During the three-week 2019 Alberta election, the only televised leaders’ debate drew poor reviews. Viewers said they were turned off by all the arguing. Yet voter turnout reached 71 per cent, the highest level ever. And although the United Conservative Party (UCP) won a 72 per cent majority, Rachel Notley’s NDP holds 24 (or 27 per cent) of the legislature seats. Historically, in the 1990s the NDP proved they can be quite effective in Opposition.
United Conservative Party (UCP) Leader (and soon-to-be premier) Jason Kenney ran a campaign that proved mainly that anger sells. Every time he sees a microphone, he’s ready to fight someone. Anger can be contagious. It’s energizing. Like Doug Ford’s “buck a beer,” anger is cheap, intoxicating and impairs people’s judgment.
One way to unite a group of strangers is to encourage them to blame another group for some (real, impending or imagined) misfortune, as with U.S. President Trump’s warnings about an “invasion” from Latin America. Another way to win voters, of course, is to promise the impossible. The UCP has done both.
During the debate, Rachel Notley invited Jason Kenney to reply to charges that part of the reason he won the UCP leadership is that he paid a fake leadership candidate to attack his main rival. Rather than seize the chance to clear his name, he threatened her with a defamation lawsuit, calling her comments a “drive-by smear” and “fear and smear.” “I’m really sorry that you believe that people talking about your record is somehow negative campaigning,” Notley responded. “The leadership campaign of what you were a part is under RCMP investigation.”
Similarly, Canadian Labor Congress President Hassan Yussuff has called for federal Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer to apologize for having appeared onstage with the Alberta Yellow Vests who are vocally anti-immigrant, reported the HuffPost. Another speaker on the same stage was Faith Goldy, whom the article called “the social media personality with white nationalist ties.”
Hassan Yussuff said, “For the leader of the Opposition not able to condemn them … and stand on a stage with someone who is associated with hate and racism and somehow to not acknowledge that? … That is a fundamental, I think, failing on his part, and I condemn his behaviour.”
When CBC asked Andrew Scheer how he responds to complaints that his speaking at the event could be seen as being soft on Islamophobia, he simply denied it. He said, “I respond by pointing out that the criticisms are baseless.” If the Alberta election is any indication, then the upcoming federal election is shaping up as the murkiest, yuckiest, nastiest campaign Canada has seen in decades. But it doesn’t have to be that way. With the federal election still months away, citizens have time to set the house rules for election debate in advance. If the government won’t enact election reform, the people can. Source: rabble.ca
Friday, April 17, 2026
