Misinformation
Despite telling myself to take a small break from political reading - it really is just getting me very frustrated at times - I ended up reading this article:
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1166726--alberta-election-after-a-divisive-campaign-voters-cast-their-ballot
There is a quote from a PC supporter in the article, as follows:
Here we see the likely effects of misinformation through the media. I can grant that someone may have read the Wildrose Policy and believed such a thing, but those are not the facts. As of their 2012 policy, here is Wildrose's stance on health care: http://www.wildrose.ca/policy/health-care/
As you can see, Wildrose does not believe in private health care. They believe in universal coverage, they believe people should not be paying out of pocket. Unless Ms. Loowell has a different understanding of "private health care" than I, it is clear that Wildrose does not believe in private health care. What they have said is that they will make use of private facilities as needed. This means that if your local public source has a waitlist but there's a private source that can do it, the Wildrose government would pay for that private source to do it (of course, will have to meet certain qualifications). This is not private health care. This is making use of private sources where needed. And this is not something they've invented: they have looked at more successful government-paid systems elsewhere and want to adopt some of their practices to make our system better.
I haven't a clue where Ms. Loowell got the idea that public education doesn't matter to Wildrose. I can only assume she'd gotten the idea from someone else: opinion piece, misinformed friend or perhaps Dr. Raj Sherman's robocall. (Yes, I received one myself and he mentioned something to the effect of privatizing schools. I still have it on my machine; perhaps I should transcribe and put it up.) Wildrose has said nothing about not believing in public education, as far as I know. They have a lot of ideas about public education, to be honest, and ways to help children more. There is nothing in their policy nor in any of their actual comments to suggest otherwise. More could be said about her other comments, but they are from I don't know where to the point that I find I can't even comment on them other than to go, "Huh?"
I'm going to comment further on this article. Here's another section:
Excuse my language, but BS. First of all, the strategist is declaring something there is no possible way he could ascertain: that the party has become more representative of the views of Albertans (how does he know why individual voters actually picked PC candidates?) and that moving more to the left (aka "progressive" side) has made them more representative. That is a presumption, not a logical conclusion based on the facts. Furthermore, one could easily argue that had the Wildrose not been so greatly misrepresented, perhaps more people would have seen that the Wildrose does actually represent them.
Here's a little more analysis into the situation: the PC popular vote, after having moved more to the left, is DOWN compared to 2008. According to Wikipedia, the PCs had 52.7% of the popular vote, which gave them 72 seats. (6 MLAs left or were booted out of the party during subsequent years for different reasons, which left them with only 66 before the 2012 election. More on this perhaps in a different post). This election, they had only about 44% of the popular vote, and it gave them 61 seats. This is down 11 seats from their win in 2008 and down over 7% in popularity. How have they become more representative of the views of Albertans if their numbers are down? It is a distortion of the facts. Is that what strategists are about? Misrepresent things in a strategic way to use their created misinformation to bolster desired appearances?
Let's point out, too, for a second, that Wildrose, while only winning 17 seats, had about 34.5% of the popular vote. The last time the opposition had that high of a popular vote was back in 1993, with the Tories winning about 44% of the popular vote and the Liberals 39.7%. (How do I know? I researched the data in Wikipedia. There were a couple of times of around 32%, too, since 1993.) The seats, interestingly enough, were 51 for the Tories and 32 for the Liberals, for a total of 83 seats in the Legislature. As we can see, the seats don't properly reflect popularity nor how representative a party is of Albertans. It is irresponsible of strategists, journalists and such to even suggest that the overwhelming seat majority is representative of what people actually voted.
Oh, math minute: If we had a democratic system where the seats were split up among the parties based on popular vote, we would take their popular vote percentage and multiply it by 87 seats:
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1166726--alberta-election-after-a-divisive-campaign-voters-cast-their-ballot
There is a quote from a PC supporter in the article, as follows:
“So what we ended up with is an Americanization of our Alberta politics,” said PC supporter Anita Loowell of Edmonton. “What we’ve got at that end, the Wildrose, is people who believe that private health care is okay, that people should look after themselves, that public education doesn’t matter and we’re all on our own. That’s not what I want."
Here we see the likely effects of misinformation through the media. I can grant that someone may have read the Wildrose Policy and believed such a thing, but those are not the facts. As of their 2012 policy, here is Wildrose's stance on health care: http://www.wildrose.ca/policy/health-care/
As you can see, Wildrose does not believe in private health care. They believe in universal coverage, they believe people should not be paying out of pocket. Unless Ms. Loowell has a different understanding of "private health care" than I, it is clear that Wildrose does not believe in private health care. What they have said is that they will make use of private facilities as needed. This means that if your local public source has a waitlist but there's a private source that can do it, the Wildrose government would pay for that private source to do it (of course, will have to meet certain qualifications). This is not private health care. This is making use of private sources where needed. And this is not something they've invented: they have looked at more successful government-paid systems elsewhere and want to adopt some of their practices to make our system better.
I haven't a clue where Ms. Loowell got the idea that public education doesn't matter to Wildrose. I can only assume she'd gotten the idea from someone else: opinion piece, misinformed friend or perhaps Dr. Raj Sherman's robocall. (Yes, I received one myself and he mentioned something to the effect of privatizing schools. I still have it on my machine; perhaps I should transcribe and put it up.) Wildrose has said nothing about not believing in public education, as far as I know. They have a lot of ideas about public education, to be honest, and ways to help children more. There is nothing in their policy nor in any of their actual comments to suggest otherwise. More could be said about her other comments, but they are from I don't know where to the point that I find I can't even comment on them other than to go, "Huh?"
I'm going to comment further on this article. Here's another section:
A Conservative strategist said moving to the progressive side of the spectrum made the party more representative of the views of Albertans and better able to convince NDP and Liberal voters in the province that a Wildrose majority was not in their interest.
Excuse my language, but BS. First of all, the strategist is declaring something there is no possible way he could ascertain: that the party has become more representative of the views of Albertans (how does he know why individual voters actually picked PC candidates?) and that moving more to the left (aka "progressive" side) has made them more representative. That is a presumption, not a logical conclusion based on the facts. Furthermore, one could easily argue that had the Wildrose not been so greatly misrepresented, perhaps more people would have seen that the Wildrose does actually represent them.
Here's a little more analysis into the situation: the PC popular vote, after having moved more to the left, is DOWN compared to 2008. According to Wikipedia, the PCs had 52.7% of the popular vote, which gave them 72 seats. (6 MLAs left or were booted out of the party during subsequent years for different reasons, which left them with only 66 before the 2012 election. More on this perhaps in a different post). This election, they had only about 44% of the popular vote, and it gave them 61 seats. This is down 11 seats from their win in 2008 and down over 7% in popularity. How have they become more representative of the views of Albertans if their numbers are down? It is a distortion of the facts. Is that what strategists are about? Misrepresent things in a strategic way to use their created misinformation to bolster desired appearances?
Let's point out, too, for a second, that Wildrose, while only winning 17 seats, had about 34.5% of the popular vote. The last time the opposition had that high of a popular vote was back in 1993, with the Tories winning about 44% of the popular vote and the Liberals 39.7%. (How do I know? I researched the data in Wikipedia. There were a couple of times of around 32%, too, since 1993.) The seats, interestingly enough, were 51 for the Tories and 32 for the Liberals, for a total of 83 seats in the Legislature. As we can see, the seats don't properly reflect popularity nor how representative a party is of Albertans. It is irresponsible of strategists, journalists and such to even suggest that the overwhelming seat majority is representative of what people actually voted.
Oh, math minute: If we had a democratic system where the seats were split up among the parties based on popular vote, we would take their popular vote percentage and multiply it by 87 seats:
PCs would have won only 38 seats
Wildrose would have won 30 seats.
What does that say about the current government's representation of Albertan's views?
Comments
Post a Comment