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If an election was held today, who would you vote for?

  • UCP

    Votes: 8 13.6%

  • NDP

    Votes: 43 72.9%

  • Liberal

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Alberta Party

    Votes: 4 6.8%

  • Undecided

    Votes: 4 6.8%
  • Total voters
    59
No chance that Smith was going to lose this riding. Getting more than 50% means she avoids total embarrassment of losing the majority to an NDP-AP vote split in her hand-picked riding. It gives her a chance to boast about beating the NDP by 28 points and throwing around terms like "blow out" and "landslide".

However, looking more carefully, there are plenty of things to give the UCP pause.
1. The 28 point win was down from 43 points in 2019.
2. The centre/left parties yesterday won 43% of the vote, which was up from only 26% in 2019. Smith basically consolidated all of the right-wing votes and still won significantly less than in 2019.
3. When Kenney ran in a by-election in 2017, he won 72% of the vote, beating the NDP by 55 points.
4. The NDP won all the voting districts in Medicine Hat, which means the UCP can't take smaller cities for granted.
5. If the Alberta Party had come even second place, they could have promoted themselves as viable contenders in 2023. But they came a distant 3rd.
 
Chinook Arch said:
The story is going to be in this election, look at the people who vote for Danielle Smith, and compare them to the people who vote against her. In which group will you find the young talented educated people?
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There are several factors that will help attract and keep people. Some of it low cost, and low taxes, some of it, quality of life, etc, but it will be more than one thing.

You make a good point about the voters. Very few of the young and educated are going to vote for Danielle Smith. They might have voted PC in other times, but not this time, and every 4 years, there will be another batch of young educated voters added to the voting pool. If the right side wants to have a future in provincial politics, they need to somehow get away from people like Smith.
 
Silence&Motion said:
If you just have a deep loathing for public sector unions and a religious devotion to debt repayment, then you're a conservative through and through. You'll just have to accept that your political tribe is now run by people who wear tinfoil hats and who are primarily interested in virtue signalling their anger toward Ottawa, the World Economic Forum, healthcare workers, cities, etc.
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That is definitely the narrative from the Liberal party hate-mongers. I'll reserve judgment until the UCP passes a budget. I don't have a tribe or a religious devotion to anything. Borrowing money to fund operations rarely makes sense as it leaves behind little of lasting value. Neither does limiting competition by allowing government to monopolize aspects of the economy, or unions to collide in price gouging.
 
DougB said:
That is definitely the narrative from the Liberal party hate-mongers. I'll reserve judgment until the UCP passes a budget. I don't have a tribe or a religious devotion to anything. Borrowing money to fund operations rarely makes sense as it leaves behind little of lasting value. Neither does limiting competition by allowing government to monopolize aspects of the economy, or unions to collide in price gouging.
Click to expand...
Yes. This is how conservatives think.
 

Canada places 58 out of 63 in climate change performance ranking​



Full disclosure, I don't have the rage towards the carbon tax that others do. But I am starting to wonder if we're getting much benefit from it or if it's as they say just another tax. Sure doesn't seem to be reducing emissions. If only there was an alternative choice presented to actually reducing emissions... I'm anything but an expert on the subject but after a quick google found this:

medium.com

6 Alternatives for Carbon Tax

Select the solution that works best and impact least on the economy
medium.com medium.com
 
It is just another tax that is buried in the price of things. With raging inflation, Canadians just know prices are going up and up and carbon taxes are just another contributor to that. The tax was introduced as a means to discourage people form emitting carbon through everyday activities i.e driving ICE cars, home heating and look to purchasing electric cars, solar heating etc. With everything that is going on in the world and the pressures of life today, how could the average Canadian be concerned with carbon emissions and what they may be paying in extra taxes? Those that are concerned and are taking action, are clearly not in sufficient numbers to make a difference. That is for sure.
 
JonnyCanuck said:
how could the average Canadian be concerned with carbon emissions and what they may be paying in extra taxes?
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I do think we, as a planet, have a problem with excessive emissions. But I've come to very much doubt that the small carbon tax we have makes people change their decision making. The carbon tax would have to be so high to essentially make those things that excessively pollute unaffordable for even the upper middle class; that simply will not happen. I disagree the carbon tax has really any affect at all, those that "can't afford it" get rebates (granted if you can't afford you're likely paycheque to paycheque so a rebate does little unless you're actively saving your rebate which if you're paycheque to paycheque you're not).

We just need to have a grown up conversation about how to bring down carbon emissions. The carbon tax does not work to reduce emissions, but rather than propose an alternative we get nothing from the opposition. Leaving us with someone's bad idea because it's better than nothing.

To bring it back to provincial politics, the NDP could really run away with the next election if they spent some time sourcing alternative best practices and carbon tax alternative to get Alberta off the feds system. I said the NDP because really do we think Danielle is going to do that, no. She's going to just repeat what we've heard, 'the carbon tax is bad'. If the NDP said, 'yeah, the carbon tax is bad, we'd like to look at a Cap and Trade or Cap and Dividend solution'. You'd see Danielle's mouth dry right up as her jaw sits on the floor.
 
JonnyCanuck said:
It is just another tax that is buried in the price of things. With raging inflation, Canadians just know prices are going up and up and carbon taxes are just another contributor to that. The tax was introduced as a means to discourage people form emitting carbon through everyday activities i.e driving ICE cars, home heating and look to purchasing electric cars, solar heating etc.
Click to expand...
I don't get your point - it sounds like the carbon tax is both too low and too high. It's a Schrodinger's tax - as long as we don't open the box to look at it, carbon tax can whatever it needs to be.

It's too high because it makes things expensive, but too low to incentivize behaviour change? It's causing financial hardship, but not enough for anyone to change their spending? How much hardship is it causing then? Are spending choices influenced by price changes or not?

How does this apply to the 8 of 10 households that are estimated to get more back in rebates than they to put in via carbon taxes? Is the carbon tax making their lives more expensive? All these households would pay more annually if the carbon tax and incentive structure were removed. link

JonnyCanuck said:
With everything that is going on in the world and the pressures of life today, how could the average Canadian be concerned with carbon emissions and what they may be paying in extra taxes?
Click to expand...
So the world is complicated and life is hard, therefore we shouldn't care about what we do and the taxes we pay? Got it.
 
Carbon pricing takes a long time to work as it involves not just behaviour which can change emissions today which is mostly minimal, but choices when creating and renewing capital stock which locks in emissions for the long term.

In any case, the vast majority of households end up ahead due to rebating the tax, so it is moot for most household accounts.
 
CBBarnett said:
How does this apply to the 8 of 10 households that are estimated to get more back in rebates than they to put in via carbon taxes?
Click to expand...
darwink said:
Carbon pricing takes a long time to work as it involves not just behaviour which can change emissions today which is mostly minimal, but choices when creating and renewing capital stock which locks in emissions for the long term.

In any case, the vast majority of households end up ahead due to rebating the tax, so it is moot for most household accounts.
Click to expand...
Doesn't this make the carbon tax ineffective? Wouldn't an alternative to the stick then carrot carbon tax method actually force the change required, not just get people thinking about change?
 
CBBarnett said:
I don't get your point - it sounds like the carbon tax is both too low and too high. It's a Schrodinger's tax - as long as we don't open the box to look at it, carbon tax can whatever it needs to be.

So the world is complicated and life is hard, therefore we shouldn't care about what we do and the taxes we pay? Got it.
Click to expand...
My point is that the carbon tax ... high or low ... is not having the desired impact. It is another tax buried in a price or cost along with a multitude of other taxes that we pay on just about everything we consume. On top of that there have been inflationary increases (some due to higher taxes). Do you think Canadians are actually pausing and analyzing how much extra they are paying is actually due to a carbon tax?
It is not that we shouldn't care about taxes ... it is that we don't keep track! We just know that everything is going up including the cost of electric vehicles, solar panels etc. which is what the carbon tax was supposed to incentivize us to purchase.
Until the cost of green energy products come way down and the infrastructure is in place to support the mass consumption of green energy, I see a carbon tax having little impact on human consumption of fossil fuels.
 
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CalgaryTiger said:
Doesn't this make the carbon tax ineffective? Wouldn't an alternative to the stick then carrot carbon tax method actually force the change required, not just get people thinking about change?
Click to expand...
No, because the rebates are not tied to consumption levels and are issued on a schedule.

The big thing is the tax changes consumption preferences. The rebate insures income isn’t lost for most. The change in consumption preferences still exists
 
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