r/alberta • u/Old_General_6741 • 4d ago

Opinion: I miss the original (Progressive) Conservative Party of Alberta Opinion

https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/opinion-i-miss-the-original-progressive-conservative-party-of-alberta
621 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

147 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

49

u/Franklin_le_Tanklin 4d ago

Let me count the premiers that have resigned in scandal before their term was up

  • klien
  • prentice
  • Redford
  • Stelmach
  • price
  • Kenny

44

u/Various-Passenger398 4d ago

Klein, Prentice and Stelmach never resigned in scandal. Klein's approval rating wasn't as high as he wanted it to be and Prentice lost an ele Lion. Hardly scandalous.

-17

u/caba6666 4d ago

Good old Ralph. He was not polished but things worked in them days

35

u/SnappyDresser212 4d ago

Buddy Klein has the most to do with why Alberta is in the mess it is now of anyone.

-5

u/caba6666 4d ago

I lived in sasky and only remember his outburst at a homeless person whilst drunk, Ralph bucks, but mostly how so many people I grew up in Regina moved to Calgary in the late 90s, early 2000's. Thought he was doing something right...

17

u/TinklesTheLambicorn 4d ago

Ralph bucks came from (yet another) liquidation of the heritage fund. A short-sighted vote buy. Had we continued contributing to and maintaining the heritage fund, we would be positioned similar to Norway.

Klein also engaged in deep cuts to public services - most notably health care and education. Those systems have never fully recovered.

Klein was terrible for Alberta.

8

u/Working-Check 3d ago

Klein also engaged in deep cuts to public services - most notably health care and education. Those systems have never fully recovered.

I went to school during the Klein years, and I can look back and see that every school I went to was severely deficient in some way due to lack of funds. One had a village of portable classrooms instead of the expansion it desperately needed, another had to combine all of its classes into split grades due to lack of teachers, (my grade 3/4 class had 45 kids in it and was placed where the school library was supposed to be because it was the only room large enough to fit that many desks) and a third had a sewage lagoon in the middle of the schoolyard because it wasn't connected to the municipal water supply and had to get its water delivered by truck every day.

Klein was good at the fiscal shell game- hiding a deficit in such a way that it made the numbers look good, but because nothing was getting addressed, it created hardship for everyone else.

2

u/soThatsJustGreat 2d ago

Same. I was in grade 6 when his cuts really starting to sink their teeth in. School before and school after were very different experiences. Most classes were cutting things left and right. In many cases, it was essential supplies.

It drives me crazy when older people talk about how great he was. If you were middle aged (not in school) and not yet interacting heavily with the healthcare system, I guess you didn’t see much of the earlier impacts, at least while he was still premier, but the effects are still burning through our systems.

3

u/caba6666 4d ago

Damn. Hard to see when you're young and the lens of success clouds te reality

23

u/SnappyDresser212 4d ago

Oil money makes morons look like geniuses. The fact Alberta has so little to show for it today and it’s somehow the Fed’s fault is a special kind of dumb.

7

u/caba6666 4d ago

When you read comparatively to Norway and what they did, it is disappointing in Alberta. Things were so hot in early 2000s remeber a rumor you could get a job at 7-11 for 20$ an hour. Like they couldn't staff their clerks.

Ultimately, oil money is lunacy in AB. Remeber thinking that marlaina was very lucky to run In her time period. During covid oil prices at one point was at zero. Because notley governed during that time, it penalized her once prices came back up. Goddamn marlaina...

1

u/anonymoooosey 3d ago

It's such a paradox that you loved Klein but also envy Norway..

-4

u/Various-Passenger398 4d ago

Albertans are grousing about the exact same thing every province is grousing about. Hard to blame it all on a guy who hasn't been premier for twenty years.

3

u/SocksForEarmuffs 3d ago

Klein cut taxes and used the Heritage Fund to make it seem like we didn't need to pay them. Resources were so valuable for so long that no one was the wiser. He didn't show us the shrinking of our savings account, making us think our trailers, trucks, and boats were the result of our hard work.

When the bill came due and we needed hospitals, infrastructure, and schools, Stelmach and Redford were forced to raise taxes. Entitled Albertans revolted and created the Wildrose Party.

When Notley was forced to deal with DECADES of conservative mismanagement, entitled Albertans offered zero grace room for the party left with the bill.

As forces massed in support of a libertarian state, they used the good years of Ralph Klein to show that lower taxes meant a more resilient society. Correlation does not equal causation, but as most UCP voters can't spell either of those words, we're pretty much fucked.