Saturday, May 02, 2015

Doug Goss, Rejection and the Fear of Failure in the Alberta Election

For a small group of corporate executives to put on public display their ignorance and small mindedness was quite something, but that it was happened in Alberta on Thursday. Doug Goss – who has done sterling service for the University of Alberta, for NAIT and for charities in Alberta – and his colleagues said: (a) they can’t afford any new taxes since it will mean that they have to lay off staff and consider their business future; and (b) that new taxes would mean that they would have to stop their donations (which earns tax relief) to the Children’s Hospital or other good causes. This is both nonsense and very revealing.

The evidence is in that raising corporate taxes – something the majority of Albertan’s support – jobs are not killed but gained, just as they are when the minimum wage is raised. Further, the evidence is also clear that such threats as are implied by Doug Goss and his Gross’d Out group rarely come to pass. When the oil companies threatened to leave Alaska when the State Government raised their royalty rates and taxes for corporations to support community development the noises were just the same. The “sky is falling”. After the changes were made, more oil companies came to Alaska and none left.

Even Danielle Smith (she of many political parties) though that this kind of nonsense would backfire. In a tweet on Friday she suggested that the Doug Goss statement “my gut is telling me that this press conference might not be a good idea”. Setting aside that this was her brain not her gut, she is right.
All of this about the fact that the PC’s are not used to rejection and alienation. They are suffering the shock of rejection (“but I thought people loved us…you mean they don’t”  and “why don’t they trust us…we have always been so nice to them”) and fear of failure.

According to my sources inside the party, they are still confident that they will win on May 5th – they have the best vote getting out machine and the best position in so many ridings from a logistic point of view. What will change this is if a large number of people vote. The more that vote, the less likely the PC party are to retain power – the fewer that do the more likely are to be in Government for another 4 years.

Some well-known PC Ministers will lose – Gordon Dirks (he who can build schools all on his own and can move mountains, apparently) and Jeff Johnson will lose.  Formerly PC safe ridings will fall to the Wildrose or the NDP. Edmonton will go largely orange (though my bet is that Thomas the Tank Engine Lukaszuk will win again in Edmonton Castle-Downs), but there will be a PC Government on Wednesday.

Just in case I am wrong, I am developing a list of the Top 10 Curried Tripe recipes (see last blog for why). Here is one!


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