The disturbing part of the Alberta provincial elections

Rachel Notley, Alberta's new leftie premier.
(Image courtesy Wikipedia)

On 5 May, the NDP won a decisive victory in Alberta. While left-leaning folks like me are quite satisfied, there is a disturbing feature of the election that ought to overshadow our elation.

Here’s the numbers, showing percent of total seats held before and after the election:

	BEFORE	AFTER
New Democrats	5%	61%
Wildrose	6%	24%
Progressive Conservatives	80%	11%

The Liberals won a single seat, losing four seats in the election.

The PC party is right of centre and the Liberals are left of centre.  The NDP is generally known as a “socialist” party, and the Wild Rose as a far-ish right party.

Do you see the problem?

Alberta is becoming politically polarized.  If anything, these elections highlight that political centrism has been roundly rejected by the citizenry.  This is not good.  Polarization strengthens in-group/out-group boundaries, which increases distrust between the two groups, which in turn will increase the risk of entirely irrational and harmful actions being taken by one group or another.  Over time, and if left unchecked, this could well lead to a fractured society in Alberta - much like we see in the US. This will destabilize an important region for Canada and internationally.  Besides the (morally reprehensible) fossil fuel industry in Alberta, a great deal of wheat (7.6 million tonnes annually), as well as chemicals, machinery, and other products, are shipped all over the world.

The continued splitting of society along any lines will not serve us well.  I don’t know how to fix it, but fix it we must.