Speaking of SoCred and because I can't VM Valka, wasn't
Keegstra only kicked from the party
after losing the Supreme Court case?
Apparently some people from Alberta are mad about the election and are talking about separating. (Though I get the impression it's just a few very loud people.) Yeah, because I'm sure that a landlocked country dealing in oil would do well.
Wasn't Kenney the minister in charge of re-rigging Equalization under the Harper presidency? Evidently he's banking on nobody having a memory longer than five years.
And this delusion that he can somehow force Quebec and B.C. to acquiesce would be comical if Trudeau hadn't bought that damn pipeline—Notley at least was willing to play quid-pro-quo, but if Jason insists on throwing a tantrum and fighting the carbon tax, what incentive does Ottawa have to work in good faith? As I understand, even after Harper's attempt to turn the country into a bona fide petro state, fossil fuels account for
less than 3% of the Canadian economy—Alberta hitched its wagon to oil in the Fifties and has refused to diversify since, and when it runs out the province is going to crash harder than Newfoundland after cod (cruelly ironic given so many Newfies work at Fort Mac). An utter disaster for the province, obviously, but hardly a
national crisis.
Any forward-thinking leader would be using oil as a trust fund for the inevitable transition... but given how foreign corporations own almost all the actual production, I guess it's not surprising they're scrabbling for every errant crumb they can find. In Norway the government and the companies work in tandem over oil, and most of the revenue goes to a national nest-egg; this American fetish for letting short-term private profit lead government by the nose is a wilful blindness bordering on masochism.
I took a little dive into Western secessionism in Canada and my god, has anyone seen the Saskatchewan premier's letter to the Liberals demanding they cancel the carbon tax? I say send in the bombers to keep those troglodytes from exploiting the oil sands anymore
Rick Mercer was ahead of his time.
Not really equivalent, though. In a very real sense, the Prog-Cons were the right-wing equivalent of the liberals (right-leaning centrist party) and the modern cons are the right-wing equivalent of the NDP (right-wing party that tries to appeal to the center). The prog-cons could get that 50% score because they could compete with the liberals on an even footing for the centrist (and even center-left) vote, while having all the right-wing votes to themselves. The Conservatives just can't do that- the best they can hope for is the liberal being bad enough that they end up driving some centrist voters into Conservative arms.
A Canadian contact of mine suggests that the Tories are going to split back into the fiscal cons and social cons, because even after the merger the two camps don't really speak with each other. Harper managed to hold the boat together through Tito-esque force of will, but for all his snide sniping Scheer doesn't appear to muster that same knack for control—and the fact that he couldn't just come out and say he hates abortions and the gays will be seen by the SoCons as spinelessness. My friend also suggests the Tories still haven't figured out why they lost in 2015, and until they jettison the racist reactionism (i.e. the Reform wing) they will never hold genuine appeal beyond their base, and like you say, have to count on the Liberals screwing up hard enough that they can dupe the centrists into temporary common cause.
Interested in your takes.
