2 November 2004

The Return of Social Credit

I've been spending the last few days getting ready for our Provincial election.

Thank God this is the last one for a while.

As all of you who have been with me for a while know, I generally have a great deal of trouble finding a candidate that I can endorse with a clear conscience. There are a variety of reasons for this, and the most important of them will be discussed later. The bottom line is that my inability to trust most politicians, combined with my staunch belief that in order to preserve the democratic system I must cast my ballot and allow my opinion to be known, causes me to spend a great deal of time and brain sweat to determine exactly which candidate or party I intend to throw my support behind. My general strategy, and one that has worked reasonably well for me, has been to analyze all of the election platforms of all of the candidates in my riding and vote for the person most likely to do the least amount of irreparable damage during their turn in office. I call this voting for the least of all evils.

This policy kind of bothers me, though, because it means that I throw my support behind a different candidate and a different party every election without really endorsing anyone. However, to my way of thinking the politicians themselves aren't really doing anything to try to win my vote, so my inability to stand behind one candidate almost feels like a kind of justice.

Politically I tend to be fairly Conservative. I believe in limited government and fiscal responsibility. I believe that it is the role of government to provide essential services, balance the books, and otherwise stay the hell out of our lives. Despite these tendencies, however, I have difficulty throwing my support behind conservative parties on both the Federal and Provincial level. Federally, I refuse to support the Conservative Party of Canada because there aren't any conservatives in the bunch: they're all just a bunch of reformers who are misusing the name and, to my mind, should probably be shot for their arrogance. Provincially I have trouble supporting Klein's Tories because inasmuch as I appreciate all the hard work that has gone into paying off our deficit I also think that the same outcome could have been achieved without cutting essential services like health care and education not down to the bone, but to the marrow.

I think it's safe to say that I won't be voting Progressive Conservative this time around. It's no great loss. The only good Tory is a suppository.

I have other beliefs, though, and sometimes they play a role in helping me form my decisions. For example, I believe that we as a society have a moral obligation to give aid and comfort to those who are less fortunate than we are, not in the form of a hand out but a hand up. I believe that in helping others better themselves we also better ourselves, and that's not a bad thing.

The problem with that kind of philosophy is that it really doesn't fit into a political platform. The Conservatives sure as hell aren't going to say anything along those lines, because it has nothing to do with fiscal responsibility, requires greater government involvement in our daily lives, and there's no money in it. There isn't any way for the government to get a return on its investment, and in the end that's what it's all about. Face it, good feelings don't appear as an accountable item on a balance sheet.

Of course, truth is simply a matter of point of view. Conventional government sees the statements that I just made as complete, utter, unvarnished truth, from their point of view. Which means that in order for social consciousness to factor into political government we need to start looking at unconventional government. If the Reform Party had survived, and if they had been more than disaffected, whining neo-conservatives (which they weren't) then they would probably have fit nicely into this little political niche. But they're not there, so we need to start looking at other alternatives. The Liberals are out, for the simple reason that they haven't exactly been an effective opposition so I have no reason to think that they would be an effective government, and most of the other provincial political parties are filled with squadrons of political whack jobs with delusions of grandeur.

My hopes for a candidate who is the least of all evils begins to dim. I might find myself voting for Kevin Taft simply through Hobson's Choice.

Then I noticed that the Social Credit Party is alive and well.

For those who don't know, the Social Credit Party was once the Natural Ruling Party of Alberta. They held power for more than three decades, until they were defeated in 1972 by the Progressive Conservative Party under Peter Lougheed. That was the year before I was born, so I can't speak from personal experience about the kind of place Alberta was under their rule, but I can say that my first clear memories of Alberta were of a kinder, gentler place than the one we have now. Some of that is simply because that's the way the world was in those days, but some of it has to be because the Social Credit policy and Social Credit teachings had to have some kind of impact on our lives.

Their platform is a logical combination of political conservativism and social conscience. They're the only political party out there that is actually proposing the idea of opening up the books and letting the citizens of the province see for themselves how their money is being spent. They're promising to reinvest in our social programs, our health care and educational programs. They're talking about reviewing our health care system to see if there are better ways for us to be spending all of the money we're investing in it, conducting the kind of audit that accountants perform for their business clients on a regular basis. This is quite a change from King Ralph's platform, which promises reforms to the health care system but won't tell us what they are because that would ruin the surprise.

Personally I find the combination of political conservativism and social conscience to be very refreshing. Klein's Tories speak of making Alberta even stronger than it is now, but when they say it they mean financially, because that's all that really matters, right? When the SoCreds say it they're not just speaking about financial strength, they're talking about helping us become better people.

I still haven't made my decision, and I probably won't until the day before the election, but I will say this: on paper the Social Credit Party of Alberta is very convincing, very compelling. But is my local candidate going to be that convincing and that compelling in person?

I suppose that's what I need to find out.