EDMONTON—Alberta, tell us how you really feel.

On Tuesday, the hashtag #NotAngryAB started trending on Twitter as various Albertans explained why they’re not upset with the state of affairs in the province.

It appeared to be a response to former Wildrose leader Brian Jean’s statement on Facebook the previous day. He spoke about the perceived anger of Albertans, distilling it down to the idea that Canada is “broken” and that the relationship between Alberta and the rest of the country is “deeply troubled.”

“All Canadians should be angry. Albertans are furious … None of our political leaders understand the current anger of Albertans. Albertans want a “Mad as Hell” Party that isn’t going to take it anymore,” the statement reads.

At least some Albertans on Twitter disagree.

“I’m Albertan and I’m not angry. I’m getting a great education, I feel safe in my home, and we don’t have a sales tax,” stated a user with the handle JamieTheJedi, accompanied by a photo of his cats.

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Mike Morrison, a blogger who started the hashtag, encouraged users to also post photos of their cute pets while stating why they’re not angry.

“Conservatives keep saying Albertans are angry. But I’m not. My family lives in a walkable neighbourhood with great public spaces in a clean, safe city. My kids goes (sic) to a good school, and we have great health care. The future has never looked brighter,” chimed in a user under the name Kimberly Taylor.

Appealing to anger and frustration is nothing new in politics. However, it becomes particularly pronounced in Alberta when the Liberals are in power in Ottawa, says Jared Wesley, a political scientist at the University of Alberta.

There are differing opinions on whether this approach works with voters.

“One way you can measure it is to see what is the No. 1 issue that Albertans care about? And the pipeline and carbon tax floats to the top,” Wesley said.

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One reason certain issues, such as the federal government’s inability to build pipelines, gain traction is because they pit Alberta against the rest of Canada — a recurring theme in Alberta politics, he added.

“The well of anger runs deep in Alberta,” Wesley said. “It’s a generational wellspring of anger and alienation. Maybe it’s not anger, but there’s always been a tinge of alienation.”

Roberta Lexier, an associate professor at Mount Royal University who studies social movements, social change and left-wing politics, tweeted that she was “torn” about the hashtag, because it simplifies what the real issues are and further polarizes the province.

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“My problem with this hashtag … I totally understand where it’s coming from and why people are doing this as a way to counter that anger and frustration,” Lexier told StarMetro.

“But I think it’s a little naïve for me to just say, ‘I’m not angry.’ I am angry, I’m just angry about very different things.”

Lexier does consider herself an angry Albertan, but not for the reasons posed by politicians like Jean. She’s as angry about the “obsession” with oil-and-gas and pipelines in provincial politics as she is with overtones of negativity and personal attacks in election campaigns.

“There’s a lot of focus on this kind of negativity and using anger and frustration as a way to gain political favour. From my perspective, that’s a really problematic way to do politics,” she said.

While she recognizes that it “makes a lot of sense” for politicians to tap into economic discontent, at least from a political standpoint, she believes it prevents leaders from having a constructive conversation on how to actually make the province better.

“For one, it doesn’t give us alternatives. It doesn’t give us the sense that there’s something we can do differently,” she said. “It’s just, ‘We hate whatever this is.’”

She believes the political strategy also has the potential to backfire due to rage fatigue.

“That’s part of what actually led to the election of the NDP in 2015. People were looking for a positive alterative,” she said.

Wesley doesn’t see a danger in using anger and frustration to mobilize political support, unless it gets to the point where politicians court fringe groups who give a platform to xenophobia and misogyny.

But he also sees populism as a slippery slope.

“We have leaders that are talking about making Alberta great again. I don’t think the major party leaders are talking in that way, but you see the hats at rallies across the province,” he said.

“It’s kind of validating their feelings … The social media adds another level to this, where people can have a gut reaction to a meme, as opposed to having to read a one page op-ed in the newspaper.”

Trevor Tombe, an economist at the University of Calgary, points to the fact that traditional economic indicators — such as average earnings, employment rate and the province’s overall GDP — show that even with the oil recession, Alberta’s economy is still the strongest in the country.

But numbers don’t capture the very real frustration present in Alberta.

“The economy as a whole, it’s one thing to talk about it in terms of aggregates and averages. But that doesn’t always reflect the experiences of the everyday Albertans.”

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