KILLAM, Alta. – Dwayne Wideman is surprised he doesn’t hear more chatter about the upcoming provincial election when drivers fill up with fuel or stop in at the service station for their morning coffee.
He believes there’s plenty of fodder for a good political discussion: campaign promises to eliminate health-care premiums; an oil patch that’s cooling off and changes to the oil royalty structure.
“There are some issues that are pretty important,” said Wideman, who originates from Saskatchewan where election debates in coffee shops were common.
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Election discussions aren’t part of the coffee time chatter down the street at Chevraux Enterprises, the local employment agency.
“I’m not a political animal,” said Lorna Offord of Sedgewick, Alta.
In a 75 kilometre stretch of Highway 13, only half a dozen campaign signs were stuck in snow banks, including two at each entrance to Killam.
Offord doesn’t believe the government will change. Only 48 percent of eligible voters in the Battle River-Wainwright riding voted in the last provincial government. Two years earlier only 33 percent voted in a byelection.
“It seems Albertans don’t like change,” she said.
Tracy Petreman of Killam thinks local Progressive Conservative candidate Doug Griffiths may have an edge because of his role in the television series The Week The Women Went.
“It puts a face to the name,” Petreman said.
Roger Epp, dean of the University of Alberta’s Augustana campus, said achieving name recognition in large rural ridings is a tough challenge for any candidate in a 28-day campaign.
“It’s hard enough to achieve name and face recognition as the incumbent. To be the challenger, who might be very well known and respected in one community, doesn’t mean anything 20 miles down the road.”
Generating election fever and rounding up volunteers in rural ridings that consist of only small towns and villages is a tough challenge for candidates.
“It just means having a volunteer base that involves many communities. It probably is hard to generate excitement.”
At Strome, a gas station attendant said the locals don’t discuss politics.
Troubles in the livestock industry and grain prices are the main topics of conversation.
She was disappointed Albertans aren’t more patient with premier Ed Stelmach and his ideas for the province.
“They gave Ralph a chance. They’re not giving Stelmach a chance,” said the woman, who didn’t want her name used.
“I vote for anybody who’s P.C.”
Epp said few people make a connection between politics and the issues that affect them.
There’s a level of environmental uneasiness in rural Alberta and a sense of powerlessness about it, but people don’t connect that with the election, he said.
“They might form landowner protection groups, engage in really sophisticated kinds of defensive action, but they don’t connect it to party politics.”
Further west on Highway 13 at Daysland, Jim Stang had just returned from several weeks working in Fort McMurray and didn’t have time to talk election or organize an absentee ballot.
The Daysland farmer only had a few days to do chores, wash clothes and visit family before heading north again.
“I won’t vote. I have enough trouble getting my suitcase packed,” Stang said as he finished lunch at the Daysland Family Restaurant.
A few streets over at Knights, the local bar, a dozen retired men had nothing but time as they played a complicated game of pool and a few hands of crib. Even they weren’t too interested in the outcome of the Alberta election.
“I don’t know who’s running. I’m just an old timer. I’m just not interested,” said Roger Weller while waiting for a fourth person to turn up to begin a game of crib.
Len Court of Daysland is interested in the election: the American Democratic presidential nomination race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
“That’s more fun.”
What troubles Court about the Alberta election is the millions of dollars in campaign promises and no money saved to pay for the promised hospitals, doctors and roads.
“A good manager has the money before he spends it,” Court said.
“They’re spending money like it’s going out of style. You can’t entirely rely on the oilsands.”
James Gardner said the Conservatives promised to look after the people who needed help, but raising his Assured Income For Severely Handicapped (AISH) benefits from $1,050 to $1,088 a month at the beginning of the year did little to help him meet his monthly bills.
After paying power, gas, mortgage, fuel and food, there is little money left over to go to a movie or out to supper.
“It doesn’t give you a life,” said Gardner, who has been in a wheelchair since a car crash in 1998.
Despite Gardner’s unhappiness with the government’s treatment of AISH recipients, he believes the Conservatives will likely return to power for an 11th consecutive term.
“I think they’ll probably get back in because people don’t see through it,” he said.
“I’d like to see someone else in there, at least in my lifetime. Maybe a change might be good.”
