But it’s entirely wrong. This is the most focused, goal-oriented government Alberta has seen in decades.

In the past 25 years only Ralph Klein’s Progressive Conservatives in their cost-cutting phase were anywhere near as determined, and even they could always find time for a drink.

What people really mean is that they don’t like what the NDP is doing. That’s another subject entirely.

Another common charge is that the NDP is “ideological.”

Once a nice, quiet word, “ideological” is now a call to arms. It was flying around the legislature again Wednesday, hurled mainly by Wildrose MLAs who are every bit as ideological as the NDP, just not in the same way.

All parties have ideologies, a general set of views they bring to solving problems.

A politician with no beliefs would be just a money-grubbing, career-advancing, attention-seeking cretin. And we don’t have any of those, do we?

The NDP is ideological, but no more so than a relentless critic like Wildrose MLA Derek Fildebrandt, who now talks about how to “make Alberta great again,” starting with the eradication of the NDP.

The NDP’s broad goal is to reshape Alberta society and economics. This is to be done before the next election in 2019.

By that time, the province must be so thoroughly redesigned that the change can’t be undone no matter who wins.

Notley said exactly that in an interview a few months ago with author Sydney Sharpe and me, for a book we’ve written about the fall of the PCs and the rise of the NDP.

“We’re well underway with the climate-change leadership plan, so that no matter who wins, nobody is going to reverse that thing,” Notley said.

She hopes that by 2019, Albertans will conclude that New Democrats are capable people who listen to them and have the province’s best interests at heart. “That’s what I want to see,” she said.

Burying PC Alberta under NDP Alberta seems to be a more important goal than winning again.

Of course, that’s an easier view to hold now than it will be in 2019. New Democrats like power. They won’t go down with a cheery “Bye bye, enjoy the carbon tax!”

But they’re determined to ensure that no new government can rescind the tax, reopen the coal mines, lift the cap on oilsands production, cut the minimum wage, or hand the electricity market back to private companies.

Such a headlong policy rush guarantees slips along the way. On Wednesday, for instance, the NDP abandoned their loony plan to pay parties 50 per cent of election expenses from the public treasury, as long as the party receives 10 per cent of the vote.

This was wildly unpopular in a deficit-ridden, recession-plagued province. The NDP has ended many of the worst features of Alberta political financing (union and corporate donations, for example) but this one was just too … ideological.

Also on Wednesday, the NDP apologized again for an egregious breach of legislature rules.

In summer, the government began broadcasting ads to promote the virtues of the carbon tax. But the legislature hadn’t yet voted approval of the tax. On Monday, Speaker Bob Wanner ruled that this was contempt of the legislature.

Wanner, like all legislature Speakers, is a member of the winning party. When the government loses a ruling like this, you know it’s an open-and-shut case of stupidity in the first degree.

The NDP apologized. Government house leader Brian Mason, who once excoriated the PCs for a similar offence, hilariously said: “We certainly take into account the Speaker’s rulings in adjusting our position in respect to these matters.”

The episode was embarrassing, but it also showed how eager the government is to imprint us, like ducklings, with images of the new Alberta.

Do they know what they’re doing? Oh, yes.

Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Calgary Herald

dbraid@calgaryherald.com