Canadian politcs WI: A Liberal Premier of Alberta in 1993.

Like it says, WI Lawrence Decore had won the 1993 provincial election in Alberta?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Decore

What effect would a Liberal provincial government have on Canadian federal politics?

How would the centrist and left leaning federal Liberals get along with an unabashed right wing Premier representing their own party?

And last but not least, what would Alberta be like without Ralph Klein running it?

RCAF Brat said:

Like it says, WI Lawrence Decore had won the 1993 provincial election in Alberta?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Decore

What effect would a Liberal provincial government have on Canadian federal politics?

How would the centrist and left leaning federal Liberals get along with an unabashed right wing Premier representing their own party?

And last but not least, what would Alberta be like without Ralph Klein running it?

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Liberal? Alberta?
Head explode!!

He won 32 of 83 seats

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Decore said:

The Liberals won 32 of the province's 83 seats, the highest percentage they had won since leaving government in 1917 and the highest percentage won by any opposition party in the province's history. They returned to official opposition status for the first time since 1967, while banishing the New Democrats from the legislature.

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I don't see how he could possibly actually win. I mean they were in 3rd place before the election. I know this is Alberta, but that's just wierd.

I think that unless Getty hung in there the Liberals don't stand a chance. Even if he does, ... *Liberal* *Alberta*

Not ASB, I'm sure, but surely WTF, no?

In Quebec, no one thought that the Liberal dynasty that was in power for four decades (1897-1936) could be toppled until 1935. Then came Le Chef, and helped by Imeldific Liberal graft, la belle province changed forever...

RogueBeaver said:

In Quebec, no one thought that the Liberal dynasty that was in power for four decades (1897-1936) could be toppled until 1935. Then came Le Chef, and helped by Imeldific Liberal graft, la belle province changed forever...

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Oh, the PC's could have been toppled, no question. The Socreds were before them, and the Reform could have taken over, say.

but LIBERALS!?! After Trudeau??? in Alberta

Imelda Marcos was nearly elected Philippine President in 1992 a mere six years after the violent overthrow of her husband. Rene Levesque won a Dewey-like victory in 1981. It's possible.

RogueBeaver said:

Imelda Marcos was nearly elected Philippine President in 1992 a mere six years after the violent overthrow of her husband. Rene Levesque won a Dewey-like victory in 1981. It's possible.

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Umm... Have you ever spoken to a Westerner? Trudeau made the word 'Liberal' stink in nostrils of some huge percentage of people from the Lakehead to the BC border. Double or triple that in Alberta. Sure (provincial) liberals were elected in Edmonton - but Edmonton is hardly representative of the province.

Heck, my leanings are CCF-ish, and I have real problems with Trudeau.


Oh, and I don't know about Imelda (didn't she have the remains of her husband's machine?), but René was charismatic like all get out. He sort of had a Steve Jobs' Reality Distortion Field.

Dathi THorfinnsson said:

Umm... Have you ever spoken to a Westerner? Trudeau made the word 'Liberal' stink in nostrils of some huge percentage of people from the Lakehead to the BC border. Double or triple that in Alberta. Sure (provincial) liberals were elected in Edmonton - but Edmonton is hardly representative of the province.

Heck, my leanings are CCF-ish, and I have real problems with Trudeau.

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Decore and Klein ran on near identical platforms, and Decore's Liberals came within 5% of the Tories in 1993. That left them about 20 seats short of forming the government. You can be pretty sure that the Alberta Liberals under Decore would bear little to no resemblance to the Federal Liberals lead by Chretien or Trudeau. (And what will really make your head pop is that while he was mayor of Calgary, Ralph Klein was a Liberal! He only joined the Tories in 1988 out of opportunism.)

A POD that could push them over the top would be a different outcome to the 1992 Tory leadership race. Have this woman win instead of Klein.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_MacBeth

She was favoured by the party establishment, and was widely expected to be the winner of the race. Klein stunned them by winning. Mind you this would butterfly her becoming leader of the Alberta Liberal Party in 2000.

I know Western sentiment on PET: I share it, as do many of my fellow Quebecers, but for different reasons. I hate him because he gave us a near-NDP government, was quite anti-American, screwed up on the Constitution, multiplied the national debt 12 times in 16 years, etc. Ironically, Mackenzie King held Dief's seat for twenty years (having been rejected twice in his native Kitchener), but now it's the navel of Toryism.

I think that Liberal success in Alberta at that time was the same dissatisfaction with the system as it existed. The same was true in Ontario in 1990 and 1995, which is how us in Ontario went from a way-left NDP government to a way-right Blue Conservative government. The Liberals in Edmonton would probably agree with nothing that the Liberals in Ottawa said, aside from fiscal responsibility and the sell-off of Crown Corporations that the governments (both PC and Liberal) did a lot of between 1988 and 1996.

The Liberal name in Alberta was almost radioactive for a long time, and that's entirely the fault of Trudeau, of course - his quite blatant screwing over of the Conservative-leaning West to help the Liberal-dominated Ontario and Quebec not only seriously economically woulded Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia, it also gave birth to the Reform Party, which twenty years has come to mostly exterminate the Red Tory at the Federal Level. Trudeau will be remembered for many things, but in Alberta I gotta imagine there were people who weren't unhappy when he died in 2000. (And having Fidel Castro at his funeral - bad decision, to be kind.)

Ralph Klein was a Liberal! He only joined the Tories in 1988 out of opportunism.)

A POD that could push them over the top would be a different outcome to the 1992 Tory leadership race. Have this woman win instead of Klein.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_MacBeth

She was favoured by the party establishment, and was widely expected to be the winner of the race. Klein stunned them by winning. Mind you this would butterfly her becoming leader of the Alberta Liberal Party in 2000.

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OT: What's the deal with party switching in Canukistan? I was reading up on Jean Charest (QLP leader) and was surprised to learn that he's a former federal PC. (BTW, that leads to an additional irrelevant question, why are the provincial and federal party systems so different? e.g. BC Libs are conservative)

Parties' ideology flips as time progresses. Under St-Laurent, the Liberals were more conservative than the PCs, who were populist Red Tories under Diefenbaker. Mackenzie King went from centre-right in 1921 to centre-left in 1945, but that was over 22 yrs in the PMO. The QC Libs are the only federalist party following the UN's demise in the early 70's, but stick fairly close to the centre. It depends on the province. Federally, the PM has to stay centrist in order to gain a majority: Canada does not allow for homegrown Thatcherism, as much as us Tory voters would like it.

RogueBeaver said:

Federally, the PM has to stay centrist in order to gain a majority: Canada does not allow for homegrown Thatcherism, as much as us Tory voters would like it.

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Some of us would consider that a blessing in disguise.

Yes, the Post has been getting quite critical of the government, though not the PM himself. Tactical ploys should be understood for what they are.