Alberta not feeling the love in federal election

By Don Martin
Canwest News Service

NDP leader Jack Layton is greeted onstage by Calgary-Centre-North candidate John Chan on day one of the federal election campaign. Layton is the only party leader to visit Alberta so far. (Ted Rhodes/Calgary Herald)

OTTAWA - It's the province this election forgot, suitable only for framing in campaign material as a scene where plumes of greenhouse gases belch into the deep blue Prairie sky from oilsands plants.

Alberta, and to a lesser extent Saskatchewan, is getting even more than the usual alienation treatment so far in this campaign - ignored by leaders while some of its 28 deemed-elected Conservative MPs fan across the country to help land seats where the result is in doubt.

How ironic. The souring economy tops the polls as the ballot-box question, yet the province keeping Confederation out of recession is almost exclusively portrayed in opposition-party advertising as an environmental evildoer in need of carbon taxation or hard-capping.

At best, Alberta is expected to serve as a refuelling stop for leaders' campaign jets, with a token event on the ground.

At worst it'll be a flyover as leaders search for seats anywhere else but in a one-party state that can be safely and strategically ignored.

The statistics are just too daunting to argue that anything but a Conservative sweep would qualify as a major upset.

After all, 25 Conservative candidates in Alberta finished with more than 50 per cent of the vote in 2006, including one claiming more than 80 per cent of all votes cast.

As my friend Alice Funke at punditsguide.ca found during her number-crunching, the only party that can see the faintest glimmer in the deep blue Tory tidal wave is the Green Party, which claimed three seats in Alberta among its top 10 national showings in the 2006 election.

Very few Conservatives, or candidates from any other party, for that matter, blew even half of their spending limit fighting the last election, and their ho-hum sleepwalk to the ballot box will undoubtedly repeat on October 14.

But, here's a rhetorical question: Does that mean Albertans, or voters in the now-booming province of Saskatchewan, home to Ralph Goodale as the last surviving Liberal, shouldn't have a role in setting the agenda?

The perennial quibble over allowing greater entrepreneurial health care would be an interesting discussion, particularly if Prime Minister Stephen Harper is heading for a majority government. As someone who believes in respecting constitutional boundaries, Harper knows health care is a provincial jurisdiction that could or should mean surrendering the Canada Health Act to legislature control.

The unfairness of western representation in the Senate, where smaller New Brunswick and Nova Scotia hold four more Senate seats than six-seater Alberta or B.C., is screaming for equalization, yet gets the silent treatment on the hustings.

And while it may be hard to feel empathy for a booming energy province when the auto sector is heading south, Alberta's economic slowdown should concern the country. A friend of mine recently went house shopping in the Calgary buyer's market, and submitted offers 25 per cent below the asking price, knowing someone will be desperate enough to accept his stink bid.

Add it up, and Alberta clearly rates something more than the 35,000-foot attention treatment from party leaders.

True, there are tentative plans for Liberal leader Stephane Dion, who might run the risk of becoming a rotten-tomato target for his Green Shift carbon tax, to appear at a Calgary rally focused on investor angst at the Conservative flip-flop on taxing income trusts.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who confined his Calgary time to Christmas and the night before the election in 2006, is expected to pit stop briefly in his riding before returning there for the election eve Thanksgiving weekend.

And NDP Leader Jack Layton has already come and gone, using the oilsands as policy backdrop with altitude as he swooped his campaign jet low over the tarsands to give reporters a closer look at the smokestacks he wants capped.

Even if it makes strategic sense for the leaders to spend more time in Guelph than Alberta, one should at least expect Conservative candidates to go through the motions of running for the job.

Yet, as my Calgary Herald colleagues learned last week, more than half the Calgary MP incumbents were knocking on doors in Ontario instead of in their ridings. MP Jason Kenney didn't open his election office until the first week of the battle was over, and says he'll only return to campaign on weekends.  I guess that's what happens when the election ends with the selection or confirmation of Conservative candidates.

After all, only in Alberta does love always mean saying you're Tory.