It’s time to state opinions at the ballot box
By Lethbridge Herald on May 27, 2023.
OUR OPINION
It’s almost over! After a long, bitter campaign, the Battle for Alberta ends on Monday when voters go to polling stations across the province to elect a new government.
The campaign waged in Lethbridge has been hard-fought with the UCP and NDP clearly laying out their visions for a new Alberta.
Both have taken different strategies in their campaigning, the NDP focusing on what it considers failures by the UCP under Danielle Smith, particularly in regards to healthcare and education.
The UCP has taken what could be considered a more positive approach to the campaign, spotlighting its successes in the past four years.
The Liberal and Alberta parties have been virtually invisible in the campaign here except for West Lethbridge hopeful Pat Chizek’s participation in forums.
The approaches by the UCP and NDP have been as different as Alberta is polarized. But soon it’s over and Albertans can determine who is best to lead them for the next four years.
Both parties have made gaffes in the campaign, some of which have prompted quick apologies, one which as of this date hasn’t even been acknowledged by the party of the candidate who made it. Including the candidate himself.
And of course, we’ve heard of supporters – or opponents – of parties take matters into their own hands by destroying candidates’ signs.
Whether on public or private property this is shameful behaviour which all party leaders should speak strongly against.
Both the NDP and UCP have made strong arguments for voters to pick their representatives on Monday, a statement which will make avid supporters of both raise their voices in argument.
But to a dispassionate, detached audience, it’s true. And many in Alberta are detached.
We’ve heard from many people in the community they aren’t voting for one party, they’re voting against another. And there is a substantial number of undecided voters remaining, according to polls.
Polls have also shown the race to win the most seats in the Alberta legislature is a tight one. One poll shows the way likely voters perceive Smith and NDP leader Rachel Notley to be almost equal.
Some ridings in the province are considered safe for either party, others not so much. Lethbridge East is among those that is considered up in the air and while Lethbridge West may have seemed a safe bet for the NDP a few weeks ago, that may no longer be the case as the UCP has improved its stature in at least one poll.
We’ll find out on Monday night after 8 p.m. when the polls close who Albertans want them representing their communities and leading their province.
All bets are off on this one.
Good luck to all candidates on Monday. All of you did what so many won’t do – you showed the courage of your convictions to run for public office.
You put yourself up to public criticism which in the era of social media, can be harsher than ever. You mostly answered the tough questions from voters and the media and you never bowed or wavered in the faith of your beliefs and party platforms.
All of you who ran for election in Alberta deserve our respect and thanks for volunteering your service to this province that so many of us are proud and honoured to call home.
21-20
Wow you really stepped out on a ledge with that one??
Politics and politicians has become the art of avoidance and deception.
How we appear to now gauge a politicians value is based on his or her’s ability to avoid the question.
So if asked what you would do to solve the doctor problem in Alberta, you answer by saying you will build more hospitals? Some Albertans somehow make the leap from a building containing medical “stuff” to someone actually operating that equipment. Its like a sexual innuendo when you look at a person and move your eyebrows about and have a smirk on your face , and say “ya know what I mean”, y know what I mean. You hope the person on the receiving end gets the message you want them to receive even though you were not specific in the point, you want them to leap. Deep down you hope you are about to “get lucky” but if the person is offended you have an escape, in that its not what you meant. Thats the politicians mantra. In fact, we have captured new terms for being a political liar, You misspoke, I was misquoted, I was misunderstood, that was not the intent. Its definitely not that you are a liar for personal and political gain.
So its easy to spot rookies. If your intention is to tell people you don’t like Trans people, you have to do some pretty amazing things with your eyebrows and smirks not to be mired in the bias you are expressing. A rookie on the other hand will spell it out so its clear and fall into the trap of commitment.
Commitment has to be avoided at all cost. So when in the last throws of your pension seaking job, you throw out an unfunded twinning of a highway, its a hope the voter does not realize you did not allocate money to it.
Or you make the term vunerable and homeless apply to people that are neither. So when you decide to kill a downtown and its residents, you want it to appear you are doing it for a “higher calling” and allude to God/Mohammad/Jehovah or Fred. Saving the hunchback of Notre Dame in the Cathedral is a far more noble thing than saving the Cathedral and moving the Hunchback. So you provide food, clothing, medical assistance, sleeping quarters while telling the masses that you are “Savin Lives” as he destroys the Cathedral? When asked about the Cathedral you answer completely and state enphatically you intend on stopping all alien spaceships if elected!
If you want to scare pensioners into voting for you, You tell them their CPP is gone. You don’t tell them a referrendum would have to be held, or was promised, or is being used to threaten Ottawa. The reason you do that is you hope the drooling dementia suffering senior, that drives a 57 Edsel occupying 2 lanes at 12mph on the Crowsnest highway, makes the leap to “poverty”, so you can get his or her vote, assuming you do not identify as a Black Lesbian Rhinoceros, as I do!
So, politics has evolved into a “at least this guy/girl” appears not to be a nutbar. So far, they have not stepped into any feces, or made some tin foil hat comment, that would allude to the fact, that he arrived by spaceship wearing a tutu!
Politics has evolved into “embarrasment levels” and voters vary their embarrasment levels based on “social media likes” of someone elses opinion. Perhaps we need polls that in fact evaluate lunacy and embarrasment levels rather than stupid polls like Leger’ and others?
If some guy wearing a tutu, prancing around his/her/it etc etc spaceship like a firefly drinking a Bud Light says “they will defend your CPP”, then suddenly, the relevance is CPP in that entire descriptor? …….Why? because embarrasment has been relegated to a sidebar, that’s why!!
Deception- I enjoy the announcements by big feeling politicians. They have a podium, and then stack the background with as many diversified ethnic background bobbleheads as they can find on a given day. As the speaker speaks his/her first lie, the bobbleheads in the background all nod their approval. So we are now treated as sheep with an IQ of 2, that can be “worked”!
Enter Danielle Smith. So now that I know I am a Nazi loving Vaccine consuming Black Lesbian Rhinoceros, I say how bad can it get? I obviously have surpassed the Embarrasment part Provincially so what about Federally, just how much of this crap from all parties finally pushes the button that sends my spaceship back to the motherland?
PS If you got a laugh, good, if you took offence, I was misquoted.
I am not a Lethbridge voter, but, what has impacted my voting decision greatly, is the negative effect of the disturbing, fringe, anti-mask, anti-vax, pro-convoy blockade, christian dominionist group, Take Back Alberta, and their infiltration and control of the UCP. For this reason alone, the NDP got my vote.
Think the UCP hold the dibs on the economy? Not….
This:
“Alberta’s economy has lagged the rest of Canada under the UCP, well-known economist’s study concludes”
http://www.albertapolitics.ca