EDMONTON - Alberta political scientist Keith Brownsey has been reminding students to keep on their toes when they've talked current events lately: "After all, there's a federal election going on in other parts of the country."
This is a province where for years Conservatives have taken their support for granted. In the last election, they easily swept all 28 ridings and most pundits expect a repeat performance Tuesday.
"This (campaign) is more a coronation out here than anything else," said Brownsey, who teaches at Mount Royal College in Calgary.
But what is it about Stephen Harper that plays better in St. Paul, Alta., than in Parry Sound, Ont? His party born out of a marriage of Progressive Conservatives and the rightist Reform/Canadian Alliance has managed only fluctuating approval ratings outside the West.
For starters, Harper lives in Calgary. He's so popular there that he hasn't even gone door-knocking in his own Calgary Southwest riding.
For another, the Reform movement was born in Alberta under Preston Manning, who was pushing for the region to have more federal clout and travelled the country asserting the "West Wants In."
And despite the fact that Harper's Tories bear little resemblance to the Progressive Conservative party of Sir John A. Macdonald and Brian Mulroney, they have inherited Alberta's anti-Liberal loathing that served his predecessors so well.
That disgust grew out of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau's national energy program, which is still much-maligned as a Liberal program that sucked resource dollars out of the province and into Central Canadian pocketbooks. Provincial governments have made hay ever since by portraying Ottawa as a rapacious bogeyman intent on stealing Alberta's petro-dollars.
The province has also been big on Senate reform -- an issue that never caught fire federally -- but something Harper has pushed for, although with almost no success.
So with Harper seen as The Man, the Tory story in Alberta this election has been about fighting complacency. The campaign trail has been studded with stories of candidates door-knocking but ignoring public forums, putting up few signs, opening their offices late or working only on weekends.
On some boulevards in Edmonton, joke signs by radio stations and fringe groups outnumber those of bona fide political aspirants.
Harper himself made only one trip to his home city late last month, and that was to trumpet the fact other leaders were avoiding the province.
"The other parties have clearly written off Alberta and don't mind using Alberta as a whipping boy from time to time, which I think is very unfortunate for our country," he said.
"This is and remains the only party that has any connection with Alberta, that shares any of the concerns of ordinary Alberta voters."
But despite what is an almost certain slam-dunk, there are murmurs of discontent in old Reform ranks.
Some stalwarts who helped Manning launch the conservative alternative movement in the late 1980s have voiced displeasure with Harper for straying from the ideological fold.
"The old Tories (of Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney) had this more-or-less collectivist view of the country, whereas Harper is committed to radical individualism with free-market ideology," said Brownsey.
That kind of laissez-faire thinking has caused him problems with blue-collar workers struggling with a deflated manufacturing industry in Central Canada.
"That's why he's had such a difficult time in the last two weeks with the credit crunch and the market crash."
That hasn't been as big a deal in Alberta where, until recently at least, a roaring oil-based economy has insulated the province.
But Hans Zurcher, a Reformer from Day 1, says to criticize Harper is be naive to realpolitik.
"He has to move a bit towards the centre as it's the first job of a politician to get elected. He has to make everybody happy," the 66-year-old businessman said from his home in Edmonton.
"The main concern is to get crime under control and get finances under control."
Doreen Barrie, a political scientist at the University of Calgary, said Harper hasn't strayed as far from his Reform roots as people think.
"He wasn't a populist and never really supported the idea of citizen initiatives and referenda," she said.
"Manning, too, kept very tight control over the party. So in that sense Stephen Harper is following in Manning's footsteps."
Barrie said the Tory juggernaut and monolithic provincial voting patterns are deceiving under the broad-brush, first-past-the-post electoral system.
In 2006, she noted, about a third of those who cast ballots didn't vote Conservative. "But until we get a different electoral system, that will remain irrelevant."
