A lot of the swings we’ve seen lately by provincial electorates, including Alberta, British Columbia (BC), and Quebec, are acting akin to a chemical equilibrium. When things get too out of whack, and too much instability is introduced into one side of the political equation, voters across Canada try to re-establish the balance.To some extent, that means voting for an ideal, an ideal that is different for different provinces.Many Albertans, for example, are comfortable promoting conventional energy businesses and enduring oil and gas price swings with minimal federal interference. Those Albertans vote for a government that will pursue that ideal. Albertans may further vote for independence if they believe it better achieves that ideal.Many Quebecers, conversely, are comfortable when their government is focused on spending for healthcare and public services. That is what they often vote for.Right or wrong, capitalist or socialist, these provincial electorates want to move toward an ideal they see as stable.I think this tendency to re-establish an equilibrium was evident most clearly this year in the Alberta referendum.To be clear, nobody who believes in Alberta sovereignty should feel discouraged that there was “only” 25% voter support. In Canada’s currently unstable environment, primed with anti-American knee-jerk reactions from Prime Minister Mark Carney’s constant hammering, it’s a win.Support for independence might have been five to 10 points higher if the referendum had been held during the nadir of former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s years in office..But, as things are now, the sovereignty movement ran smack into Albertans who don’t like the trend of global and especially American instability, and who don’t want more of it at home. I think many of them were genuinely scared of the instability that would be involved with the transition to independence — such as pensions and job stability.The majority wanted the status quo. Well, most of it anyway. There is one issue that’s become anathema across the country: immigration.Immigration is now broadly seen as destabilizing. It’s throwing Canada’s equilibrium badly out of whack, and it’s hard to fix. Immigration is such a widespread problem that it dominated voting in both Alberta’s referendum and Quebec’s provincial election this year. It would have dominated BC’s provincial election too, if Kerry-Lynne Findlay (KLF) hadn’t been given the boot.According to political consultant Jordan Leichnitz, the NDP had prepared massive opposition research (“oppo”) and jumped in with guns blazing before the election was called.“They had so much oppo,” she lamented on the Curse of Politics podcast, “and they oppo’d so hard that they took out KLF early. It contributed to her going early.”But while KLF was the proverbial punching bag the NDP pinned their hopes on, she practically knocked herself out. Ridiculous decisions such as the ad she ran painting Premier David Eby as a power-hungry communist dictator showed she really doesn’t have a firm grasp on things.KLF mislabelled Eby, who is not a dictator but a “useful idiot.”A “useful idiot” enables destabilizing lawfare such as BC’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA) and the Cowichan decision, which contribute to tearing down property rights and the province itself. A dictator comes in only after everything collapses.No dictator I’ve studied ever used subsidized daycare either.If KLF had portrayed Eby as the confused and destabilizing “useful idiot” he is, and how the province was literally collapsing under him, she would have been on the right track.But Leichnitz is also kind of right — the NDP contributed to taking out KLF “early.” KLF resigned on September 20, and Eby called his election two days after that. He likely thought the BC Conservatives were now just a KLF-chicken with its head cut off, and they’d be easy pickings..But KLF’s early exit completely messed up Eby’s plan to attack her as part of an overall anti-Trump strategy. Findlay would have been painted as Trumpian ad nauseam because of opinions like the one she shared on Facebook stating that foreign nationals were “endangering and injuring our citizens” and that British Columbians should “deport those people.” Using such material, Eby could suggest that KLF was even more unstable than he is.She would surely have been accused of preparing to run an ICE-like campaign that could easily be paired with videos of deportations, imprisonments, and shootings from south of the border.But aren’t deportations a solid way to re-establish an equilibrium? To regain stability?While aggressive deportations may seem like a smart idea, because immigration is out of whack everywhere and so is crime, one mention of Trump can be enough to activate the tens of thousands of NDP voters who surprisingly didn’t show up for Eby. What happened to them? Well, they were suddenly presented with a much less inflammatory opponent, and that left them questioning why Eby called the election in the first place.Enter new BC Conservative leader and KLF replacement, Premier-designate Lorne Doerkson, setting aside his pith helmet and elephant gun to return from safari.Suddenly, instead of threatening deportations and trying to depict the NDP as commies under a dictator, all the BC Conservatives wanted was to “Get BC Moving.” They dramatically shifted by dropping the poorly planned culture wars shtick and addressing political and economic instability. They offered a chance for stability in a way that many voters could relate to, and it won them a resounding majority.Quebecers also chose stability in 2026..After enjoying unprecedented popularity in its last two elections, the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) disintegrated. Its supermajority of 90 seats evaporated into none.Apparently, they were no longer running Quebec efficiently and were perceived as failing on numerous fronts.Some of the key issues the CAQ failed to deliver on were very much stability issues.Urban Quebecers wanted less traffic, but the CAQ failed to deliver their promised multi-lane highway tunnel across the St. Lawrence for city drivers. Quebecers wanted to have regular access to their car insurance, but the prolonged issues with digitizing their information created untold frustration with massive lineups for road tests, vehicle registrations, and licence renewals. This and the $500 million in pay overruns by members of Quebec’s auto-insurance board, which the CAQ willfully ignored, were unacceptable. Quebecers, like Albertans, wanted to significantly curtail immigration, but saw the CAQ as incapable of controlling the flood from Ottawa.And now they’re gone, with the Quebec sovereigntists filling in.The formula for winning in times that have been painted as unstable, a crisis, or even a rupture, is to be perceived as the one who can bring stability. You want to be the addition to the political equation that will re-establish the equilibrium.Failing that, you should at least be able to prove you are less crazy than your opponent.
