Will Alberta change government?

The latest polling from Environics has the Wildrose Alliance comfortably in second place with 28% support. The PCs are still leading, but are only at 34%.

• PC - 34%
• Wildrose - 28%
• Liberals - 20%
• NDP - 9%
• Greens - 8%

Alberta seems to go through shifts from one party in government to another once a generation. Between these shift elections the election results are rather boring and stable and in support of the government.

Alberta has had four governments since 1905.

• Liberals - 1905 - 1921 - 16 years
• United Farmers - 1921 - 1935 - 16 years
• Social Credit - 1935 - 1971 - 36 years
• Progressive Conservatives - 1971 - 2009 - 38 years

In 1971 Peter Lougheed's PCs defeated Social Credit. The 1967 election saw the first weakness in Social Credit since they came to power in 1935. By the 1975 election it was a one party PC show, as it has been since then. Social Credit died as a party by 1982.

Before Social Credit Alberta was governed by the United Farmers from 1921 with big majorities in three elections. The UFA went from government in the 1930 election to not a single MLA elected in 1935.

The first four elections in the province were all comfortably won by the Liberals with a moderate Conservative party.

The strength of government in Alberta election is also shown in how often there is a realistic government in waiting in the form of a strong official opposition. In the 27 elections since Alberta was created in 1905, in only 12 of them has there been a sizable opposition.

Also interesting is that when there has been a change in government the new government has come out of nowhere to win a majority.

I have no idea why Alberta politics are like this.

It is still several years before there needs to be an election in Alberta, but the election could be one in which the Wildrose Alliance wins government from the PCs and the PCs may be reduced to a tiny number of MLAs.

The Glacial Pace of Change in Ottawa

For years I have been unhappy with how slow the federal government operates. It takes up to years to pass legislation that should be able to go through the parliament in weeks. The speed at which the civil service delivers most of the programs of the federal government is too slow to be able to meet the demands of the society.

Currently we have money rolling out for the federal stimulus program, but it is barely reaching projects and very few projects are underway. By the time the bulk of the activity of stimulus package is under way we will be into a growing economy. The need will no longer exist for the stimulus money. The federal government took too long to get the program underway and then has taken too long to approve and forward the money for the projects.

There is no earthly reason the federal government could not have had the stimulus program underway the day after the budget and then been cutting cheques my the end of March. The Canadian Federation of Municipalities had a long list of projects ready to be built that only needed funding.

I see this over and over again when it comes to the federal government. There is almost no program the federal government administers that does things in a timely manner. The federal government needs to develop a way to streamline how long it takes to pass legislation and then there needs to some way to make programs be delivered more effectively.

The end of the Senate would speed up the legislative process. The role for the senate has really disappeared as we have moved as a society to one that expects more direct input from the public. The Senate was created to be the exact opposite of public input, it was created to slow the actions of the will of the people. If the needs of the regions need to be represented, this can be done by the provinces and specifically when the first ministers gather.

How do we speed up the delivery of programs? I believe the best method would be to transfer as many programs to the provinces as possible. EI should be linked and delivered together with the provincial welfare programs. Canada Student Loans should all be done by the provinces. There is no need to a federal health department. The same is true of all the natural resource issues. Fisheries should be managed by the provinces, on the westcoast that is only BC, but in the east it would have to be cooperative structure, so there might be a role for some sort of DFO.

The more that is taken from the federal government and delivered by the provinces, the more efficient and effective program delivery would be.

H1N1 and the governments of Canada

I am trying to figure out why in Canada we have the federal government involved at all with the H1N1 vaccination program. Last time I checked, it is the provinces that deliver health care in Canada.

• What benefit is there in the federal government ordering the vaccine and then shipping it to the provinces?
• Would it not have been faster and more effective if each province had dealt with this themselves?
• How long was the vaccine delayed by going through the federal government?
• Who is paying for the vaccine? If it is the provinces, what is the role of the federal government? Are the feds cost recovering and does mean the provinces are paying for Health Canada staff costs?
• How many staff hours have been used by Health Canada on H1N1? Who benefits from this cost?

The provinces of Canada need to get the federal government out of health care. There is no benefit and only added costs and red tape by having the federal government involved in health care. The time has come for the Canada Health Act to be repealed.

If we have a federal government involvement in health care to offer money to the provinces the money for health care, why not just let the provinces collect the same taxes themselves and cut out the federal government? I believe that there would savings nationwide if we were to remove the federal government from health care. I also think we would see a more efficient and effective health care system by removing a redundant level of government.