Provincially, a lot of sort of left leaning folk I know are getting involved with the Alberta Party, which appears to me as sort of a younger Liberal party without the baggage of being called Liberal, but I'm not sure they have the long-term drive to actually develop a new party. And of course from the right there's been a lot of buzz about the Wild Rose party. If you were to go strictly on media reports and polls of popular vote, you'd reach the conclusion that the PCs are done. I'm not certain that's the case at all, but it is refreshing to me to see a lot of people I knew to be cynical non-voters get involved with
something.
I believe this is the first election since the municipal elections that got Nenshi elected in Calgary, and the shift required to unseat a Con MP in Calgary are incredibly high, so I don't think we'll see anything this time around. But if that energy is put to work long-term, it could produce results in one or two election cycles. A lot of people seem to expect fairly instantaneous results, though, and when I explain that Linda Duncan's win in Edmonton Strathcona was the result of a decades long strategy to build up members, awareness and support in the riding, a lot of younger activists' eyes kind of glaze over. I don't usually get the chance to say that that work is not yet over. It makes sense that not everyone can be involved actively for that long, but people come and go and it works out over the years. In Edmonton, our mayor isn't as cool as Nenshi, but he's not horrible, and we got a terrifically progressive council this time around (with the one exception of the guy in my ward, who's a former
Sun columnist, and pretty much everything you'd expect from that
- I guess you have to have one)
So, I guess that's to say that there is a lot of excitement, at least in urban Alberta, but whether there's the drive to translate it into long-term results is yet to be seen. That's my take on it, anyway. I'm curious if Holly sees it differently from Calgary.
