH.
Ralph likes to drink, so we privatize the government liquor stores. Ralph likes to gamble so we introduce VLT's into bars. On the other hand, women’s shelters in Alberta have to beg for money to meet increased insurance costs.
He can hold another useless Senate election a $3 million dollar red herring while claiming there is no democratic deficit in Alberta. It would do Bonnie Prince Charlie proud. And like other leaders who follow the fueher principle Klein dismissed elected health board representatives two years into their mandate, because they were not Tories. They were another opposition to his government. He has dismissed school board trustees for the same reason. They voiced opposition to government cuts. Vox Populi is not popular with Ralph. If Ralph and the PC's had their way every level of government in Alberta would be dominated Tories. And opposition be damned.
And the reason for electing another senator in waiting, we already have two from the last exercise in futility in 2001, is because Alberta Tories want to reform the federal government. But no reform is needed in Alberta insists Ralph, where the legislature sits less often then in any other parliamentary democracy. In Alberta the most important matters of State are decided in closed cabinet meetings.
But that should be expected from a Premier who states in the legislature that Augusto Pinochet is just a misunderstood democrat. He was forced to overthrow a democratically elected government because it was socialist. Them reds got what they deserved. And with unabashed aplomb his evidence for this opinion was an essay he wrote for a University course. The fact he plagiarized whole sections of his essay off the internet was dismissed with a wave of a hand. And the iron fist of his Minister of Learning who met with Alberta’s University Presidents and demanded they write public letters of support for Ralph saying he didn't really cheat on his homework. In Alberta when it comes to the crime of plagiarism, to paraphrase Geoge Orwell, some undergraduates are more equal than others.
Ralph claims there is no democratic deficit in Alberta. In Calgary home of Canada's corporations and right wing lobby groups, all is well for the Party of Calgary and Ralph, the Reform, er Alliance, er Conservative Party of Stephen Harper demands fixed election dates, referendum, recall, and proportional representation in Ottawa. What is good for goosing Ottawa dare not be gandered in Alberta.
This election is being held 3.5 years into a possible 5-year mandate. And while our Teflon Emperor has proclaimed this is his last election that will mean Ralph expects to rule until 2010. By that time Alberta may be the last single party state in the hemisphere, including Cuba.
For the mythical "severely normal Albertans; Martha and Henry" Ralph may be their boy, for real Albertan’s living in Ralph’s World it’s Caveat Elector.


ALBERTA’S NEW DEFINITION OF ‘PC’ (Party of Calgary)

(2336 words)

When Ralph Klein announced shortly before the election call that his government was giving $3 billion dollars as a ‘gift’ to Alberta municipalities, it looked like another typical Tory election ploy of buying votes with our own money. But in this case there was a twist, the $3 billion was not going to be divided evenly between Alberta’s two largest cities. Rather Ralph’s hometown of Calgary was going to get $1billion, Edmonton was going to only get $750 million based on its population, while the rest of the money was to be spent across the province in smaller cities and municipal districts. The reason Ralph gave for giving Calgary more than Edmonton was revealing he stated that it was because the Mayor of Calgary had come up with the idea in the first place and asked him for the money. Once again Calgary benefited while the Capital City was short-changed by Ralph and his PC party.
In Alberta it has become clear that in this election the term PC does not mean Political Correctness, nor does it mean Progressive Conservative it’s new meaning is PARTY OF CALGARY. Having re-branded themselves the Progressive Conservative Association, deleting any reference to being a political party in their ads, the PC’s as they have been known since 1971 have become a regional party representing Central and Southern Alberta. They are an ‘association’ a corporation which runs the province from the real centre of power; Calgary. They have returned to their roots, which was in the office towers of Calgary in particular the offices of the Mannix Corporation, which hired Peter Lougheed and later Ernest Manning.
After 35 years in office as the provinces ruling party, the Social Credit party of Manning was in decline with a lame duck Premier Harry Strom. In the 1971 election the small PC caucus of six swept the province with an overwhelming majority. And has stayed in power for almost as long as their predecessor.
The success of the PC’s under Lougheed was engineered by the former quarterback by amalgamating the interests of Calgary’s Liberals and Tories and with a backroom deal with Ernest Manning to quietly throw his support behind the new party pulling southern Alberta votes in for the Lougheed team. The Socreds disappeared off the map over the next decade, slowly becoming irrelevant as the PC’s amalgamated their party along with the Liberals. Only the NDP with one member in the house stood as an opposition to the Lougheed Government.
With the oil boom of the seventies and eighties, the governing Tories could do no wrong. Until that fateful mechanism of capitalism, the boom and bust business cycle slammed into the province in the 1980’s. The recession that had been hitting the rest of the world and Canada had been avoided in Alberta with the expansion of the tar sands oil project. The boom busted. Unfortunately it busted as prices for refined oil increased, while raw product declined. The bust in Alberta was a boon for eastern Canada, in particular Ontario, where much refining was done. Alberta’s export prices were kept down for a made in Canada price, while its ability to refine, process and export to the US market were limited. This was the real crisis that caused oil executives in Calgary to leap from their executive offices in a repeat of the great Wall Street crash of 1929. Construction dried up, laying-off thousands of trade’s workers, thousands of white collar workers in the oil industry in Calgary were laid off, steel and pipe manufacturing plants closed.

In order to stabilize oil prices in Canada, the minority Liberal Government in Ottawa under pressure from the NDP introduced the NEP, (ironically named since an earlier form of the NEP was Lenin’s attempted to create a market space for capitalism in Russia in the 1920’s) and created Canada’s national Oil company PetroCanada. In Alberta this partial ‘nationalization’ of Alberta’s oil production in order to create a provincial refining processing industry is still seen to this day as having ‘caused’ the crash of the eighties. What Albertan’s forget when they mention the dreaded NEP is the famous Globe and Mail photograph of then Prime Minister Trudeau and Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed, toasting champagne glasses together over the creation of PetroCanada, as a result of the NEP. PetroCanada saved Calgary from its market forced crash. It revived the oil industry in Alberta by increasing investment in the refining process, and contrary to the gnashing of teeth and spitting of blood over the NEP, allowed for Alberta to enter an unprecedented twenty-year boom.
A room full of monkeys could have governed this province over that time, and in fact that is exactly what happened.
After Peter Lougheed retired, the natural governing party of the PC’s elected its first Edmontonian as leader; Don Getty. Getty while an Edmontonian and former football teammate of Lougheeds, was well connected with Calgarys Petroleum old boys network. He was their point man in the Provincial capital, acting an oil business consultant and lobbyist. He however was unfortunate enough to takeover the party as the economic crisis continued in Alberta. However with record oil reserves, the government was able to throw money around ‘like a drunken sailor’ in order to save collapsing farms, as well as collapsing secondary and tertiary businesses. In rural Alberta it subsidized secondary processing plants for canola, beef, and pigs. In order to save the construction industry, and maintain its rural Social Credit base it built hospitals and schools, it expanded university construction, and in order to win seniors votes it built seniors housing in the cities. And it got re-elected.
Unfortunately even though the government built much, it was unable to fund staffing for seniors homes, hospitals or universities. And it couldn’t find enough tradesmen to build infrastructure.
It invested in meat packing plants, in a hazardous waste reduction plant in Swan Hills, it began partnerships with Japanese companies in building processing plants for timber export, all with an open cheque book paid with oil money and interest from the heritage trust fund.
Getty ended his short-term premiership in a personal and political crisis. His son was busted dealing cocaine (after his parole he was hired by Tory Bagman Ron Southern of ATCO as favour to Getty), his reputation was besmirched by the party as having been a lame duck premier. The knives were out after Getty lost his seat in Edmonton to a Liberal and hadto run in Stettler in a safe seat to retain his party leadership. Getty continued to be attacked by the opposition as well as by party insiders, in particular by leadership candidate Ralph Klein. The Liberals who had not been on the Alberta political map since they lost to the United Farmers at the beginning of the 1920’s had been revived as a centre right party to contest the Tories domination of the Alberta political map.
Under Getty the party lost a record number of seats to the NDP and Liberals, and the PC’s forced Getty out. In a closely fought leadership race between Edmonton MLA Nancy Betkowski (who would later become a lame duck leader of the Liberals) and former Calgary Mayor and boozing good old boy Ralph Klein, Getty was attacked for having created a fiscal crisis in the government.
In reality Getty had primed the pump in a good old-fashioned Keynesian attempt to forestall the worst crisis the province had seen since the Great Depression.
And the Depression was a memory in the province that still brought shivers to those who had lived through it. It was this memory that had kept the Socreds in power for 35 years, it would be the NEP that would be blamed for the crisis Getty faced. Albertans have long memories of those who done them wrong and those who saved them. In the Depression it was the Socreds that challenged the ‘eastern bastards’ in Ottawa as Klein called them, after the NEP fiasco it was the Tories who challenged Ottawa. To this day Klein uses Ottawa bashing to gather round the wagons and the mere whisper of NEP is enough to silence provincial opposition politicians and federal politicians as well.
Klein won the leadership race by Getty bashing, and in no small way Edmonton bashing. If Ottawa bashing won votes in Alberta, Edmonton bashing was equally a winner in the rest of the province.
Obviously Edmonton as the Capital of the province was like Ottawa a government town, though in fact it is the largest working class city in the province, full of tax and spend bureaucrats, government workers and folks who don’t know how to balance a budget. The Tories returned to their roots in electing Klein, and once again became the Party of Calgary.
The next test of the Party of Calgary came in the provincial election of that year, which saw former Edmonton Mayor Lawrence Decore leading a revived Liberal Party face off against former Calgary Mayor Ralph Klein leading the Party of Calgary. The NDP had been the official opposition for the first time in it’s history prior to the election, but by the end of the election were wiped off the map.
Like the rest of the country and in fact the rest of the world, the province was facing a short-term deficit which was increasing the provincial debt. All levels of government were facing increasing debt as corporations and foreign investors began divesting themselves of bonds in order to have access to cash.
Once again the business cycle of capitalism was glossed over, while politicians blamed the Getty government for its excess spending. In the United States and England Ronald Reagan and Margret Thatcher were elected and blamed Keynesianism for the economic downturn. It was the big lie of debt and deficit that allowed right wing politicians to begin to move towards increased privatization and outsourcing of government services based on the demands of business lobbies with cash to invest.
Decore called for ‘brutal cuts’ to government spending, Klein called for ‘massive cuts’, Klein won. Albertans stick with the one that brung ya. The vote was, ironically against the Tory government of Don Getty, with both Klein and Decore making him the boogieman.
In Edmonton and Calgary a sense that the crisis facing the Tories could mean a Liberal victory, led to strategic voting which ended in a wipe out of all the sitting members of the NDP, a larger Liberal Opposition and the election of Ralph as Premier of Alberta.
The Tories could do no wrong in Alberta except in Edmonton, where every sitting Tory lost to the Liberals. The Edmonton Sun renamed the city Redmonton, after the Liberal party colour of Red.
It would be a black day for the city, for government services, for democracy in the province as the Klein government would adopt the Republican Agenda, the New Zealand Agenda and the Thatcher Agenda to deal with its short term deficit crisis.
The Klein Government embraced privatization and outsourcing of government services and cutting payments to the poor, the disabled, and the artistic and cultural communities. Getty style Keynesianism was replaced with Fraser Institute policies. In fact Ralph became the poster boy for the Fraser Institute and its Free Market / Less Government policies.
Calgary became the HQ not only of the Oil industry in Canada but the HQ of privatized federal corporations like CN and former Quebec companies like the CPR. It became the HQ of National Citizens Coalition, (NCC) the right wing political arm of the Fraser Institute and the Business Council on National Interest. And it gave birth to the Reform Party of Canada, led by Ernest Mannings little boy Preston. The Reform party became the Canadian Alliance and now today is the Federal Conservative Party (having dropped any pretence to be being ‘Progressive’ by removing that prefix). The current leader of the Conservative Party is Stephen Harper who was also spokesman for the NCC.
Under Klein Calgary has boomed with growth of white collar, high-income movers and shakers. While across the rest of the province secondary and tertiary industries have declined like meatpacking. Hospitals have been closed, nurses and doctors laid off, social services have been cut, work for welfare has been imposed, private secondary and post secondary schools compete with the public schools and universities, teachers have been cut.
Where there haven’t been cuts is in Northern Alberta, where there is a construction boom in the oil industry of the Tar Sands and the secondary refining and processing plants in and around Edmonton.
This later boom was originally created by the NEP and has been funded by reduced royalties that the Klein government introduced when it took over. It was these very reductions in royalties that exasperated the Alberta deficit that led to such brutal cuts in the nineties.
It is Calgary where the right wing think tanks, the political science department at the U of C, and others have launched their cross Canada attempts to promote: charter schools, privatization of liquor stores, an elected Senate, and a firewall around the province. Calgary represents the new conservative politics of the Republican Party North.
Jean Charest when he was leader of the Federal Progressive Conservative Party during that first term when Klein began his ‘revolution’ said "Alberta sets the agenda for Canada". Today Charest is Liberal Premier of Quebec and modeling his restructuring of Quebec’s social contract on what he learned from Klein, as is B.C. Premier Gordon. That Agenda is alive and well in Canadian politics provincially and federally, but let’s call a spade a spade, it’s not the Alberta Agenda anymore than Klein’s Party of Calgary represents the province, it’s the Calgary Agenda.

ALBERTA’S SENATE ELECTION-Don’t Vote It Only Encourages Them

(881 words)

For the third time in seven years Albertan’s will get the privilege of electing our Senators in waiting, which are the proverbial bridesmaids of Canadian Politics. This is a $3 million dollar farce foisted on the taxpayers of this province by Ralph Klein in order to appease his parties Calgary rightwing rump, who are the movers and shakers in the new federal Conservative party. Albertan’s are one again being led down the golden brick road by Ralph, in this election which is non-binding on the Federal government. Don’t peek behind the curtain, or the smoke and mirrors of this non-event will become clear.
It’s all about the old Reform party agenda of having a Triple E Senate, ‘Equal, Elected, Effective’, but wait the Reform party is no more. And the masses have not been clamoring for an elected Senate, heck Stephen Harper and his Conservative Party (the Reform party in wicked witch of the west drag) didn’t even raise the issue in the June Federal Election. Ralph wasn’t even going to run any of his own party candidates in the Senate election till he faced pressure from some of those same Federal Conservative faithful about what a sham a Senate election looked like when the ruling party in the province didn’t play along.
So the provincial Tories are running candidates. The newly formed Alberta Alliance (another incarnation of Mormon-Elder Randy Thorsteinson attempt at creating a rural right wing party, he was the leader of the Alberta Social Credit party in the last election) is running the majority of candidates and there are three Independents all former supporters of the Reform party.
It’s a race to the right. The provincial and federal Liberals and NDP are not running candidates, nor is the Green Party, or the Communist Party, or the Communist Party Marxist-Leninist, nor even the Natural Law Party.
During the last Senate election at least there were truly independent candidates, severely normal Albertan’s as Klein calls them, running. Not so in this non-event. And the lack of any real election presence, signs, leaflets, radio, TV or newspaper ads underlies the whole phoniness of this election of a Senator in waiting.
And given the fact that Senate appointments are a lifelong appointment to the Red Chamber, one has to wonder how you can even elect one once every twenty-five years let alone having three elections in seven years.
Did I mention that Senators are appointed? Appointed by the Government of Canada, the Senate is a Federal institution and it has not been reformed to be a Triple E Senate, despite the feeble attempts by the Calgary based right wing party known as the Reform-Alliance-Conservatives, in its early years to make this an issue.
The only place one hears of Senate Reform is from the mouths of Calgarians, such as Peter Lougheed, Preston Manning and Stephen Harper. For the rest of us in Alberta and across Canada it’s a non-issue.
And we still have Senators in waiting elected prior to this election awaiting appointment by the Federal government, so why do we need more? The fact that these previous elected Senators, members of the Reform party, like the current crop has a snowballs chance of being appointed is irrelevant. It is another shtick the right wing can use to proclaim from the office towers in Calgary of how the West Wants In and no one in Ottawa is answering the door.
Once upon a time it was about electoral reform in Canada, the agenda of the Reform party was Referendum, Recall and a Triple E Senate. As it went through its transformations into the Conservative party, it dropped all pretence to democratic reform, and is now all about States rights, err Provincial rights, Flat Taxes, Tax Reduction, Privatization, the Republican Agenda for Canada.
The real question is not about reforming the Senate but why we should even have this elitist institution, a vestigial remnant of the British Parliamentary system modeled on its House of Lords. In order to be appointed to the Senate you must be a landowner. You must own property renters need not apply. It does not even represent all the parties in the Federal House of Commons, there are neither NDP nor BQ Senators. Of course in the case of the NDP that’s because they have held that this elitist establishment should be abolished. Now there is a real reform.
We should not be electing Senators but abolishing the Senate. Real reform would be to expand the House of Commons through a system of proportional representation to make up for elimination of this archaic vestige of British colonialism.
Senate reform is not on the agenda for any of the Federal parties, proportional representation is.
In Alberta on the other hand such radical ideas challenging the severe democratic deficit we face under the one party state of Ralph Klein is not even on the horizon. Instead Ralph gives us a phony election for a phony senator. Smoke and mirrors.
When it comes to electing a Senator from Alberta the old adage; "Don’t Vote It Only Encourages Them", holds true.

For background on Abolish the Senate Campaign in 2001 see my web-site:
http://www.connect.ab.ca/~plawiuk/senate.html


THE ALBERTA LIBERALS ARE NDP LITE

(540 words)

If imitation is the highest from of flattery, Brian Mason and the NDP should be blushing. With only two members in the Alberta Legislature they have been the sharpest critics of the Ralph Klein regime. The Alberta NDP has set the agenda in Alberta for mobilizing opposition to the right.
It’s the proverbial battle of Alberta. It’s the Edmonton Oilers against the Calgary Flames, the Edmonton Eskimos against the Calgary Stampeders. It’s a case of Edmonton Reds versus Calgary Rednecks.
With the election of Kevin Taft as leader of the Liberal Party and the ‘official’ opposition, which have seven seats all from Edmonton, the Liberals have abandoned their centrist attempt to be Tory Lite and have become NDP Lite.
Since this election is a forgone conclusion, the only real challenges and races will be in Edmonton. It’s the battle for Redmonton. And Tafts Liberals keep trying to be the NDP.
They have called for public auto insurance, a long time NDP policy. They have called for tuition freezes for post secondary students, the NDP has called for a 10% rollback in tuition and a freeze.
The latest election foible Taft has thrown out is a call for a review of Alberta’s Democratic Deficit, which really is what this election should be all about. He is calling for proportional representation, which the NDP has called for over the past two elections. He has raised the issue of reducing the number of seats in the Legislature to 64, an issue the NDP raised back in 1986.
There is nothing that the Liberals have said this election that differentiates them from the NDP.
They even changed their party logo to appear more radical, they have eliminated the Lubex L that symbolized their party in the past, for a slick black and red banner, an obvious attempt to appeal to the anarchist youth vote.
The Liberals have been on a decline since their heyday over a decade ago under the leadership of Lawrence Decore. Since then they have had three leadership changes, every time they lost the election to the Tories, they lost seats, and inevitably they bring out the knives and change leaders.
Today they are a left rump in Edmonton. But the NDP has returned, and with only two MLA’s in the house has still been a more effective opposition than the Liberals, who maintain ‘official opposition’ status by the skin of their teeth. Decore’s neo-conservative Liberals are no more, the Liberals under Taft are the left of the party, and what’s left of the party.
Instead of being NDP Lite they should simply give up their pretence to being a centrist-left party and join the NDP, giving Edmontonians a solid voice of opposition to the Party of Calgary and its leader Ralph Klein. The battle is for Redmonton and it is only a matter of time before this stark choice will be made clear to Taft and company. That time is fast approaching and will be made very clear on Nov. 23.
The Liberals are only the official opposition in name and should do Edmontonians a favour and unite with the NDP.