Opinion

Premier’s Approval Rating Drops

Deirdre Mitchell-MacLean

Kenney’s approval rating went from top three to bottom three in less than a year.

The Edmonton Journal commissioned a poll of Premier approval ratings and the results show Alberta’s Premier has moved from among the top three earlier this year to leading the bottom three with 40 per cent approval, a notable decline from his pre-election approval rating of 55 per cent.

Leger reported Kenney’s approval rating at 42 per cent at the beginning of December.

Former Premier Rachel Notley had 40 per cent approval as well – pre-election.

Jobs, economy, pipelines; 1 out of 3 may not be good enough.

Now-Premier Jason Kenney repeated it over and over during the 2019 election; “Jobs, economy, pipelines.”

The UCP’s unsuccessful candidate in Edmonton-West Henday, Nicole Williams, even had a short video of her young daughter saying “jobs, economy, pipelines” go viral.

Radio ads, newspaper ads, television ads, Facebook ads, and YouTube videos all repeated the phrase: “Jobs, economy, pipelines”.

Kenney promised his government would repeal “the NDP’s job-killing policies”, specifically, “the job-killing carbon tax”. Instead, Kenney reverted to the Progressive Conservative policy of only applying the carbon tax to large emitters, who are responsible for around 50 per cent of Alberta’s emissions, with TIER.

Promise made.

He promised to decrease the “punishing” corporate tax rate.

Promise made, promise kept.

“There will be no cuts to front-line services,” Kenney said.

Promise made.

School boards across the province posted decreases in funding. Parents in Calgary are being invoiced for additional transportation fees for students, right before Christmas. United Nurses of Alberta announced 750 nurses would be laid off.

“We will balance the budget without raising taxes,” Kenney said.

Promise made.

The Oct. 24 budget delivered a surprise; bracket creep. Instead of tax rates being adjusted for inflation, they will now remain steady, allowing for additional taxes to flow through to provincial coffers. Bracket creep was a personal pet peeve of the Premier’s when he was with the Canadian Taxpayer Federation (CTF) and also when he was an MP, as current CTF Alberta Director Franco Terrazzano pointed out in a Calgary Herald Op-Ed.

“Jobs”

A visibly jarring contraction of jobs came from across the country in November when the economy saw 71,000 jobs lost; almost 20,000 of those, one quarter, in Alberta.  The latter offset gains made in the spring of around 22,000 jobs.

“Economy”

RBC downgraded the province’s economic outlook in June from 1.3 per cent growth to 0.6 per cent. People waiting on oil jobs to spring back up are the ones in the most precarious position; they aren’t hiring.

“Pipeline”

TMX has shovels in the ground. Credit where credit is due, the feds finally got their act together.

This post is an opinion.

Deirdre is a reporter, pundit, podcaster, and political sociology fiend living in rural Southern Alberta.   

contact: [email protected], [email protected]

Twitter: @Mitchell_AB for all the commentary; @thisweekinAB for posts; @politicalRnD to guess “who tweeted that”?

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