CALGARY — The leader of Alberta’s NDP is looking to win over voters who chose right-leaning candidates in the past, saying the rival United Conservative Party has not rid itself of its predecessors’ biggest shortcomings: the Progressive Conservatives’ sense of entitlement and the Wildrose’s intolerance.
“What is more clear every day is that Mr. Kenney didn’t bring the best of the PCs and the Wildrose together,” Rachel Notley said Wednesday. “He brought the sky palace to the shores of the lake of fire.”
A penthouse suite atop Edmonton’s Federal Building, dubbed the “sky palace,” came to symbolize what was perceived as a sense of entitlement by a former PC government led by Alison Redford.
In the 2012 election, the Wildrose Party blew a late lead in the polls, in part, because then-party leader Danielle Smith refused to sanction a candidate who penned an anti-gay blog urging homosexuals to repent or face eternal damnation in hell’s “lake of fire.”
Notley said she respects why people had put their trust in the long-governing former Progressive Conservative party, since it had a strong tradition of defending Alberta. But she said the PCs were in power too long and left working people vulnerable by not doing enough to diversify the economy.
Notley’s New Democrats toppled the PCs after 44 years in power by winning a majority in 2015.