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The Koch Brothers may need therapy. Tory blue Alberta has just dismissed a smug, incompetent, corporation-serving oligarchy from power and sent it to wander the wilderness. More than that — voters handed the reins of power to democratic socialists in a jurisdiction ruled and ransacked for decades by the surrogates of Big Oil.

Suddenly, anything is possible in Canadian politics. If Alberta can turn to the NDP, why not Canada? How long can it be before the Tea Party that Stephen Harper has made of federal politics for the past decade comes to an end — and the CPC shares the fate of Alberta’s Progressive Conservatives?

There’s a reason why the Tory federal caucus was like a “morgue” yesterday, to borrow Peter MacKay’s apt description. They know what few are saying out loud: If it happened to Jim Prentice, it could easily happen to Harper — and to every member of his team.

Both Harper and Prentice championed a sort of degraded democracy along the lines of the game plan set by the Trilateral Commission, a body set up in 1973 by establishment types worried about an “excess” of democracy creating a “governability” problem in the West. Those were the days of the energy crisis, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, environmental protests and a peace movement that ended up forcing a halt to the Vietnam War. Today, those same forces are in play. Back then, the Commission concluded that people — particularly young people — had to be more passive and obedient to established authority if “democracy” was to survive.

This should give you an idea of the kind of ‘democrats’ who work with the Trilateral Commission: Henry Kissinger — the guy who said the future of Chile was too important to leave to Chileans — is a Lifetime Trustee. In 1975 the commission turned out a report on the “Crisis of Democracy”, which argued that “the effective operation of a democratic political system usually requires some measure of apathy and noninvolvement on the part of some individuals and groups.”

Jim Prentice is now a living object lesson in what happens when voters aren’t apathetic enough. In September 2013, Prentice was named North American deputy chairman of the Trilateral Commission. Then senior executive vice chairman of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Prentice had been a senior Harper cabinet minister from 2006 to 2010, running the departments of Industry, Environment, and Indian affairs and Northern Development. Prentice was also the Harper government’s intermediary on clean energy dialogue between Canada and the U.S. — although it wasn’t much of a conversation.

When Prentice told Albertans to “look in the mirror” to understand what had caused the province’s financial crisis, it was his Marie Antoinette moment. Prentice’s budget offered austerity to the masses and another all-day sucker to corporations.

And no, the math was not all that difficult to figure out. For years, the PCs had been lining the pockets of the oil companies with obscenely low resource royalties that weren’t even competently collected. In fact, Alberta failed to collect nearly $2.5 billion in royalties every year since 2009 because the provincial government bungled the math. Premier elect Rachel Notley called it: This election saw Albertans take back their government from the people who believed they owned the place.

Harper never had a formal connection to the Trilateral Commission. But like the corporate elites he shills for, the PM has elite connections and is obviously comfortable with the idea that too much freedom in the wrong hands is dangerous. Hence, the lengthy enemies list: unions, scientists, aboriginals, environmentalists, charities, progressives, journalists, even injured veterans.

A word on Harper’s institutional connections. Both the Fraser Institute and the National Citizen’s Coalition were set up around the same time as the Trilateral Commission. Friedrich Hayek, who won the Nobel prize for economics in 1974, is credited with bringing economic conservatism together with social conservatism. He also came up with the idea of setting up organizations like the Fraser Institute to supply studies that showed markets were superior to governments at solving problems.

Meddling federal Tories had publicly warned Albertans before the vote that an NDP win in Alberta would be ‘disastrous’. So what are they telling their constituents now? That they’ve made a horrible mistake? That the wheat will stop growing? That Calgary is destined to become a ghost town? Meddling federal Tories had publicly warned Albertans before the vote that an NDP win in Alberta would be ‘disastrous’. So what are they telling their constituents now? That they’ve made a horrible mistake? That the wheat will stop growing? That Calgary is destined to become a ghost town?

Colin Brown, the founder of the National Citizen’s Coalition (NCC), was a millionaire life insurance salesman from London, Ontario who didn’t like medicare. The motto of NCC was: “More freedom through less government.” It was more like: “More profit through no social programs.” Brown was firmly against hospital insurance, medicare and the expansion of social welfare during the Pearson and Diefenbaker years.

On January 14, 1997, Harper announced his resignation from his Calgary West seat and joined the NCC as vice president, a move that would have a profound effect on the future of Canada. It was there that he learned the mechanics of politics — careful polling, public relations and fundraising. Most important, he learned how to market himself. According to his mentor Tom Flanagan, Harper’s goal was to block the expansion of the federal welfare state.

A year later he took over as president of the NCC from David Summerville, a former Toronto Sun reporter. Harper was in favour of alternate ways to deliver health care — including alternatives provided by the private sector. As VP of the NCC in 1997, he said, “It’s past time the feds scrapped the Canada Health Act.”

Rachel Notley, giant-killer, is the polar opposite of what both Prentice and Harper represent. A labour lawyer and union activist, she attended her first anti-war demonstration in the early 1970s at the age of nine, with her mother. She said she was amazed by what people could accomplish when they came together. Some forty years later she and her party have pulled off the greatest political upset in Canadian history.

The very people Harper has vilified, Notley embraced. In her victory speech, she thanked public servants, teachers and health care workers. She thanked Alberta’s Indigenous people for “the trust we have been given tonight.”

“The government belongs to you,” she said as her supporters cheered. “And you will be treated with respect.”

Then she said she was looking forward to working with Harper on issues that engage Alberta — and the audience erupted in a chorus of boos, a fact that went strangely underreported in the mainstream press. Meddling federal Tories had publicly warned Albertans before the vote that an NDP win in Alberta would be “disastrous”.

So what are they telling their constituents now? That they’ve made a horrible mistake? That the wheat will stop growing? That Calgary is destined to become a ghost town?

Harper and Prentice have spent a lot of time dealing with oil and gas. Notley had a few choice words on air and water. She drew wild applause when she promised to work for a national policy on the environment. She promised to build the energy sector “instead of having a black eye”. (Some experts believe a better record on climate change just might improve access to markets. The Church of England has an investment portfolio worth $13.8 billion which has just blacklisted the tar sands.)

“You voted for change,” she said, “for better health care, for better schools and for good family-supporting jobs. And we will answer your call.”

While Notley and the NDP were busy taking over his back yard, Harper was doing his usual marketing. On May 2 he flew into Iraq — supposedly to rally the troops, actually to collect campaign imagery for the next election.

Standing in front of two fighter jets parked nose to nose for maximum effect, and before a huge Canadian flag in a hanger in Kuwait the next day, he told the assembled troops: “Make no mistake: by fighting this enemy here you are protecting Canadians at home … because this evil knows no borders, and left uncontained, it will spread like a plague.” There will be no closet big enough to hide in — the usual hysterical misrepresentation of a marginal threat for political effect.

Harper even brought along two retired NHL stars, Paul Coffey and Ryan Smyth, to play a little pick-up hockey with the troops, and breakfasted with CAF members. Col. Tom Lawson was quick to state that Canadian jets were not part of the U.S.-led strike that killed 52 civilians in the Syrian province of Aleppo, including seven children, the previous Friday. (Does anyone believe this guy anymore?)

The PMO immediately posted the taxpayer-funded videos to its in-house online agitprop channel, 24/Seven. Then it had to pull them after someone pointed out that the videos violated the government’s own security protocol by showing the soldiers’ faces. It was a major cockup, followed by a major climbdown and a very public humiliation for the boss.

For a long time now, the Harper government has been reaping the benefits of a perfect cultural storm: constant corporate messaging, constant government partisan advertising (paid for by taxpayers), the dumbing-down of an electorate taught to follow emotion rather than reason, and a steady degrading of democracy — the better to leave the elites in charge. Aggression abroad, fear at home — it’s been a winning formula for the Conservatives so far. It even allowed them to maneuver the Liberals into supporting a democracy-sapping piece of legislation called Bill C-51.

But that was before Alberta — where democracy beat fear this week. Now, all bets are off.

Michael Harris is a writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. He was awarded a Doctor of Laws for his “unceasing pursuit of justice for the less fortunate among us.” His nine books include Justice Denied, Unholy Orders, Rare ambition, Lament for an Ocean, and Con Game. His work has sparked four commissions of inquiry, and three of his books have been made into movies. His new book on the Harper majority government, Party of One, is a number one best-seller.

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