Quote:
Originally Posted by Aeneas
Did you listen to Taft's concession speech?
He started off listing the groups that support and vote for the Liberal party. Educators, medical professionals, arts groups, etc. last on the list was business leaders. Went on to say the Liberals would carry on the fight for the average Albertan. I think it was clear the average Albertan did not support him.
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That's exactly it. The Alberta Liberals became a 'Public sector' protest party after Ralph Klein instituted his 5% clawback in wages back in the 1993-1997 years and the Lawrence DeCore types left the party. Everybody who was angry about that bought Liberal memberships in droves and went on to shape the party and it's policies.
They've been fighting that same battle every election since. They also do such a bad job of selling to the public too. In health and education they use metrics that speak from the perspective of an employee in such sectors. Ie when talking about K-12 education the first point of focus is on class sizes and they rarely mention anything about improving graduation rates or standardized test scores. In reality as a parent of a K-12 student do you give a damn how many students a teacher has to manage if high school graduation rates and test scores are still high? Heck where I come from that's called being more efficient.
In health care the most prominent position mentioned in any Liberal platform over the years is nurses and other support staff. Ie train more nurses, competitive wages, more full-time positions, "Staff-patient" ratios, yada, yada, yada. Their key measuring sticks are not about quality of care, cost of care, or timeliness of care, but rather how good a job they do at providing employment opportunities.