During the "freedom" convoy, Canadian conservative leaders such as Pierre Polievre were falling over themselves to not just show support for the protesters, but be seen with them in the press and social media. Now at the time Polievre was busy running for the leadership of the federal Conservative party and showing that boosted his anti-Trudeau street cred.

We saw the same play out in Alberta with Danielle Smith. Now based on her radio show, Smith was pretty much already in the protester's camp before running to replace Jason Kenney so it was easy for her to use those people to basically hijack the UCP from whatever moderate conservatives were left after Kenney's reign.

So at the end of Tuesday's provincial general election we have ended up with a majority NDP government. This is in line with what the polls had been saying for a week though still a shock in a province that hasn't voted for a non conservative party for 82 years. This has left progressives in a state of exuberance and conservatives in a state of panicked shock.

Back here I opined about the fact that Danielle Smith was basically done as Wildrose Party Leader. I figured that there would be a leadership review, the far right of her party would revolt and demand a far right leader and Smith would end up riding off into the sunset. Well things happened much faster than I thought and despite no leadership review it would seem that Smith and 8 of her fellow Wildrose MLA’s will head their own party off at the pass and head on over to the government benches.

She’s done… With two more of her legislative caucus leaving, this is only the latest hit to the Wildrose party under her leadership in recent months

So the votes are in for the four Alberta provincial by-elections and the winners are, surprise, surprise, the Progressive Conservatives. This can only be seen as a big win for Jim Prentice who's unenviable task is to give the impression of clearing out over 40 years of Tory entitlement. Though not winners, the Alberta party and NDP who came in a strong second in two of the ridings so at the least weren’t losers either. The big losers, the Alberta Liberal party and the Wildrose Party.

So on my drive to work this morning I was listening to CBC's Calgary Eyeopener when they interviewed Calgary Mayoral candidate Jon Lord. Now Jon's a former alderman and MLA and has the dubious honour of being a Conservative candidate who's lost an election to a Liberal in Alberta. Now Jon's running for mayor since, based on his interview, the city is too busy spending money on services for citizens and not enough time lowering his taxes.

A local television station acquired a video secretly taped at a meeting of some of Calgary's home builders. In it the builder speaking basically states how with the generous spread of campaign dollars, they have three councillors in their back pockets and are trying to get at least five more. Further, he states that 11 of them have ponied up $100000 each to "bring Preston onside" with his Manning Centre and its candidate school.

Calgarians are getting an example of what happens when you blindly put your 'X' beside whatever bale of hay the Conservative party puts up for election, you get the short end of the stick when they're doling out the money since they don't need to buy your vote. Mayor Nenshi and various community groups are justifiably upset that money that was promised is now not coming. They shouldn't be surprised though, as it's just politics.

CBC has broken a story about local municipalities donating money to the Alberta Progressive Conservative Pary. There are several aspects of this story that are truly depressing and scary.

It would seem that Ted Morton, candidate for the leadership of the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party and hence premier of Alberta and who has been campaigning on openness and accountability has a secret identity. Seems Dr. Morton used an alias email to keep his true identity a secret in ministerial correspondence while he was minister of Sustainable Resource Development.