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Orange Chinook: Politics in the New Alberta
In 2015, the New Democratic Party won an unprecedented victory in Alberta. Unseating the Progressive Conservatives-who had won every provincial election since 1971-they formed an NDP government for the first time in the history of the province.
Orange Chinook is the first scholarly analysis of this election. It examines the legacy of the Progressive Conservative dynasty, the PC and NDP campaigns, polling, and online politics, providing context and setting the stage. It highlights the importance of Alberta’s energy sector and how it relates to provincial politics with focus on the oil sands, the carbon tax, and pipelines.
Examining the NDP in power, Orange Chinook draws on Indigenous, urban, and rural perspectives to explore the transition process and government finances and politics. It explores the governing style of premier Rachel Notley, paying special attention to her response to the 2016 For McMurray wildfire and to the role of women in politics.
Orange Chinook brings together Alberta’s top political watchers in this fascinating, multifaceted analysis.
Orange Chinook is the first scholarly analysis of this election. It examines the legacy of the Progressive Conservative dynasty, the PC and NDP campaigns, polling, and online politics, providing context and setting the stage. It highlights the importance of Alberta’s energy sector and how it relates to provincial politics with focus on the oil sands, the carbon tax, and pipelines.
Examining the NDP in power, Orange Chinook draws on Indigenous, urban, and rural perspectives to explore the transition process and government finances and politics. It explores the governing style of premier Rachel Notley, paying special attention to her response to the 2016 For McMurray wildfire and to the role of women in politics.
Orange Chinook brings together Alberta’s top political watchers in this fascinating, multifaceted analysis.
568 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 31, 2019
3 people are currently reading
43 people want to read
About the author
Duane Bratt
8 books2 followersDuane Bratt is a political science professor in the Department of Economics, Justice, and Policy Studies at Mount Royal University. He is the co-editor of Orange Chinook: Politics in the New Alberta and author of Canada, The Provinces, and the Global Nuclear Revival. Duane is a regular commentator on political events.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 1, 2020
I am a proud Albertan, so I love the topics discussed in this book. I wish more work of this sort was done. I appreciate the great amount of effort required to produce a book with this scope. However, the writing and editing here is horrible and lazy.
Leonardo DiCaprio’s name is twice misspelled as “De Caprio”. Rachel Notley’s name gets misspelled once as “Notely”. Danielle Smith’s name gets misspelled once as “Daniel”.
One particularly grating sentence punishes the reader with six commas: “The NDP government faces serious financial constraints, and while for the most part, these constraints are not of the government’s making, they must nonetheless deal with them, and this will constrain, at least to some extent, their policy options”.
Another sentence contains no less than three separate typos: “Unlike the Prentice, Redford, and Stelmach, governments,only three members if Notley’s new caucus had experience in the legislature, and none had been in government” (sic throughout). The very next sentence states that the NDP government had a twelve member “caucus”, when it should read “cabinet” (the Notley cabinet initially had 12 members, while the full NDP caucus was much larger). Still in the same paragraph, the last sentence reads “familiarity of” instead of “familiarity with”.
If this isn’t enough evidence of a 7th-grade-essay writing style, at another point a single paragraph contains two different sentences that both start with “Interestingly,”.
Even though the book is presented as a dispassionate “guide to Alberta politics”, one section on former Premier Notley devolves into a fawning gush of compliments befitting a campaign ad (“she continues to be unpretentious, down to earth and the antithesis of elitist”). This makes a mockery of objective analysis.
There are countless other minor annoyances, such as when “Pembina Pipelines” is mistyped as “Pembina pipelines”, or when Suncor Energy is referred to as “homegrown” (in fact, it’s origin is as the subsidiary of American company Sun Oil). There is a frustrating amount of repetition throughout; it is clear the different chapter authors did not spend much time reading each other’s contributions.
I was disappointed to see that this book was funded by taxpayers (Alberta Media Fund and Canadian Council for the Arts). Perhaps us taxpayers can collectively fund a second edition that fixes some of the spelling and grammar errors.
Leonardo DiCaprio’s name is twice misspelled as “De Caprio”. Rachel Notley’s name gets misspelled once as “Notely”. Danielle Smith’s name gets misspelled once as “Daniel”.
One particularly grating sentence punishes the reader with six commas: “The NDP government faces serious financial constraints, and while for the most part, these constraints are not of the government’s making, they must nonetheless deal with them, and this will constrain, at least to some extent, their policy options”.
Another sentence contains no less than three separate typos: “Unlike the Prentice, Redford, and Stelmach, governments,only three members if Notley’s new caucus had experience in the legislature, and none had been in government” (sic throughout). The very next sentence states that the NDP government had a twelve member “caucus”, when it should read “cabinet” (the Notley cabinet initially had 12 members, while the full NDP caucus was much larger). Still in the same paragraph, the last sentence reads “familiarity of” instead of “familiarity with”.
If this isn’t enough evidence of a 7th-grade-essay writing style, at another point a single paragraph contains two different sentences that both start with “Interestingly,”.
Even though the book is presented as a dispassionate “guide to Alberta politics”, one section on former Premier Notley devolves into a fawning gush of compliments befitting a campaign ad (“she continues to be unpretentious, down to earth and the antithesis of elitist”). This makes a mockery of objective analysis.
There are countless other minor annoyances, such as when “Pembina Pipelines” is mistyped as “Pembina pipelines”, or when Suncor Energy is referred to as “homegrown” (in fact, it’s origin is as the subsidiary of American company Sun Oil). There is a frustrating amount of repetition throughout; it is clear the different chapter authors did not spend much time reading each other’s contributions.
I was disappointed to see that this book was funded by taxpayers (Alberta Media Fund and Canadian Council for the Arts). Perhaps us taxpayers can collectively fund a second edition that fixes some of the spelling and grammar errors.
March 4, 2019
Essential reading for anyone following Alberta politics closely in 2019, but often sloppy with the details (names spelled wrong, seat counts for parties at various elections are wrong, Jim Prentice was never deputy prime minister, and the notwithstanding clause definitely does not allow provincial governments to opt out of federal legislation). Some chapters are much stronger than others, but the whole book provides a wide variety of perspectives and keeps things interesting.
July 1, 2020
Good solid analysis of modern Alberta politics. A little dense at times(Like the polling data), but I understand why it's there, just not interesting to me.
January 13, 2022
Most chapters were good but some of the ones about the ndp governing were not for me. Some of that might be reading the book after the ndp government is no longer in power
August 25, 2019
Being recently new to Alberta this gave a good historical overview of politics in Alberta.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews