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The Nov. 30, 2015 election that brought the Liberal party to power in Newfoundland and Labrador marked the demise of the last nominally Conservative government in the country. After the election of a Liberal federal government the previous month and the defeat of the once-mighty Alberta Progressive Conservatives in the spring, observers wondered whether Conservatism, if not conservatism, might be on the way out.

Since that time the political landscape has undergone some subtle alterations. Should the United Conservative Party win Tuesday’s election in Alberta (if it does — experience teaches there is no sure thing in Alberta politics) it will join a chain of six Conservative/conservative provincial governments stretching all the way from the Rockies to the Bay of Fundy, together representing more than 80 per cent of the country’s population.

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Of course, just how conservative these governments really are may be doubted; the country would seem less to have shifted right than Conservative parties have shifted left. Ontario Conservatives are congratulating themselves for having given the opposition little to shoot at in last week’s provincial budget, which is true enough: for in it the Conservative government of Premier Doug Ford promised to spend very nearly as much as the left-wing Liberal government it replaced.