# Alberta Election 2015: "Mother of mercy, is this the end of Alberta Tories?"
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alberta-election-2015-mother-of-mercy-is-this-the-end-of-alberta-tories/717970
**Category:** Politics & Elections
**Created:** [April 18, 2015, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alberta-election-2015-mother-of-mercy-is-this-the-end-of-alberta-tories/717970 "2015-04-18T05:51:46Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 8
### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2015, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alberta-election-2015-mother-of-mercy-is-this-the-end-of-alberta-tories/717970/141 "2015-05-22T03:01:04Z")
> [@RickJay](#):
>
> This is probably the fiftieth time, at least, you’ve talked about Canada and proportional representation. You know more about PR in Canada than most Canadians.
Not really; **Frank’s** post #103 was news to me.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2015, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alberta-election-2015-mother-of-mercy-is-this-the-end-of-alberta-tories/717970/142 "2015-05-22T03:03:56Z")
> [@Canadjun](#):
>
> Steep? More like mountainous for some. The youngest new NDP MLA is a 20 year old university student. While I am absolutely delighted that the NDP won by a landslide, I am a bit concerned about how it will sensibly go from 4 seats to 53 seats and still be a competent government.
Well, the government is not the legislative majority, is it? It is simply chosen from among them, right? So they should be able to find enough experienced (not necessarily experienced in the Legislative Assembly, but experienced) NDP members to form a competent one. Knock maple.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2015, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alberta-election-2015-mother-of-mercy-is-this-the-end-of-alberta-tories/717970/143 "2015-05-22T03:06:38Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#):
>
> The inevitable “If this is what X has turned into, I’m leaving!” bluster: [A Canadian 'mass exodus' on social media - BBC News](http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-32629758)
>
> Unfortunate to compare them to Nazis, though (the pic is from _Downfall_, about the last days in Hitler’s bunker).
Ooh, [the Fuhrer won’t like **that!**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSYk8ofhYFY)
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2015, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alberta-election-2015-mother-of-mercy-is-this-the-end-of-alberta-tories/717970/144 "2015-05-22T03:13:15Z")
> [@Biffster](#):
>
> Well it’s two weeks after the election now and the sky has not fallen.
Has the new government even taken office yet?
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2015, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alberta-election-2015-mother-of-mercy-is-this-the-end-of-alberta-tories/717970/145 "2015-05-22T03:16:32Z")
> [@DWMarch](#):
>
> So it would seem the Notley Crew wants to raise AB’s minimum wage to $15/hour.
Yeah, but, that’s in Canadian dollars, right? A total increase over three years of about, say, 75 cents in real money?
::d&r::
::d&r::
::d&r::
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### Author:  [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2015, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alberta-election-2015-mother-of-mercy-is-this-the-end-of-alberta-tories/717970/146 "2015-05-22T03:17:28Z")
The NDP have a majority goverrnment. The official opposition is made up of the Wildrose - diametrically opposed to the NDP philosophically. It’s going to be hard for them to work together without major compromises on both sides. Since the NDP doesn’t have to compromise with a large majority, I think they’re going to govern on their own.
What is likely to happen is that the federal NDP are going to parachute in a bunch of professional managers to help run things - The PC’s did it, and it’s fairly common. But it remains to be seen if a caucus made up of young, inexperienced activists and true believers are about to take orders from a collection of out-of-province establishment types. With that much inexperience and lack of education in that group, the Dunning-Kreuger effect could take over - they know so little they don’t know what they don’t know, so they think they know it all. It wouldn’t be the first time that inexperienced people thrust into power did not know their own limitations.
I actually hope they govern seriously and well, because I live in their sandbox. But experience tells me we’re in for at least a very bumpy first year, and whether the bumps continue will be determined by their collective willingness to learn from experience.
And this isn’t really a partisan thing - the PC’s troubles took a turn for the much worse when we elected Ed Stelmach as Premier, and he created a cabinet full of farmers and cronies with little relevant experience. The result was a mess and he eventually had to resign because the incompetence burned so badly.
We get very caught up in the partisan war, and sometimes it’s easy to forget that governments are like multi-billion dollar corporations and very difficult things to manage unless you have elected officials with serious managerial chops running the show. If the Republicans in the U.S. nominate Rand Paul or Mike Lee or another 1st term Senator with no executive experience, I"ll predict the same outcome.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2015, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alberta-election-2015-mother-of-mercy-is-this-the-end-of-alberta-tories/717970/147 "2015-05-22T03:19:47Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#):
>
> Not only are they inexperienced and relatively uneducated, they don’t seem like a moderate bunch to me. Student activists, union reps, community organizers and social workers are not exactly the groups you’d call on for governmental moderation and consideration of the other side’s views.
Based on the American experience, neither are corporate CEOs nor RW career pols beholden to them. The lot you describe could hardly do more damage.
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### Author:  [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2015, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alberta-election-2015-mother-of-mercy-is-this-the-end-of-alberta-tories/717970/148 "2015-05-22T03:20:49Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#):
>
> Has the new government even taken office yet?
Nope. Notley is supposed to be sworn in on Sunday. And after they are officially in power I expect some time to pass while they settle in and learn the ropes before the craziness starts.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2015, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alberta-election-2015-mother-of-mercy-is-this-the-end-of-alberta-tories/717970/149 "2015-05-22T03:21:06Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#):
>
> How is the Yoga teacher going to fare in a negotiation with a senior bureaucrat with multiple degrees and 30 years of experience?
Oh, I’m sure she’ll prove very flexible.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2015, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alberta-election-2015-mother-of-mercy-is-this-the-end-of-alberta-tories/717970/150 "2015-05-22T03:24:18Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#):
>
> There are so many problems with a $15 minimum wage it’s hard to know where to start…
>
> First, it will cause unemployment. Guaranteed.
[Not necessarily.](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Minimum_wage#Academic_bitch-fighting)
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### Author:  [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2015, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alberta-election-2015-mother-of-mercy-is-this-the-end-of-alberta-tories/717970/151 "2015-05-22T03:26:28Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#):
>
> Based on the American experience, neither are corporate CEOs nor RW career pols beholden to them. The lot you describe could hardly do more damage.
Corporate CEOs don’t get to be CEO unless they have learned when to charge forward and when to back off. They are the kind of people I would most trust to be pragmatic. The knock on Mitt Romney on the right was that he was a guy who was more than willing to compromise with the other side.
It’s the ideologues with no experience you have to worry about. Guys like Ted Cruz or Barack Obama. The ones that aren’t there to manage, but to shake things up and demand change while not having the foggiest notion of how to do it or what the ramifications of their decisions might be.
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### Author:  [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2015, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alberta-election-2015-mother-of-mercy-is-this-the-end-of-alberta-tories/717970/152 "2015-05-22T03:31:53Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#):
>
> Oh, I’m sure she’ll prove very flexible.
(-:
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### Author:  [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2015, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alberta-election-2015-mother-of-mercy-is-this-the-end-of-alberta-tories/717970/153 "2015-05-22T04:12:18Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#):
>
> [Not necessarily.](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Minimum_wage#Academic_bitch-fighting)
The key sentence in that article:
> [@](#):
>
> The most likely reason for this outcome is that the cost shock of the minimum wage is small relative to most firms’ overall costs and only modest relative to the wages paid to low-wage workers
In other words, most minimum wage hikes in the past have been very small. More on the order of 10% than 50%. Most of them happen when the economy is growing, where wages could be expected to lag. We’re in uncharted territory with such a large hike during an economic downturn. Or rather, we’re in exactly the same territory as the minimum wage increases in Seattle and San Francisco, and those are already demonstrating significant effects on unemployment.
Also, the ‘new minimum wage’ research seems to be coming straight out of left wing research centers and from people like Robert Reich, who has been a strong advocate for higher minimum wages for a long time. That doesn’t make it wrong, but it means that it should be treated like you would treat an economic study from The American Enterprise Institute or Cato - with skepticism.
Studies of larger minimum wage hikes have found pretty consistent unemployment effects on the order of 1% increase in unemployment for a 10% hike in wage. But even in the ones where there are no job-loss effects, the economists in question suggest that there are other ‘corrective pathways’, such as cutting benefits, training, delaying cost of living increases, forcing employees to work harder to justify their salaries, and raising the cost of goods.
I can imagine that in the U.S. where there are significant costs to employers for health care and such, there is some room to cut benefits to make up for increased pay. In Canada, not so much.
From the [Ontario Labour government](http://www.labour.gov.on.ca/english/es/pubs/mwap/section_03.php):
> [@](#):
>
> In the Canadian context, researchers have generally found an adverse employment effect of raising minimum wages especially for young workers. Studies from the 1980s suggest that a 10% increase in minimum wages would result in 1%-3% reduction in employment (Swidinsky, 1980; Schaafsma & Walsh, 1983). More recent studies find larger adverse employment effects (Baker, Benjamin & Stanger, 1999; Yeun, 2003; Baker, 2005; Campolieti, Fang and Gunderson, 2005a.b.; Campolieti, Gunderson & Riddell, 2006; Sen, Rybczynski and Van De Waal, 2011). Typically those studies find that teen employment would drop by 3% - 6% if the minimum wage is raised by 10%.
In fact, only those studies in the U.S. mentioned in your link have found ‘inconclusive’ results. Studies in Canada, the U.K, and the OECD in general have found pretty consistent negative effects on employment.
And this increase is _huge_. Alberta already has the highest minimum wage in Canada. With this increase, the minimum wage will be $4/hr higher than the next highest (Ontario). That’s going to put a lot of pressure to relocate on companies that may have high labour costs and a low-wage workforce. A 50% increase in labour costs over three years is extremely hard for any company to overcome if a significant portion of its costs come from a low-wage workforce.
The recent Canadian studies indicating a drop of 3-6% in employment of young people after a 10% minimum wage increase are terrifying when you’re about to increase minimum wages by 50%.
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### Author:  [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2015, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alberta-election-2015-mother-of-mercy-is-this-the-end-of-alberta-tories/717970/154 "2015-05-22T04:51:47Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#):
>
> Alberta already has the highest minimum wage in Canada.
Alberta has the _lowest_ minimum wage in Canada outside of the NWT, though admittedly the provinces are all pretty close coming in between $10.20 and $11.00.
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### Author:  [@Biffster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffster)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2015, 8:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alberta-election-2015-mother-of-mercy-is-this-the-end-of-alberta-tories/717970/155 "2015-05-22T08:23:10Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#):
>
> It’s not just their lack of experience in government. It’s their lack of experience in anything remotely resembling the management of a large organization - or a small one. Or in at least one case, a household since she still lives at home.
>
> We’re talking about a caucus made up primarily of students, union representatives, social workers, nurses, a Safeway worker, a few teachers, an unemployed person with no education, A couple of college dropouts, a yoga instructor, a few that describe themselves as ‘social justice activists’ or community organizers…
>
> There are people in that caucus I wouldn’t hire for any job at all. Most of them would be strictly entry-level or perhaps local management level. Only a handful have any management experience at all or any real personal accomplishments to speak of.
>
> One article I read that was actually trying to play up the cabinet-level talent of this bunch came to the conclusion that we had a fine attorney-general candidate in a 28 year old woman with a newly minted law degree who had recently opened a ‘family practice’. Seriously?
>
> Not only are they inexperienced and relatively uneducated, they don’t seem like a moderate bunch to me. Student activists, union reps, community organizers and social workers are not exactly the groups you’d call on for governmental moderation and consideration of the other side’s views.
>
> I think Rachel Notley is going to have her hands full trying to corral this bunch and get them engaged in the mundane business of governing rather than the much more exciting and glamorous activities associated with activism and running for office. Is the 20 year old Comp-Sci student really going to be happy shuffling papers in a bureaucracy and showing up at town halls and local events to kiss babies and shake hands? Are the activists going to be thrilled with the idea of sitting in the back bench being told what to do or say while Notley negotiates ‘compromises’ with their hated enemies in the Wildrose and PC party?
>
> How is the Yoga teacher going to fare in a negotiation with a senior bureaucrat with multiple degrees and 30 years of experience?
>
> What I think is most likely to happen is that a lot of these people are going to be in over their heads, and as a result power is going to devolve to the bureaucracy, which will do what bureaucracies always do - use it to grow their own power and influence.
>
> And I can hardly wait to see the ‘hard negotiations’ between the teachers and nurses unions and the government, when the people on the government side of the table negotiating on behalf of the taxpayers were recently representatives of those same unions…
>
> The biggest risk Alberta faces is that the public unions are going to run roughshod over the process and gain huge concessions, which will be unaffordable and very hard to unwind. See: Ontario in the first two years of the Rae government, when a similarly inexperienced yet very sympathetic new government caved to outrageous union demands, throwing the province into a fiscal spiral that eventually required deep cuts to partially correct. Maybe the NDP has learned from that debacle, but has this bunch?
So what does it tell you that Albertans would rather trust their governance to a bunch of noobs rather than a bunch of experienced conservative politicians? The entitlement mentality of the old crew really seems to have rubbed Albertans the wrong way, and a left-wing party, however inexperienced, would be preferable to the same old same old. That’s quite a slap in the face to all the “seasoned politicians.”
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### Author:  [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2015, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alberta-election-2015-mother-of-mercy-is-this-the-end-of-alberta-tories/717970/156 "2015-05-22T16:48:30Z")
> [@Gorsnak](#):
>
> Alberta has the _lowest_ minimum wage in Canada outside of the NWT, though admittedly the provinces are all pretty close coming in between $10.20 and $11.00.
Sorry, I was thinking of the ‘effective’ minimum wage, which at its peak in Alberta was the highest in Canada. It has since dropped because of the economic downturn. But the rest is true - if we increase the minimum wage to $15, it will be the highest minimum wage in Canada by a very large margin $4/hr more than the next highest in Ontario. An increase this large is pretty unprecedented. On the good side, it’s so large that it will probably make for a very good case study - the employment effects should be large enough to measure, or if they aren’t that will be very interesting data as well.
Alberta’s minimum wage is $10.20/hr, which is the same as Saskatchewan’s and only .05/hr lower than BC’s - the two provinces most likely to compete for workers. It’s anyone’s guess what will happen to jobs when we’re sitting between two provinces that have a minimum wage almost 50% lower than ours. The NDP is basically going to be conducting a large labour experiment with our province.
Mitigating this might be the fact that Alberta has the smallest percentage of minimum wage employees in the workforce of any province, and by a pretty good margin. Or at least we did in 2013, when the economy was red-hot. Only 1.5% of our workers then were earning minimum wage (because of that higher effective minimum wage). If that’s still the case, the economic impact for the province as a whole may be low even if the impact on minimum wage workers is devastating.
BTW, contrary to the NDP’s assertion that many minimum wage workers are trying to feed families, Alberta’s stats show that 35.3% of minimum wage earners are under 19 years of age, and another 17.1% are between 19 and 24 years of age. Slightly more than half have been in their job for less than a year, and 35% of them do not have high school diplomas.
This is the profile listed in[this cite](http://work.alberta.ca/documents/alberta-minimim-wage-profile.pdf):
15-19 years old
employed full-time
in permanent employment
non-union employee
less than one year job experience
in Accommodation and Food Services
in Sales and service occupations,
some high school
female
Females are slightly more represented than males - I’m guessing because there are more opportunities for higher paying jobs in construction and the like in Alberta - at least until recently.
These are entry level jobs for young people with not much education. If their productivity doesn’t justify $15/hr, it’s going to cause a lot of unemployment in that cohort. And since these are the very definition of entry level jobs, it’s hard to see how they will ever find employment if we’ve cut the bottom rung off the ladder.
This is a very stupid policy. We’d be better off just identifying the non-transient minimum wage workers and give them a wage subsidy through tax credits. A 15 year old high school student does not need a $15/hr job, but he or she does need to be able to get that first job despite not having a diploma or any job experience. The people we want to help are the small number of full-time minimum wage employees who are actually trying to live on the salary and who have no options or prospects for better jobs in the future.
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### Author:  [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2015, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alberta-election-2015-mother-of-mercy-is-this-the-end-of-alberta-tories/717970/157 "2015-05-22T16:58:43Z")
> [@Biffster](#):
>
> So what does it tell you that Albertans would rather trust their governance to a bunch of noobs rather than a bunch of experienced conservative politicians? The entitlement mentality of the old crew really seems to have rubbed Albertans the wrong way, and a left-wing party, however inexperienced, would be preferable to the same old same old. That’s quite a slap in the face to all the “seasoned politicians.”
Absolutely. But don’t make the mistake that this was some serious shift to the left by Albertans. What essentially happened is that the Wildrose leadership and the PC’s tried to manoever the election, and the voters got really pissed off and voted for the only other alternative.
Most of the NDP candidates did not get elected on their merits - apparently some of them were really just placeholder candidates who didn’t even bother campaigning and didn’t dream that they would actually win. The voters just went to the polls and checked the ‘not PC or Wildrose’ box.
If the NDP thinks they have a mandate to govern from the left, they’re going to get a big surprise in the next election unless a miracle happens and their ideas turn out to improve the economic performance of the province.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2015, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alberta-election-2015-mother-of-mercy-is-this-the-end-of-alberta-tories/717970/158 "2015-05-22T17:02:29Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#):
>
> Sorry, I was thinking of the ‘effective’ minimum wage, which at its peak in Alberta was the highest in Canada. It has since dropped because of the economic downturn. But the rest is true - if we increase the minimum wage to $15, it will be the highest minimum wage in Canada by a very large margin $4/hr more than the next highest in Ontario. An increase this large is pretty . . .
Indeed it is. It’s **beautiful!** 😃
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### Author:  [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2015, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alberta-election-2015-mother-of-mercy-is-this-the-end-of-alberta-tories/717970/159 "2015-05-22T18:23:08Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#):
>
> Indeed it is. It’s **beautiful!** 😃
I guess we’ll know in a few years.
If minimum wage increases don’t cause unemployment, why not increase it to $20? Hell, why not make it $50? I’m sure nothing bad will ever happen. Because everyone knows you can increase wealth with a stroke of a government pen.
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### Author:  [@orcenio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/orcenio)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2015, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alberta-election-2015-mother-of-mercy-is-this-the-end-of-alberta-tories/717970/160 "2015-05-22T19:07:47Z")
> [@Leaffan](#):
>
> Great post.
>
> The federal NDPs in Quebec are a similar bunch of unprepared ragtags.
Ragtags who **fought, killed, and buried** one of the two biggest, organized, and entrenched political threats to the existence our country; while you mock then as ‘unprepared’ they have, for the last four years, faithfully served their constituents with enough aplomb and goodwill to currently [soar the NDP to remarkable heights](https://goo.gl/y4L9Vm) in Quebec.
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