The labour market here is still in critical condition, even though benchmark oil prices have inched upward and the discounts on Alberta oil varieties are at historic lows. Unemployment shot to 8 per cent in February of 2016, and Alberta’s welfare caseload reached a new post-Ralph Klein high of around 43,000. As our New Democrats appeal to the excuse of a recession, one remembers that Bob Rae’s Ontario NDP government (1990-95) offered the same explanation for its various woes. During my lifetime the province has been an economic colony, obsessed with competitiveness and quite short on the state’s version of “compassion.” We all knew we would get NDP economic policy when we voted NDP. Do NDPers need to look far to find a stalking, wrathful, hyperconservative Mike Harris figure in Alberta?

Source: National Post April 12, 2017 19:30 UTC