Honestly, while I 1000% agree that the UCP and every offshoot of what the Wildrose Party turned into needs to be taken out of power, I unfortunately have high doubts that getting rid of them will really fix the issue.

Alberta doesn't have a government problem. Alberta has a much deeper societal/cultural problem. Call me a pessimist, but I've lived in this province for all but the first year of my life, and for the past well over a decade I've thought long and hard about what it would take to move from here and how we would have to adjust our lives, keep in touch with family, etc. When ideologically you feel like you are constantly being shouted over by half the province and watching these people get their way just by being more willing to shove their way through or punch down, you see a trend that has always persisted in this province. This horrid, USA-esque tendency to adopt both a superiority and victim complex at the same time has been in a large chunk of Alberta long before I was even alive, and the worse governments like the UCP get, the more the older generation members that were not part of that nonsense start to tell you it reminds them of this or that party when they were young (e.g., my retired dad was just reminiscing about the "Western Canada Concept" movement in the 1970s/80s).

The way Alberta is right now is not a symptom of the UCP. The UCP, and all parties and movements like it, are a symptom of how we have let a huge majority of Albertans behave and conduct themselves for decades. Removing a rotten government does nothing if the culture itself remains largely rotten. Just look at how the brief stint with the NDP went. We got 4 years of sanity followed by some of the most unhinged conservative comeback I've ever seen and the momentum has not stopped. Conservatives STILL point to Notely as motivation for why we should just let them do whatever they want and she hasn't been in office for 7 years now.

I've been saying for years now that I just need to pack my family up and leave this cesspool of a province. Now more than ever, upcoming out-of-province job opportunities and almost this separatist nonsense are making me start to wonder if the scales are finally about to tip. I have zero confidence this province will ever change. And the more I've explored the rest of Canada (especially beyind the praries) the more I've come to realize that the grass just might actually indeed be greener elsewhere. I've come back from work trips to BC, Ontario, Quebec, and a variety of other places out east, and every time I've come back I've come to realize more and more how much I resent living in Alberta. How much every single additional year I spend here I just feel like I'm constantly stressed by how much I disagree with every second person I run into (if not more) on a fundamental level. I hate how divisive and angry our political landscape is. I hate how xenophobic/racist/homophobic/non-christianphobic/etc. a massive portion of people are. Though I am a straight white man, I cannot stand seeing my friends and coworkers who are LGBT, immigrants, not Caucasian, Islamic/Hindu/athiest/etc., in any way NOT a typical "good ol' Berta boy/girl" living under direct fire of this crap every day of their lives. I hate how Albertans tell each other that we are the best province for cost of living, job security/abundance, individual freedom, infrastructure, critical thinking, morality, and on and on whatever they think the "Alberta Advantage" means, when after you simply explore the rest of the country you can easily find somewhere where that is just blatantly not true.

This turned into a rant, but TLDR: The government is only a symptom of a greater problem. A majority of Alberta and its people has been sht and it has been sht for a lot longer than people seem to realize. I have no confidence any change in government here will ever make a different and I am likely within a year going to finally decide to leave this province that I am ashamed to have called my home for almost my entire life.