And The War For Control Over The CPC Begins

With Andrew Scheer announcing his resignation as CPC party leader this week, the war for control over the party begins in earnest.  Make no mistake, this is not a fight between individual candidates espousing different visions for the party.  This is about the factions within the party trying to gain (or maintain) control.

In particular, the Social Conservatives (SoCons) have their eye on "the big prize" - reinforcing the base of control and power that they asserted when they pushed Andrew Scheer up the middle as their second choice behind Brad Trost.  You would think that a group whose beliefs and policies have cost conservatives elections - even in Fortress Alberta - would find themselves on the outside by now.  But, we have to remember that this isn't how SoCons operate - they operate from a well of deep, uncompromising belief that they have the solution, and they are willing to spend a very long time organizing to achieve that goal.

The first volley in that war was published in the National Post yesterday.  Titled "How Social Conservatism Done Right Can Actually Help The Tories Win Again", it is an intriguing view into some of the key mistakes that SoCons have been making for years.  Let's take a closer look.

Fraser Institute Claims That Alberta Public Sector Employees Are Overpaid

The Fraser Institute is notorious for pushing a hard right, neo-liberal, approach to economic and fiscal policy.  In my experience, their methods are at best sloppy analysis and at worst outright twisting to push a particular policy agenda.

This past week they have published a battery of "reports" that they claim show the public sector workers are being paid considerably more than their peers in the private sector.  They have produced these reports for Alberta, Ontario, and British Columbia (so far). Presumably, this is because once you have set up the analysis for one province, it's pretty much boilerplate to apply it to other provinces with similar datasets available.

For the sake of simplicity, I will focus my commentary on the Alberta version of this report.