OTTAWA – For Liberals from west of Manitoba who have kept the party flame alive through some lean years, these are heady days indeed.
Last week, as 2,000 Liberals gathered for their last pre-election gathering, there was an underlying assumption that the 1997 election will produce their best western showing in decades.
“I think the position of the party in Alberta is much, much better than it has been for a long, long time,” said southern Alberta Liberal senator and cabinet member Joyce Fairbairn.
Liberals will be competitive in Edmonton and northern Alberta, with polls even showing some strength in traditionally anti-Liberal southern Alberta.
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“I am very hopeful that we will increase our numbers in Alberta, that we will make a breakthrough in southern Alberta,” she said.
Edmonton Liberal MP and natural resources minister Ann McLellan agreed.
“We have polls showing we are running ahead of the Reform party in Calgary so we’re optimistic that we’ll even be able to make a breakthrough there,” she said at the end of the convention.
Counting the votes
In British Columbia, Vancouver MP Anna Terrana pleaded with the convention to help B.C. Liberals by supporting her idea that voting hours be staggered across the country to have vote counting happen at about the same time in each region.
She said it is an issue throughout the West. Voters find out that when they cast their votes, the next government already has been elected in the populous east.
“The elections have already taken place and we have been left out,” she told delegates. “This is an issue of great agitation for Western Canada.”
Delegates responded by supporting a change in election laws to have counting start later in the East and earlier in the West.
In 1993, the Liberals won six of 32 seats in B.C., four of 26 seats in Alberta and five of 14 seats in Saskatchewan.
Appeal to the West
Organizers at the convention were predicting the Liberal record of deficit control, promotion of trade and business, reduction in interest rates and defence of programs like medicare will play well across the West.
In fact, so cocky were Liberals that party leaders kept reminding them to take nothing for granted.
“Alberta has always been a tough province for Liberals,” said Fairbairn. “We have an opportunity but we will have to work very hard.”
In her province, the Liberals will target unpopular provincial health spending cuts as much as the federal opposition parties.
After a private workshop session on assessing the opposition, the party reported: “When it comes to strategy, the Conservatives have money, the NDP has organization, the Reform has motivation and the Bloc QuŽbecois has passion. Liberals have all four.”
Still, party pollster Michael Marzolini warned delegates not to be too confident.
He produced numbers from a September poll which showed the party with 47 percent of the national vote, compared to 14 percent for Reform, 13 percent for the Progressive Conservatives and 12 percent for the NDP.
Provincial breakdowns were not always as positive for the party.
They ran second in Quebec to the Bloc QuŽbecois, second in Saskatchewan to the NDP and second in Alberta to Reform.
“We must not be seduced by these positive poll numbers,” he said. “The only thing we have to fear is being overconfident.”
