Latest Mainstreet poll. Reminder they missed the boat in the municipal election 5 or so years ago(take it elsewhere, GGG!). I think that was maybe decided voters, too.
My thoughts remain the same. Include them in the polling average but don’t take it as a discreet data point. The overall polling data is likely better with them in it.
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Yeah I know you've said that about her, and you've made your voting intentions clear. I appreciate that you can change your vote based on information because that's more than most can say, but you keep posting things that excuse her. Saying someone is pulling the strings behind the scenes is giving her an out.
Not everyone needs to hate Smith for her not to be elected. Thinking she is a good person unfit to lead and the party is unfit to govern should be good enough.
Not everyone needs to hate Smith for her not to be elected. Thinking she is a good person unfit to lead and the party is unfit to govern should be good enough.
I don't think anyone needs to HATE her. I think people need to stop making excuses for her and her party (that's not in reference to Dion, just in general).
Hate is a strong word. She's ignorant, and not very bright, and ideally that's not who you want leading a political party and a province.
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There are many reasons. Alot of the discussion in this thread is about the extremes and about the headlines.
However, people are mostly one-issue voters and don't look at the extremes. I'll give you one example in my world. The non-union Alberta employee wage freeze.
Two year wage freeze turned into 6 years. With the UCP, they stopped the freeze and there has been two one time wage increases. One in mid 2022 of 12% to make people who were there from the start whole again and then another increase at the end of 2022, and expecting another one later this year.
I'm one of these managers and was not able to receive a raise nor increase wages of my employees nor increase the head count of my team even though the workload has increase 3-fold. Something iggy_oi has blasted me about for years, very fairly. Girly doesn't pay her employees, well, I can't.
So if you're a non-union Alberta provincial worker, why would you vote for the NDP who could freezing your wages again?
I just want to say thank you for articulating some possible reasoning for voting UCP (though I vehemently disagree), and I'd note that only one poster conditionally called you a theoretical idiot (or maybe it was moron)...either way I'm sure you've got tough enough skin to continue to debate.
I'd offer a few counterpoints: the UCP purse strings have sure gotten loose as the election approaches, eh? How did your personal finances fare from 2019-2022 when you consider insurance and utility bills that skyrocketed after UCP interventions? Salary freezes have never, in the history of the world, continued forever. With recent inflation (couples with the current resource surplus) it would have been crazy to continue it at this point.
Do you think the NDP would have held your salary freeze for all 4 years had they been the present sitting gov't? I'd suggest you may have actually seen movement by 2020 or 2021. I would award UCP zero credit here - this isn't quite a case of undoing one of their own blunders and spinning it as a win, but rather simply doing what any rational gov't would do, give or take.
It is really ####ing sad that the few times they do something rational it feels like a monumental victory, but that is the context of governance they have created.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GirlySports
It was the freezing of non-union but not union that made it NDPish. I think if the UCP has to make such a move in 2016, it would have been across the board.
We'd have to delve a bit deeper here to the specific contracts, but gov't does not really have the ability to impose unilaterally on unions (that whole collective bargaining thing).
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Are you suggesting their proximity might form some sort of portmanteau, along the lines of something like S̶m̶i̶t̶l̶e̶r̶ Hilter? I'm rather fond of Little Smitler.
I'd offer a few counterpoints: the UCP purse strings have sure gotten loose as the election approaches, eh? How did your personal finances fare from 2019-2022 when you consider insurance and utility bills that skyrocketed after UCP interventions? Salary freezes have never, in the history of the world, continued forever. With recent inflation (couples with the current resource surplus) it would have been crazy to continue it at this point.
Do you think the NDP would have held your salary freeze for all 4 years had they been the present sitting gov't? I'd suggest you may have actually seen movement by 2020 or 2021. I would award UCP zero credit here - this isn't quite a case of undoing one of their own blunders and spinning it as a win, but rather simply doing what any rational gov't would do, give or take.
Personally, I think the NDP would have, because their budget would be bigger, especially with a 2nd term, thus justifying a continued freeze. In my capacity on the inside, dealing with the NDP was difficult. It would tough getting any response from either the Treasury or FOIP. Now that could be first term disorganization and maybe a 2nd term it would have been smoother. Our CEO pressed Ceci about the freeze and never got one response in his final 3 years.
Once the UCP were back it was much easier with Toews. Even while the freeze was on, he would communicate why and why not and eventually worked out an agreement after 2+ years. So yes, I do give the UCP credit here.
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We'd have to delve a bit deeper here to the specific contracts, but gov't does not really have the ability to impose unilaterally on unions (that whole collective bargaining thing).
Can confirm.
I don't work for the provincial government, but I did formerly work at the City of Calgary in a non-union management position from 2015-2021. My salary was frozen from January 2017 until I voluntarily left the organization. If non-union salaries have since been unfrozen, I'm unaware.
Union salaries and annual compensation increases were dictated by the contracts that were negotiated between the various public unions and City leadership. Even if the mayor, council, City Manager, and every other senior leader at the City all wanted to freeze union salaries, they were legally unable to do so until those contracts expired and a new contract (with the union agreeing to 0% annual increases) was signed. On the other hand, City leadership had the power to unilaterally freeze non-union salaries, which is exactly what they did.
I'm sure this works the same way at the provincial level. It's not like the "pro-labour" NDP was showing favouritism to provincial union employees by giving them raises while freezing non-union salaries, it's that the union contracts were already signed and had to be honoured for X number of years until they expired. I'm not surprised that GirlySports is, yet again, failing to comprehend the nuance of a situation.
Anyone else think that the weathervane Danielle Smith pics looks like those cigarette warning images?
"Warning, voting Danielle Smith may reduce life expectancy and contribute to heart disease."
I wonder if this was intentional or if it was accidental, but I don't think I would be able to hold back a chuckle if cigarette box looking signs start showing up with that image and a similar warning label on it. I think it's against the rules to do something like that though, right?
Latest Mainstreet poll. Reminder they missed the boat in the municipal election 5 or so years ago(take it elsewhere, GGG!). I think that was maybe decided voters, too.
It's likely an outlier, but where are the outliers for the NDP? If they are going to win they should be building a bit of lead, at least in a few polls. They haven't done that recently and that spells bad news as far as I'm concerned.
Anyone else think that the weathervane Danielle Smith pics looks like those cigarette warning images?
I've seen a couple of them on the side of the road and find them difficult to see at a glance while driving. Too much going on in the picture. I'm sure the majority of people won't have any idea what it means.
Part of the reason I'm going to have a difficult time voting NDP is that I simply don't align with a lot of the mean spirited takes in this thread or people like this in general quite frankly. I don't really want to be associated with angry people that call everyone morons for not agreeing with them. It's not a great place to be right now for me as I just don't like the options and I'm still not sure about what I'm going to do. One thing for sure is that this thread just makes it harder and harder to vote NDP for me.
I fully understand the middle part of your post. There are many people here that push me away from wanting to be a long term or huge supporter of the NDP, however what I don't get is the first and last part where you say that would make you not want to vote NDP.
Everything the UCP has done and will do is so much worse than anything said here I just can't get how that would affect your vote. Affect your feeling about NDP and its supporters, 100% agree and see your point there, but it is nowhere close to enough to get me to even think about a Smith/Take Back Alberta led UCP party vote.
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I've seen a couple of them on the side of the road and find them difficult to see at a glance while driving. Too much going on in the picture. I'm sure the majority of people won't have any idea what it means.
I think it's a screen cap from a political ad that I think I saw on TV or youtube or whatever. It's supposed to be a stormy black cloud background with Danielle Smith's head on a weather vane pointing in different directions to signify she keeps changing her mind and direction aimlessly or something.
One trend I have come across some friends and people in my day to day talk/work/social circle is a concern with the UCP but unease with the NDP.
A lot of people are not happy with the UCP and Smith in general but feel unease about some of the social issues, wokeness and perceived softness on crime, drugs, violent offenders, environment/climate policies etc.
Smith's and the UCP performance has been quite poor across the board on a whole host of issues but it does seem SOME of their messaging is resonating with some people on what I call common sense issues.
I do think a leader and a party that was down the middle and more mainstream/common sense like the Alberta party could do well if only they had more airtime, a leader who was better known.
