Why 'conservative' Calgary keeps electing progressive mayors
CBC
Every four years, on the day after Calgary's municipal election, political junkies across Canada suffer a collective outbreak of cognitive dissonance.
How can it be, they ask, that "conservative Calgary" has elected such a distinctly un-conservative council?
Why is it, they wonder, that Toronto's mayors are named "Rob" and "John" and Calgary's are named "Naheed" and "Jyoti"?
Just what exactly is going on out there?
Let's be honest: Calgary has a reputation as a conservative place. When we don't live up to it — for instance, when a member of the UCP cabinet tells Calgarians on election day to "vote right" and Calgarians respond with a friendly, "No, thanks!" — Canadians elsewhere are flummoxed.
So let's tackle this reputation. Is Calgary really all that conservative?
The answer is yes — sort of.
It depends a lot on the issue, and the level of government. On some issues, like energy policy, Calgarians have distinctively conservative tendencies. And there's a deep connection between Calgary and the federal Conservative Party. This makes us seem — and think of ourselves as — conservative.
But, and this is the important part vis-a-vis the cognitive dissonance we provoke, Calgarians tend to hold clearly progressive policy attitudes in municipal politics.
In short: We're "policy progressives" but "symbolic conservatives."
Let me explain what that means and why it matters for our municipal elections.
I know, dear reader, that your appetite for social science jargon is limited. But here's just a morsel of jargon that I think is actually quite useful: the distinction between policy ideology and symbolic ideology.
Policy ideology is the name we give to our left-wing or right-wing policy preferences. These are the left-right patterns in our actual policy views.
Symbolic ideology is about how we think of ourselves — where we feel we belong on the left-right spectrum.
RCMP say a man who was reported missing near Key First Nation has been found deceased.
Christy Morin says life was never the same in Alberta Avenue after the fires began.
It's small things, like a cigarette or a pair of clean socks, Rachel Montour says, that can go a long way to make you feel more human when you’re out on the street.
Several dozen members of Windsor's Chaldean community and its supporters celebrated in the cold at the corner of Marentette Avenue and Wyandotte Street East Friday, as city officials gave a secondary name to the section of Marentette between Wyandotte and Tuscarora Street: Chaldean Way.
Allison Hill says she tries to make people’s experience at the Thunder Bay Food Bank “as pleasant as possible.”
Two years after a man went missing in Scarborough, Toronto police are renewing the investigation in hopes that the public will bring forward more information.
A musical instrument created in Guelph, Ont., has been thrust onto the international stage — or rather, screen.
More than 1,000 Maritime Electric customers are without power after high winds blew across the Island Friday night into Saturday.
The Supreme Court of Canada is deliberating a case that could shape the way sentences are handed down in cases where both the offender and victim are Indigenous, which some Nunavut lawyers say could have ramifications for the Inuit-majority territory.
A man barricaded in a former church in Welland, Ont., was taken into custody early Saturday, nearly 24 hours into a standoff that began over a fence dispute.
Peel police are investigating after a Friday night shooting in Mississauga left one person dead, police said.
Another busy construction season has come to an end in London, and the city is already looking ahead to next spring when a slew of new projects are expected to begin.
Prime Minister Mark Carney has begun to lay out publicly what he sees as boundaries when dealing with China, as his government wades into a new relationship with the economic giant.