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Premier Rachel Notley’s NDP government can’t win the next election unless it wins Calgary and it can’t win Calgary with an unemployment rate stuck north of eight per cent.

And that’s exactly where we sit, despite the endless blather and bluster about those emerging green shoots and that now infamous economy-boosting, pipeline-constructing social licence an imposed carbon tax would deliver.

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The September jobless report for Calgary spells it out in type large enough even this myopic government must have come to notice, their vision no doubt clearing as the next provincial election looms into view.

With less than nine months until Calgarians again go to the polls, the September unemployment rate in our city stands at a dreary 8.2 per cent. Meanwhile, in Edmonton, the rate has dropped to 6.3 per cent — a tale of two cities indeed, under the NDP.

Now a few years ago, the excuse that oil prices were in the dumpster gave the government a fig leaf behind which to cover. But today, with prices well past the $70-a-barrel mark, such reasoning has fallen away, along with the naive belief that joining hands with the Liberals in Ottawa would somehow end well for Alberta. (This government is full of university-educated ministers but did none of them take history?)