Quote:
Originally Posted by SebC
Simple solution: stop voting Conservative! (Need to give the parties an incentive to try.)
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Actually I would argue it's up to the other parties to try and make an effort. Let's all remember Nenshi's campaign for mayor. Basically a tax and spend candidate won a conservative city like Calgary over a favored blue tory type because he put in the effort to connect to voters using social media and engaging them in a new dialogue about his message.
Contrast that with the Federal election, I e-mailed my Liberal candidate a few questions about Liberal policy and I got a disjointed answer two weeks later. As for the NDP, their candidate in my riding isn't even living in Calgary and doesn't even campaign here. It appears the only purpose of running candidates in Calgary for the NDP and the Liberals is to get that $2 subsidy per vote.
This isn't just about making an effort locally. There's a policy gap that parties use to demonize Alberta to create a boogyman to gain seats elsewhere. As mentioned in the globe article, it's not like it's always been Ignatieff's schtick to demonize the oil sands. Putting in cap and trade, when the US won't, and banning tanker traffic on the west coast would cripple the future of oil and gas in Alberta. The Nenshi example also proves that we're not totally against tax and spend, provided that the spend part happens here in as much quantities as the tax part.