Is Canada getting a tea party? The Economist suggests so, pointing to the Wildrose Alliance, a group formed in Alberta because the Conservative Party isn’t sufficiently conservative for Albertans. (My neighbour explains all of Canadian politics thusly: “Alberta and Quebec basically balance each other out.”)
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Nope. The big difference is that the Wildrose Alliance is purely regional, and plans on staying that way. There are a number of Conservatives jumping ship to the WA, but they’re people who were unhappy when the old Alliance became a federal party (Long story, complicated, involves wetsuits. Don’t ask). The Wildrose Alliance wants to work in the provincial political scene and stay out of the federal scene.Report
It’s all of the American ex-pats. They heard that Alberta was Canada’s conservative province and they thought that that meant that it was Conservative… when, really, it’s merely kinda blue dog.Report
You’re not that far off the mark. If you go digging into their biographies you find that a surprising number of prominent provincial Conservatives are expat yanks. Many of them moved to Alberta during the Vietnam War era, strangely enough just after their college exemptions ran out.Report