Battle River Crowfoot, as predicted, becomes the most
significant non-event in Canadian political history.
Last night, after watching the election results—which seemed
predictable—I realised that the trolls of social media would be sharpening
their knives at some of my commentary or taking the opportunity to turn their
vicious rhetoric not in any way different from Poilievre’s against the voters
of the riding calling them sheep, cattle, or any other derogatory term
imaginable.
This result was anticipated mainly from the moment Carney
announced the by-election. I spent much of my formative years in this riding before
serving on Allan Blakeney's staff in Saskatchewan, subsequently working with Ed
Broadbent in Ottawa, and later pursuing a career as a mainstream media
journalist in Toronto until 1988. In 1997, I returned home to raise my four
children, and I returned to this area without hesitation.
People here do things mainly to paint a fiddler on the roof
example out of a long-standing tradition. Nothing wrong at all with that, and
the members to which they have elected here reflect that same traditional sense
of community-based populist politics that was given birth to in the depression
by the CCF and the Social Credit movements of the day. This has not changed,
and it is highly doubtful that it ever will.
I laughed at those who trolled Poilievre throughout this
process and set their affections on Bonnie because that only served to entrench
the community and wound up hurting Bonnie more than helping.
One good thing that came out of this was that the whole
notion of a sovereign Alberta has been completely thrown out the window, garnering
only 1.5 per cent of the vote share. We are Canadians and continue to be
proudly so in Alberta, and that is something to praise and recognise.
Like anything else in Canada's political environment today,
which plays out more like a night at good old WWF wrestling rather than
positive political discourse, Mark Carney's honeymoon with the electorate will
soon end, and the long line of social media trolls will be hooking and baiting
him with as much hatred as that of Poilievre. This has already started with his
decision to order striking Air Canada flight attendants back to work, which the
courts will overturn, and his letter praising Donald Trump for the Putin
Summit, throwing Ukraine again into uncertainty and instability.
Carney is now beholden to Poilievre to keep him in office
and is busy passing as much of the conservative blue book as possible to keep
the Conservatives happy. TC Douglas referred to this as a black cats and half white cats coalition, which was from Mouseland and referred to the time of the 1917
Union Government with the Conservatives and Liberals under then Prime Minister
Robert Borden.
The next few months are going to be a very bumpy ride for
most Canadians, and those thinking that this miraculous change is going to
appear are going to be very disappointed, to the point where I think the next
election will be another minority, with Poilievre as Prime Minister.
People in this country have become ingrained in this point-and-click mentality that flows even to the expectations of how rapidly changes made by the Government will materialise. It will take years, even generations, to correct the imbalance in both income inequality and economic instability that Canada now faces, which began in the mid-eighties. The problem is in today’s society, if it can't happen now, why even consider?
Politics has shifted so dramatically to the polarisation of opposite spectrums that it has become a battleground of name-calling, trolling, worthless rhetoric and accusations of wrongdoing. We elect Governments to work on behalf of all people to build a society which hopefully will be free of poverty, violence and neglect of one another. Perhaps if our politicians were made well aware of these needs continuously in a constructive manner things may indeed change.
