Backlash against Wildrose shows most voters reject bigotry.
by Gillian Steward
The sighs of relief sweeping Alberta are almost audible. It's not that most Albertans are relieved that the Progressive Conservatives won the election, yet again. But rather that it is now abundantly clear that most Albertans are not racists and homophobes.
Other Canadians likely feel they don't need to prove this. But in Alberta we had a history that clung to us like an old, tattered sheet.
The Social Credit party, which governed Alberta for 35 years, was overtly anti-Semitic in its early days.
In the early 1980s anti-Semitism reared its ugly head again, when it was revealed that a social studies teacher in a public high school was teaching students that the Holocaust was a hoax. Jim Keegstra was quickly booted from his teaching job and eventually convicted of wilfully promoting hate, a decision upheld in 1990 by the Supreme Court.
Nevertheless, Alberta gained a reputation as a place where anti-Semitism thrives, a stereotype that has prevailed for a long, long time. Just last year a national newspaper ran a full-page article about Calgary being the centre of neo-Nazism in Canada, when in fact neo-Nazis here have aroused so much public opposition they have abandoned their White Pride marches.
Albertans also got a reputation for being hostile to gays and lesbians, thanks to premier Ralph Klein. In the 1990s Klein refused to include sexual orientation in Alberta's Human Rights Act — until the Supreme Court told him that was unconstitutional. He also vociferously opposed the legalization of same-sex marriage and was forced to back down on that as well.
It was this history that came back to haunt us during the latter part of the election campaign thanks to Danielle Smith and the Wildrose party. The haunting began when Smith declared that marriage commissioners should be able to exercise their "conscience rights" and opt out of marrying gays and lesbians if they thought it was wrong.
Smith then said that complaints about discrimination should be handled by a special court. That sounded like she wanted to abolish the Human Rights Commission.
A Wildrose candidate, a minister running in a very ethnically diverse part of Calgary, said more than once that he was better qualified to handle a multicultural constituency because he was Caucasian. An Edmonton candidate, also a minister, called homosexuals sinners who "will suffer the rest of eternity in the lake of fire, hell…"
All of this frightened a lot of people. Edmonton's Jewish mayor publicly objected; as did Calgary's Muslim mayor.
Kelly Ernst, a Calgarian who has worked long and hard for gay and lesbian rights in the province, said that during the last few days of the campaign he could see through social media that people who were intending to vote Wildrose because they wanted change were turning back to the PCs because of the racist and homophobic comments coming out of the Wildrose camp.
"People within the Wildrose, and the media, have a perpetual problem describing the sentiment of Albertans. They are too blinded by the 40-plus years of one government and the power of the Albertan stereotype," he told me.
Smith could have easily shut down the candidates, she could have disqualified them. But instead she defended them by invoking their right to free speech. She didn't seem to understand that political candidates voluntarily give up their freedom of speech to toe the party line. This left people wondering just exactly what the party line is on such issues.
To be sure there was a wing of the Alberta PC party that hewed to this sort of discrimination, and many of those PCs eventually joined the Wildrose because they felt more at home there.
But it was always easy to see that the majority of Albertans did not hold those views. When Klein was fighting same-sex marriage, several opinion polls showed that most Albertans didn't support him.
When Ted Morton, who opposed same-sex marriage and abortion, ran for the PC leadership in 2006 it looked as though he might win — but his support stopped dead at 30 percent of PC members.
Now that social conservative wing of the PCs sits in opposition, Premier Alison Redford is freer to adopt more liberal social policies.
Now that social conservative wing of the PC party has been rooted out. It sits in opposition, leaving Premier Alison Redford and the PCs freer to adopt more liberal social policies.
"The Albertan stereotype was embodied by the Wildrose, yet Albertans soundly rejected it," says Kelly Ernst.
Yes indeed. The Wildrose provided Albertans with an opportunity to take a stand against bigotry, against the history that has haunted us. An opportunity that proved irresistible.
About Gillian Steward
Gillian Steward is a Calgary writer and journalist, and former managing editor of the Calgary Herald.
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