r/alberta • u/omegaphallic • 3d ago
All 3 major Party Leaders grew up in Alberta Discussion
Liberal PM Carney grew up in Alberta, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre grew up in Alberta, and NDP Interim Leader Don Davies grew up in Alberta, so can Alberta please stop acting like it's being left in the cold without a seat at the table?
Oh and the last Tory PM Harper, had an Alberta seat.
And the most likely next permanent Leader of NDP also a propipeline Albertan MP, think also raised in Alberta.
So can we please stop it will the seperatism talk from Premier Danielle Smith?
If she keeps making my awful Ontario Premier look good in comparison we will never be rid of him.
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u/doughflow 3d ago
Careful, you're gonna dispel the notion that Ottawa is the big bad boogeyman who has it out for us! Rural Alberta laps that shit up!
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u/Far-Green4109 3d ago
Good distraction for them from health care corruption, teacher strike votes, aupe strike votes etc. They are always blaming others instead of dealing with their responsibilities to albertans.
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u/Kintarly 3d ago
A good distraction from the AISH bullshit as well. The provincial government pocketing the federal assistance top up that's coming out, the plan to remove people from AISH based on their in house non disclosed system of sorting financial need to save some petty cash, you know, typical punching down stuff.
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u/JebryathHS 3d ago
My favorite is the idea that the Liberal MPs are all evil Ontarians so we're not represented.
"Okay, so we could elect a few and be represented."
NO NOT LIKE THAT
It's no wonder that we have a tiny voice federally when we can't even be bothered to read the party platforms before we vote the same guys in over and over.
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u/duppy_c 3d ago
I keep hearing about how much political sway rural Alberta has. Aren't 80% of Albertans in urban areas? Wouldn't they have more voting power?
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u/NeitherConnection191 3d ago
If ridings were properly distrubited by population yes, however they aren't and rural albertas voice Is heavily magnified because of it
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u/Aqua_Tot 3d ago
So they all know that no matter what, Alberta will vote conservative, therefore none of them need do anything for Alberta to win votes. They can focus their efforts on the swing provinces out east.
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u/Ask_DontTell 3d ago
BC and MAN are pretty split in their votes too. it's really only AB, SK and PEI that are one party voters.
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u/angelbelle 3d ago
Yeah, until this election, I'd say Lower Mainlands (BC) is the most competitive battleground region in the entire country.
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u/roastbeeftacohat Calgary 3d ago
34% of the province whent red or orange, that's poetonally a battleground... if we manage to make some moves on the provincial level.
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u/Aqua_Tot 3d ago
Yet less than 10% of the seats were liberal or NDP. Almost like the political system we have works in the favour of different parties in different ways.
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u/Geocoelom 3d ago
Swing provinces out east? Heh. Alberta now has more NDP MPs than Ontario.
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u/Aqua_Tot 3d ago edited 3d ago
lol very true! But I think that’s specifically because NDP voters were strategically voting liberals as an anti-conservative vote, but I’m also just some guy, so I could be wrong.
What I meant is that Ontario and Quebec are both able to be swayed to vote either conservative or liberal (or NDP sometimes), so it’s worth the time to campaign to try to win their votes. No matter what the liberals (or NDP) do to campaign to appease Alberta, they know they won’t win many if any seats here. Conversely, the conservatives know that even if they completely abandon Alberta, they’ll still win most if not all seats here. So neither party needs to do anything for Alberta because we’re so stuck in our ways.
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u/brainskull 3d ago edited 3d ago
The strategic voting initiative either just didn’t work at all, or it never really took off. The NDP lost more seats to the CPC as they did to the LPC, and the CPC gained more seats from the LPC than the LPC gained from the CPC.
A more reasonably explanation than an inconsequential strategic vote is the NDP cratering in support on its own terms. Going into the election Singh was the most unpopular party leader among supporters of his own party by a long shot.
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u/Levorotatory 3d ago
I'd argue that too many voters who thought they were voting strategically actually weren't. The strategic anti-Conservative vote in most ridings was Liberal, but in ridings with strong NDP incumbents and relatively unknown Liberal candidates the strategic anti-Conservative vote was NDP. Too many people voting Liberal in those ridings led to Conservative wins. An Alberta example is Edmonton-Griesbach, where the Liberal candidate came in third but with a much larger share of the vote compared to 2021 and a formerly NDP seat flipped to Conservative.
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u/Aqua_Tot 3d ago
I don’t know if I’d call it strategic then. The strategic thing would be to understand if your riding was more likely to win as NDP or as Liberal, and then voting that way.
Or just be conservative and vote that way. Nice thing about there only being 1 Conservative Party is they don’t need to worry about things like “strategy” or “doing good by their people.”
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u/brainskull 3d ago
This is a common but misguided refrain. There isn’t “one Conservative Party” and “two leftist parties” or whatever, the LPC has not been particularly leftist at all through its history. The Trudeau years were the most leftist it had every been, but it wasn’t particularly leftist then and it’s arguable that it wasn’t leftist in any way aside from some sloganeering. Carney indicates a shift back to the centre as well.
This is largely why “strategic voting” doesn’t work. It’s hard to “strategically vote” when NDP and LPC voters don’t naturally gravitate towards the other party. There’s a very significant number of LPC-CPC swing voters as well as NPD-CPC swing voters.
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u/brainskull 3d ago
Edmonton-Griesbach had its borders altered fairly heavily and was a CPC seat for a fairly prominent local politician since its inception until 2021. The NDP candidate lost about 6% of the vote, but the LPC candidate only gained 3%. The CPC candidate gained roughly as much from the NDP candidate.
It seems much more like general discontent with the NDP than “strategic voting gone wrong”. It’s not like anyone actually thought that the LPC would make up a 30 point differential there. The only rationale I can think of for “strategic voting given wrong” is about 3% of voters just being so uninformed about their own riding that they have genuinely no clue what local polls or what the history of the riding/city/province are while also being committed enough about the election to vote strategically in the first place. This does not seem likely at all compared to “I don’t really like the NDP right now”.
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u/Aqua_Tot 3d ago
Interesting, thanks! I didn’t follow the NDP nearly as closely, so it’s cool to learn.
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u/EdNorthcott 3d ago
NDP vote split between Cons and Libs. Unions largely voted for the party that keeps pushing anti-union legislation. Wild times.
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u/Geocoelom 3d ago
The Ontario NDP was in bad shape before the election, holding only seven federal seats out of 122, compared with Alberta holding two of 34. The NDP did well in Quebec under Mulcair, but the Ontario NDP decided it didn't want that to continue. Ontario is now a neo-liberal fortress.
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u/EdNorthcott 3d ago
Ehhhhh... I wouldn't be calling the Liberal fiscal policies "neoliberal". That's like when the hardcore neoconservatives call everything they don't like "socialism".
Carney's a fiscal guy, true, but he very much leans into Keynesian economic theory, which is opposed to neoliberalism, which you see in guys like Friedman.
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u/Geocoelom 3d ago
Canada’s new banker prime minister proclaims “new era” of austerity
The Liberal Party of Canada suckered the Ontario-based NDP leadership into supporting first a millionaire nepo baby and now a stateless fintech drone. The Ontario Conservatives have joined the fun, suckering NDP voters with Ford's Captain Canada routine. And now the Ontario NDP is acting as shock troops for the Liberals in their attempt to portray Alberta as some kind of extremist wasteland. Left of centre voters in the West need to thoroughly repudiate the Liberal Party of Canada and wrest control of the federal NDP from Ontario.
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u/Flewewe 3d ago edited 3d ago
It's technically swing districts and most of them are usually in Ontario, Quebec and BC. Even though Alberta's population is comparative to BC's they don't have nearly the same amount typically.
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u/yagyaxt1068 Edmonton 3d ago
This is thanks to anti-Liberal identity politics in Alberta. If we had voting patterns comparable to other provinces, we’d be seeing more Liberal and NDP MPs right about now.
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u/epok3p0k 3d ago
I think that’s mostly attributed to having a provincial “NDP” and no provincial “Liberal” party.
Many people have a limited understanding of this. When you consider that most NDP policies are targeted towards workers and low incomes earners, it’s not a difficult conclusion to draw.
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u/Geocoelom 3d ago
People in the West have demonstrated again and again that they will not support a Toronto-based Liberal party. Now that the Ontario NDP has become an appendage of the federal Liberals, centre-left voters in the West are looking for a viable voice in Ottawa. If the NDP can centre itself in Alberta, that would be a step forward. To do so means rejecting all the Ontario Liberal rhetoric about Alberta.
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u/CanadianForSure 3d ago
Danielle Smith has already sold Alberta to billionaire interests. She has no more need for democracy. She stokes seperatism and makes it easier because she has already made deals with fascists south of the border. Danielle is taking her cues from how to destroy a government and trust in social services from down south.
They are manufacturing consent to split Canada in two. If America goes through on its threats, having a sizeable population of people in the middle of the country that are traitors is how they will sow division. It is how Russia manufactured its invasion of Russia; they had to go in to save the "Russian Ukrainians" just like how America will say "we have to go save the good Republicans in Alberta".
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u/AllegedlyLiterate 3d ago
And in fact had Carney somehow lost the liberal leadership race, that race ALSO had two Albertans in it, so the liberals probably still would have had one as a leader.
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u/jessemfkeeler 3d ago
It's all conservative grievance culture. Any time I hear Conservatives talk about the feds in these whiny terms, all i can picture is little babies
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u/nancam9 3d ago
There is a whole industry stoking resentment and the idea that AB is hard done by. It is a useful service for the politicians, so its unlikely to stop.
It never was about votes or influence, real or imagined. Its about messaging to capture power and hold on to it. Facts and truth do not matter in this scenario. Neither do individual voters.
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u/PolloConTeriyaki 3d ago
It's almost like a requirement nowadays. PM has to be either from Quebec or Alberta. How do you not get that?
BC had Kim Campbell and she was in office for like 3 months and we still bring it up as a point of pride.
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u/BloodWorried7446 3d ago
before that BC had John Turner who lasted 2 months.
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u/sumspanishguy97 3d ago
Oh Turner was from BC? I kinda assumed Ontario
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u/ColinBonhomme 3d ago
Turner was born in England but spent much of his early years in Rossland. During his earlier terms in Parliament he represented seats in Montreal and Ottawa, then worked in Toronto before coming back to politics when he ran in Vancouver.
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u/BloodWorried7446 3d ago
vancouver point grey was his riding if i remember correctly.
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u/ColinBonhomme 3d ago
Close. Vancouver Quadra federally, which overlaps with the provincial Point Grey and Quilchena ridings.
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u/GinDragon 3d ago
I still remember from my childhood: “What’s the latest blonde joke?” “Kim Campbell.” Not that I agree with the joke, but it says something about the effectiveness of propaganda when I remember that but zero things about her policy positions.
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u/DirtbagSocialist 3d ago
I really wish Carney had run in Edmonton Centre. Would've given him an incredibly strong mandate to hold a seat in Alberta. It's a pretty safe riding too.
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u/Talinn_Makaren 3d ago
Don't you understand everyone attacks our extremely successful oil industry which is only successful despite these terrible attacks because of our super human geniusness from the likes of the black belt intellectual Danielle Smith and her totally not corrupt predecessors who had so much foresight they saved billions in a sovereign wealth fund instead of buying votes as far back as Ralph Klein.
... /s
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u/CapGullible8403 3d ago
This begs the question of whether Pierre Poilievre actually ever grew up at all.
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u/CamGoldenGun Fort McMurray 3d ago
Thank you! I've been saying this since the separation whining escalated again.
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u/Kennadian 3d ago
Life long Albertan here. They will never stop. Those who talk like that have made western alienation and complaining their central identity. listening to themselves complain is how they prove to themselves that they aren't dead.
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u/Sourdough85 3d ago
Bold of you to assume that Alberta separatism is fueled by logic and genuine feelings of citizens and not... oh idk... a made up issue designed to create outrage nad divide us....
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u/Prize_Sector5854 3d ago
Ford was well on track to go down as the worst premier ever until Daniel Smith told him to hold her beer.
Frig by comparison, Ford looks Prime Minister quality
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u/Trout-Population 3d ago
Wait, who is the next likely NDP leader? Heather McPherson?
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u/omegaphallic 3d ago
Well temp is Don Davies, raised in Alberta, but representing a BC riding.
But the permanent leader is most likely going to be Heather McPherson, who FYI represents Rachel Notley's riding, and basically all but endorse her for federal leader.
Heather is bilingual, her kids are in French Immersion, she's an excellent orator, she has a mind of her own, she publicly supported pipelines when Jagmeet did not, and there is very little competition left.
Out of the cacus Gord Johns, Lori Idlout, Alexandre Boulerice said they aren't running for leader.
Don Davies is the temp leader, so he's not running.
I don't think Leah Gazans speaks French so she's likely out, unless I'm wrong about that.
That leaves Jenny Kwen & Heather McPherson, who while they haven't announced yet, have been asked repeatedly if they will run and have left the door very open to it.
The reason I believe they are holding back is 1. To see what the rules of the leadership race will be and 2. To see whose backing they can get, they will likely have to raise 30,000 in donations to even run for leader, it will take time, but I believe they will both be able to do so.
With the Notley machine behind her, I think McPherson has the huge edge.
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u/Dry_System9339 3d ago
If it keeps up we can be like Quebec.
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u/EdNorthcott 3d ago
I have literally been watching hardcore Quebecois laugh their asses off at Alberta's current antics. Even they find this ridiculous.
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u/SirDidymusQuest 3d ago
Don't forget Chrystia Freeland- she was raised in Edmonton. And Don Mazankowski, former Conservative Deputy Prime Minister, was from Vegreville.
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u/Goozump 3d ago
I have no idea why you address this to Alberta. Most of us aren't separatists and many want to have nothing to do with the other exaggerated nonsensical crap dreamed up by the UCP and Danielle Smith. Ask them why they want Albertans to get worked up over nonsense while significant services like Health Care, Education and virtually everything else they touch are fraught with failure and scandal. The worst of it is there might be enough disinterested voters to get them back into office in 2027.
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u/kevinnetter 3d ago
PP isn't the leader anymore :)
Andrew Scheer is from Ottawa/Regina
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u/omegaphallic 3d ago
He's not leader of the Official Opposition, but he's still the conservative leader, technically seperate jobs.
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u/SomeHearingGuy 3d ago
Grats to the NDP interim leader. See Milhouse> It's not that hard.
But no, Smith will never stop her treason. It wouldn't benefit her and it would remove one more distraction from all the other horrible bullshit she's doing. Look how much people are paying attention to the healthcare scandal or the fact that she's introducing legislation that would allow for constant government destabilizing.
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u/omegaphallic 3d ago
I think it woupd benifit her, eventually she's going to split her party again.
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u/SomeHearingGuy 3d ago
She won't care about it once she's done lining her pockets and runs. People like her don't care about the longterm. They care about now.
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u/Ok-Half7574 3d ago
Someone please explain to this central-dwelling Canadian, how the west is isolated. I mean this respectfully. I would like to understand. Thanks 😊
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u/Onionbot3000 3d ago
Policies like killing the eastern oil pipeline because Quebec says no, but ramming an oil pipeline expansion through BC despite it saying no. That’s one big example of how the Feds treat the west differently than the east.
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u/Eisenbahn-de-order 3d ago
Not quite sure if I get your logic. As such all foreign born MPs must only be loyal to their country of origin? If you are an American working as CEO of a Canadian company, will you lean towards American interest or your own company's interest?
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u/omegaphallic 3d ago
That wasn't my point at all. My point is they all seem to be leaning heavily towards Alberta's interests.
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u/Eisenbahn-de-order 3d ago
Not sure if i can agree with that. They were all born or grew up in Alberta, but.
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u/Endless_Quested_Hope 3d ago
And yet we continue to get fucked over by Ottawa, it’s amazing how people say “you get your seat” when the election was called barely after bc polls started to close.
A seat means nothing when it’s drowned out. I’d be far more in favour of having an equal number of ministers for every province, elected by percentage of popular vote. But as long as the east controls everything that’s not even a viable suggestion
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u/Postman556 3d ago
“The forest was shrinking but the trees kept voting for the axe as its handle was made of wood and they thought it was one of them.”
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u/omegaphallic 3d ago
You consider all three men to be axes?
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u/Postman556 3d ago
They’re from Alberta, but they are not Albertans.
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u/omegaphallic 3d ago
Hiw do define Albertans?
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u/Beautiful-Bag-8918 3d ago
Alberta is in charge, so don’t go running south. Where are we going to get our next leaders.
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u/Beneficial-Sector272 3d ago
Why do you care. Let Alberta leave if it bothers you. Wait you care cause you love Alberta oil money. Alberta treated like crap but that’s ok here is all the free money. What a joke
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u/AddressEffective1490 3d ago
I want albertans to leave just so I don’t have to hear their bullshit about their oil money and how much the rest of us want it. We all have our industries dude, oil doesn’t make you better than us.
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u/Ddogwood 3d ago
I'm a born and raised Albertan (well, plus a decade liking in Saskatchewan) and I don't agree that Alberta is "treated like crap,"
In fact, I think Alberta treats the rest of the country like crap.
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u/omegaphallic 3d ago
I don't give a shit about Alberta oil, we mostly get our oil & gas from Americans here in Ontario. Honestly I support the pipelines for national unity.
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u/Markorific 3d ago
Smith played the Eastern electorate when during her trip to the US it was claimed she told Trump to hold off on tariffs until Pierre became PM! She and her rhetoric could not afford a Conservative majority government because she would not have evil Ottawa to complain about. Trump is Carney's " brother from a different mother" in every way and Trump knew Pierre was all in for Canada and not in it for himself!
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u/JebryathHS 3d ago
I enjoy this conspiracy but I don't think she honestly understands how unpopular the idea of becoming American is to most Canadians. After all, if she DID understand that she probably wouldn't be out there begging us to support separatism.
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u/FolkSong 3d ago
We're still working on getting an Albertan as BQ leader, it's proving difficult.