Late in the evening of May 5, just hours after New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Rachel Notley had been declared the premier-elect of Alberta, snow began to fall in Edmonton. It didn’t stop for almost 24 hours. It was the wet, heavy stuff, piling up on the budding leaves of spring and bringing down branches and entire trees. Needless to say, there were plenty of “hell has finally frozen over” and “it’s going to be like this for the next four years” jokes.

It has been remarkable to watch news of the NDP win spread around the world, with shock being expressed as far away as London and New York. There has been concern expressed that capital will not flow into the province as it has in recent years. “It’s completely devastating,” for energy companies and investors, said Rafi Tahmazian, who helps manage $1 billion in energy funds at Calgary-based Canoe Financial LP in Calgary, in a media commentary. “The perception from the market, based on their comments, is that they’re extremely dangerous.”

But Premier Rachel Notley is no anti-oil-sands crusader. She’s a pragmatist and a politician, and there’s nothing a politician likes more than being in power. She knows that thousands of her union supporters draw their paycheques by extracting, upgrading and shipping the two million barrels of oil Alberta produces each day.

In her first speech as premier-elect, on election night, she made a point of reaching out to the oil industry: “To Alberta’s job creators, great and small, in the energy sector and in every other sector, our government will be a good partner,” she said. “We will work with you to grow our economy and secure a more prosperous future for every Albertan in every community.”

The proof, of course, will be in the policies. But the NDPs platform was hardly revolutionary. In an article pubished in Maclean’s just before the election, University of Alberta professor and energy analyst Andrew Leach wrote that “an NDP government would certainly lead to changes in Alberta, but perhaps not of the radical sort feared by many in the province. In fact, on many issues, it’s hard to find a lot of daylight between NDP policies and those of the other two front-running parties.” Any review of the royalty regime will surely be done with an abundance of caution.

From a more general business perspective, Notley has pledged to raise corporate income taxes to 12% from 10%. Although I generally subscribe to the notion that we should tax consumption and not production – and therefore should stay away from income taxes – the move only puts Alberta’s rate slightly higher than British Columbia and Ontario and on par with Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

By and large, so far, it’s business as usual in Alberta. The oil is still flowing. Edmonton is still a forest of cranes, with 21 developments going on in a four-by-10- block stretch of downtown. Calgary is still in a slowdown, but that’s more because of the price of oil than because of the policies of the provincial government.

Notley faces a wealth of challenges. They will come from her inexperienced caucus and the entrenched conservative machinery that has built up over the past 44 years. But it’s not time to head for the hills. A democracy functions best when various ideas are heard and policies implemented. For the first time in a long time, Albertans will now have that opportunity.

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