Lefty Canadians on Twitter are in despair tonight about yesterday's provincial election in Alberta. Canada's most right-wing province voted to keep the Conservatives in power, as they're wont to do — but this time, alarm bells were ringing since the current Premier is a MAGA-y nutjob who loves Ron DeSantis — and who has been generating gasp-inducing headlines in a way that even Marjorie Taylor Greene might envy.
Danielle Smith is a joke as a politician, but she's an elected Premier now, and she's dead set against any action on climate change. Unless she somehow self-destructs along the way, she'll surely give Ottawa and the federal Liberals huge headaches on that issue. As for Albertans, they could easily find their healthcare privatized, their books banned, and their pension savings snatched from the country's federal plan and absconded into a risky plan of Alberta's alone. Not good.
On the brighter side, the race was very close, with the New Democratic Party shaving the UCP's margin to 49-38 — a swing of 15 seats. Their party leader, former Premier Rachel Notley, will head the largest official opposition in Alberta history. It won't be easy for Smith to govern a province that's split 50-50 between its rural and urban constituencies.
It would have been so much better for Canada if Alberta had repeated its election of 2015 and put the NDP in charge. But the resurgence of the NDP is a heartening sign, and we cats choose to PURR.
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