Commentary by CP-Alberta: www.communistparty-alberta.ca
Alberta politics are heating up this spring, with a May 5 provincial election now underway. While pundits differ in their readings of the past year, it has been something of a rollercoaster ride for the two big right-wing parties, the Conservatives and Wildrose, allowing new space for the Liberals and especially the New Democrats. On the left, the Communist Party-Alberta is also gearing up to run two candidates asking the main social and ecological question facing the province: who owns and controls the oil and gas sector of Alberta’s economy?
Just three years ago, Alison Redford helped win another re-election victory for the Conservatives. In power without interruption since 1971, the party has a proven track record of fully supporting its friends in big business. But in the last few years a new right-wing challenger emerged in the form of the Wildrose Party, whose ranks include Western regionalists, Christian fundamentalists, homophobes, libertarians as well as other far-right voices.
The Tory dynasty has also seen the two major cities, Edmonton and Calgary, increase in population and change in social character through immigration and the weakening of ties to Alberta’s agricultural roots. This is reflected in the relative strength of Liberal support in corporate headquarter Calgary, and NDP support in the somewhat more industrial Edmonton.
In March 2014, Redford resigned amid scandals and was replaced by Jim Prentice as party leader and Premier. People’s Voice readers will no doubt remember Prentice as a former Harper Conservative MP who left federal politics in 2010 to act as an executive for the CIBC bank.
Last November and December, twelve Wildrose MLAs, including their leader, crossed the floor to join the Conservatives. The move provoked widespread indignation on the right, which together with disenchantment over the latest provincial budget was enough to bring the remnant Wildrose party neck and neck with Tories in the most recent polls.
Prentice postponed a winter budget sitting due to falling global oil prices, and floated the idea of a sales tax. In fact, the budget tabled in March does contain some minor tax increases (including a so-called “Waiting Room tax”) but mainly reflects the upside-down logic that the province faces a spending crisis, not a revenue problem, cutting over a billion just from health care alone.
Coming out solidly against these neo-liberal cuts will be the Communist Party–Alberta, running two candidates with a people’s agenda platform.
Naomi Rankin, the party’s provincial leader, will run in Edmonton Mill Woods. Rankin is a retired computer programmer who has been a political activist in peace, women’s and social justice groups since she was a teenager.
Joining her in the campaign is Bonnie Devine, in the working class riding of Calgary East. A telecommunications worker, Devine is the past-president of her union local and a prominent anti-racist activist.
“Conservative governments have failed to charge normal royalties on resources, and they have cut corporate taxes again and again, as well as replacing progressive income tax with a flat tax favouring the rich,” the Alberta CP’s election platform says. In the opposite direction, the Communist platform proposes quality, affordable social housing; restoring public funding to health care and rolling back privatization; a universal, accessible, affordable, and public childcare program; as well as free post-secondary education.
“People across Alberta are justifiably outraged by the opportunism of the right wing parties and their squandering of Alberta’s wealth over the past decades,” Naomi Rankin told People’s Voice. “Albertans shouldn’t be forced to choose between the parties of big business,” she said, adding that the Tories operate a “take the money and run” economy.
Figuring large in the Communist platform are the needs of people and nature, such as progressive taxation; job creation by diversifying the economy and expanding public ownership; labour and workers rights; expanded equality and democratic rights for all Albertans; a new financial deal for cities; support for family farms; and a safe and healthy environment.
Alberta needs to “move away from dependence on resource extraction to valued added processing,” “bring the energy industry under public control,” and “Halt new development of the Athabasca bituminous tar sands, phasing-out these operations with jobs guaranteed for workers at equivalent wages and benefits,” the platform says. It also proposes free public municipal Wi-Fi services for cities, and lower utility rates with ecology pricing that rewards conservation.
People’s Voice will feature more reports about the election campaign. The Alberta CP’s website is online now and being updated, at www.communistparty-alberta.ca