There seemed to have been a great deal of confusion about what was really on the ballot in Alberta. Does the wildrose province want to build new pipelines, or does it want to renovate outdated policies? This seems an odd dichotomy, and you would be forgiven for thinking that the exact opposite parties are implicated. But the fact remains that in Alberta, a microcosm of the pan-Canadian divide is taking place in real time. It is up to us whether we truly pay attention.
In case you haven’t noticed, an awful lot of large-scale resource development has taken place here in B.C. since Stephen Harper’s Tories and Christy Clark’s Liberals lost power. Former NDP premier John Horgan, who now works for a coal mining firm, took out a “Stake in the Peace” against Site C, then he oversaw a tripling of its budget with development full steam ahead. And Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, along with the B.C. government, has approved multiple pipelines.
If you went back in time to 2013 and explained this to the typical, broad blue tent voter in Alberta or B.C., they would have laughed you out of the room. And yet, here we are in 2023, with Site C on its way to completion, pipelines being twinned or approved, as well as multiple mines in development, all under “progressive” governments in Ottawa and Victoria. There are several possible answers, but the simplest is that big business and big government get along very well.
Why? Because there is no difference in their structure and processes, as well as the people who work for them. Yes, characters abound within the practical ranks, as turning tools, wrestling with nature, or facing citizens is bound to leave its mark. But the vast majority of these large entities are staffed by people who have never met their clients nor visited a worksite. They live in large cities with full services, far from the rural hinterland where resources are extracted.
This is the “commissar class” and their jobs revolve around the question of process - the “how,” not “why.” Within progressive governments, leading members of these private and public corporations are elevated to elected office, which merely changes their title and grants slightly more authority. What is far more important is that having graduated through the ranks of the desk-bound to public office, they are perfectly familiar and true believers in “process” politics.
What this meant for Alberta is that while the ballots may have said “conservative” versus “progressive,” the politics are exactly the opposite: social-democrats protect the status quo of process politics, while new freedom and sovereignty movements are radical in their questioning of that consensus.
Some may accuse me of stoking that division. But, like all other prophets, I am simply an unreliable narrator pointing out ugly realities. We have made several bad choices for decades, not least of which was the implementation of a constitution that failed to get all 10 premiers to sign. As our Pearson-Trudeau consensus begins to disintegrate, we must reopen the debate on country and citizenship, rights and freedoms, processes as well as principles.
What’s more, I am certain that people from across the spectrum would welcome a frank discussion on these issues. But a plurality of voters, largely from the commissar class, continue electing governments that may even use radically progressive rhetoric, but their policies do not materially improve the lives of their citizens. Instead, without arguing the principles or even the facts of a serious issue, they follow a process that is predetermined to favor the powerful few.
Say what you will about the tenets of social-democracy - the parties bearing that flag are neither socialist nor democratic. Instead, progressive governments have become the very thing they sought to destroy: goons for an elite consensus. Trouble is, they’re just so damn good at it.
Nathan Giede is a Prince George writer.
