With two weeks left until Albertans go to the polls, the United Conservative Party is starting to feel the heat. And no wonder: they have a leader who’s playing hide-and-seek with the media, candidates who seem to be competing to see who can fit their own foot furthest into their mouth, and a growing list of current and former conservative heavyweights speaking out against the party’s new direction. But there’s still an ace up their collective sleeve that could save the party from its own listless campaign, one that even Danielle Smith knows how to play properly. It’s the enduring belief — or perhaps, in Alberta, the article of faith — that conservative governments are better for the economy.
That belief isn’t actually backstopped by much in the way of data, mind you. Instead, it’s a combination of deliberately drawn spurious correlations, conservative political rhetoric and the business community’s vested interest in sustaining this narrative in order to elect governments that will cut their taxes. It’s also a reflection of the NDP’s refusal to make a better economic case for itself and its record.
The way in which conservatives have weaponized the Rachel Notley NDP’s four years in government is a case in point. The economic downturn that occurred under the first NDP government’s watch in 2015 was a direct result of the collapse in commodity prices, one that was already well underway by the time they arrived in office — and one that probably helped get them elected in the first place. Conservatives were quick to connect the dots between major job losses in the oil and gas sector and the NDP’s arrival in power, and they continue to use them — facts be damned — to paint the NDP as incompetent stewards of the economy.
But there are some other dots they’re much less interested in connecting. Texas, a state with a very Republican governor and government, also saw huge job losses in its oil and gas industry over the same period. By September 2015, the Texas Petro Index (a “cross-section of economic indicators for the upstream oil and gas industry”) had fallen 27.7 per cent from its high in 2014. And like Alberta, its economy slowed to a crawl in 2016, with its GDP growing by just 0.2 per cent.
In other words, there was very little difference between an NDP government in Alberta and a Republican one in Texas in the face of a huge commodity price crash. The truth is that Alberta, more than any other province in Canada, is at the mercy of economic forces beyond its control. You might think, after watching the catastrophic impact that COVID-19 had on oil and gas prices and employment levels, the UCP might be a bit less willing to trade in the idea that the NDP was single-handedly responsible for Alberta’s economic pain during its own time in office. Instead, they’ve been doubling down.
