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Alberta government poll of outsiders finds residents smug and uncaring
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Daily Brew
You don't like us. You really don't like us.
That's the conclusion the Alberta government got from an effort to find out what other Canadians thought of their oil-rich fellow citizens.
A set of surveys and focus groups conducted by Harris Decima Group found that while residents of Toronto and Vancouver considered Albertans to be hard-working, entrepreneurial and optimistic, their views also had a negative edge, The Canadian Press reported.
"In Toronto, we found clear evidence of frustration that Alberta was becoming a stronger pillar and a more central agent in terms of Canada's economy, eclipsing Ontario in some respects," the poll report said.
"In Toronto and Vancouver, there were also considerable perceptions that Alberta was a fairly right-wing or conservative place, and that compassion, open-mindedness and tolerance was not always what it could or should be."
Aside from the feeling that this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black, the thing to know about this poll is that it's four years old.
It was conducted in the fall of 2008, as well as in several Alberta communities. It was released in 2009 but has gone unpublicized until now, The Canadian Press said.
Forty per cent of the non-Albertans surveyed felt Albertans didn't care much about the rest of Canada, and about a quarter described them as greedy and arrogant.
Some 42 per cent agreed with statements that suggested Albertans didn't care about the environment.
And the Albertans polled sensed these feelings.
"Many Albertans also felt that the province had, somewhat unfairly, acquired a reputation for being less tolerant, less compassionate and less environmentally careful than ideal," the report said.
"While some argued that the problem was one of perception, some also felt the reality was that Alberta had had some room to improve in all three respects."
Polls are snapshots of public opinion at a given time, so why bother with a four-year-old poll?
Political scientist Chaldeans Mensah said it's probably even more relevant today. Alberta is prospering thanks to controversial oil sands development while Ontario's manufacturing sector declines, and an Albertan, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, is running the country.
"The tensions are likely to grow if we don't stem the continuing decline in the economic fortunes of Ontario," said Mensah, who teaches at Edmonton's Grant MacEwan University.
"Albertans will begin to be targeted, similar to the way it was decades ago when the situation was reversed when Albertans saw Central Canadians as a bit snobbish and uncaring about concerns out here."
Colleague Duane Bratt of Mount Royal University in Calgary said Alberta has replaced Toronto as a national focus of resentment.
"Why was Toronto hated?" asked Bratt. "Because it was the biggest, richest, most powerful spot in Canada. Now, that view is going toward Alberta."
Both political scientists said Alberta's reputation is undeserved but "within every stereotype there's a kernel of truth," said Bratt.
Alberta writer David Climenhaga blogged that his fellow Albertans deserve some blame for the views expressed in the poll.
"How can we avoid such conclusions when, time and again, generation after generation, we elect the same right-wing politicians at both the provincial and federal levels?" he asked.
"How can we avoid such perceptions when those politicians preach constantly about the efficacy of their far-right economic policies as if Alberta's wealth were evidence of that and not the fact we won the resources lottery before human beings even turned up on this quarter of the Great Plains?"
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