Across central and southern Alberta last week, the voters decided the outcomes of the municipal elections as a matter of trust.
In Didsbury on the eve of the balloting, mayoral candidate Joyce McCoy posted on the Didsbury Discussion Group Facebook: "What are you voting for. . .? Not lower taxes, Not ideas, Not more stuff, Not more services, Not an ideology. . . You are voting for someone you trust."
The outcome demonstrated that McCoy was correct. All the incumbents on council lost, including McCoy, a one-term councillor running for mayor.
The six councillors and mayor Rick Mousseau had lost the trust of the voters in Didsbury.
There is a list of specific controversies, mistakes and unpopular decisions stretching back two or three years
The common denominator was loss of trust.
To achieve transparency, accountability, openness and integrity in town political life, the majority of the 1,651 voters who cast ballots in Didsbury decided that council needed a clean slate.
The 40 per cent turnout falls short of the experience of those of us who have been voting for decades because we remember when a low turnout was 60 per cent.
Times change and there is comfort because the turnout was much higher than four years ago.
The flood of 22 candidates in a town of 5,000, a turnout of 1,651 voters and the defeat of all seven incumbents are the numbers that speak to the central issue of trust.
In municipalities across the region, incumbents who had earned the trust of their communities were, for the most part, re-elected or acclaimed.
Trust was the big issue in Calgary where mayor Naheed Nenshi was re-elected, defeating his strongest opponent, former Alberta Progressive Conservative Association President Bill Smith.
The majority of voters just could not bring themselves to trust a prominent conservative who was perceived to be in the hip pocket of the Calgary Flames and National Hockey League lobby for more public money for a new hockey rink that Nenshi and his council was willing to fork over.
All of the City of Calgary incumbents were re-elected and all of the candidates who attempted to coat tail on a conservative affiliation lost to new councillors who are, in large part, progressives.
It's a long way out from the next provincial election, but the municipal election result in Calgary is the first evidence that the NDP government will be re-elected.
The NDP will win handily in Edmonton.
They will also win several Calgary seats and if they lose, it will be to the Liberals and Alberta Party.
Bottom line is that urban Alberta - Calgary, Red Deer, Edmonton, Medicine Hat and Lethbridge look healthy for the NDP as the provincial election window opens.
The oil and gas industry, and the conservative politicians who speak for it, have lost the trust of what is becoming a majority of urban voters, especially young millennials and Gen Zers.
In the early going, the ballot issue for the provincial election in 2019 is not government deficit and debt.
It is trust.
Frank Dabbs is a veteran political and business journalist, author of four books and editor of several more.
