The National Energy Program is still one of the most quoted pieces of fed-bashing by Alberta (and in Saskatchewan which was also affected), despite being dead & gone for 20 years. Current grievances include distribution of federal power (population-heavy Quebec & Ontario are frequent targets), the Canada Health Act (http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/medicare/chaover.htm), the US beef embargo and the GST. There is some low-level discussion about resurrecting the triple-E senate proposals (http://www.cric.ca/en_html/guide/senate/senate.html) of the Meech Lake Accord (http://www.solon.org/Constitutions/Canada/English/Proposals/MeechLake.html) but my impression is that there is little stomach among the voters to entertain constitutional amendments of any kind at the moment, even by Albertans. Basic pocket book issues continue to be more significant to voters.
Personally, I'm not sure how a triple-E senate would help maintain Conservative control of Alberta. It would take serious gerrymandering to keep senators under the thumb of rural conservative voters rather than the more liberal voters of Calgary and esp. Edmonton. My suspicion is that this is one of those odd situations where the end result could be precisely the opposite of what the drafters intended. It would be a fun experiment in any case. In any case, my very unscientific intuition is that there are better odds of a single transferable vote modification to the House of Commons than replacement/abolition of the Senate.
Once a political junky, always a political junky. :-)
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Date: 2005-07-13 07:15 pm (UTC)Personally, I'm not sure how a triple-E senate would help maintain Conservative control of Alberta. It would take serious gerrymandering to keep senators under the thumb of rural conservative voters rather than the more liberal voters of Calgary and esp. Edmonton. My suspicion is that this is one of those odd situations where the end result could be precisely the opposite of what the drafters intended. It would be a fun experiment in any case. In any case, my very unscientific intuition is that there are better odds of a single transferable vote modification to the House of Commons than replacement/abolition of the Senate.
Once a political junky, always a political junky. :-)