THE UCP IS BROKEN

Please find below the 3rd in our series of Rural Voice Discussion papers.  I look forward to hearing your thoughts and response. 

The UCP: A failed experiment

It has been about one month since I launched the Rural Voice Discussion Paper, a proposal for a new approach to provincial politics in Alberta.

In this paper, I argued that over the past 50 years political parties have taken rural Alberta for granted while shifting away from the values and principles that form the foundation of the conservative movement in the name of electoral expedience. I also argued that by abandoning its rural base, the United Conservative Party has now lost the ability to win elections.

Since launching the paper, I received several questions about whether the UCP can recover. The short answer is: No.

The current situation

According to current polling, Premier Jason Kenney is the least popular Premier in Canada. He has lost the trust of Albertans and has been a greater disappointment than Alison Redford. Under his leadership Albertans feel lost and betrayed. They voted for the guy in the blue pick-up truck but found out he was only renting it to get himself elected. Kenney’s personal popularity currently trails the NDP in every region of the province and every demographic, including rural Alberta. If an election were held today the NDP would win a large majority, sweeping Edmonton and claiming a majority of seats in Calgary.

Making matters worse, the NDP continues to out fundraise the UCP, as the UCP loses memberships, local and provincial board members, and the long-time volunteers on which the party relies for election campaigns.

A toxic culture that can’t govern

Even worse than Kenney’s personal numbers is the toxic culture he and his political insiders have brought to Alberta politics. This has infected and soured the hope we had in a United Conservative Party.

Through the unity process and prior to the 2019 election, the UCP was founded on the principles of economic freedom, smaller government, grassroots democracy, and defending Alberta’s rights within Canada.

What we got was a leadership election tainted by allegations of corruption and dirty tricks, a Calgary-centric cabinet, total disrespect to our voters “If that’s our ‘base’, we’ll need a new one…’”, and a complete lack of respect towards elected MLAs within the UCP caucus.

These principles were further undermined before the pandemic by large corporate welfare handouts, increased government spending, Provincial Sales Tax (PST) trial balloons, and a failure to fight for a fair deal.

The pandemic, meanwhile, brought on a full a revolt of the UCP’s rural base caused by the UCP government’s hypocrisy on health restrictions, and the Premier’s flip flops on vaccine mandates and vaccine passports.  Images of the Premier’s closest advisors flouting health restrictions even as the government prosecuted small business owners for violating these same restrictions became emblematic of a government that has lost touch with Albertans. This is now the established political culture of the UCP; dishonest, rudderless, and toxic.

What is the UCP’s purpose?

The UCP was meant to be a unifying force of like-minded conservatives from both the Progressive Conservative and Wildrose parties.

As such the UCP was founded on a Unity Agreement between the two legacy parties, designed to bridge a philosophical divide at the heart of the conservative movement. Wildrose, which arose in opposition to the old PC dynasty’s tightly controlled administration, demanded full grassroots participation in government.

That sentiment was lost the moment Jason Kenney took leadership of the party, although it took several years for party members to fully understand the extent to which Kenney and his Ottawa crew would seek to control the party’s direction.

At the core of the Wildrose philosophy was the idea that every MLA’s first duty is to represent the families and communities in their constituency to the best of their ability. Ultimately, this idea has proven unworkable within Kenney’s harsh culture of extreme party discipline, which routinely demands MLAs put allegiance to the leader first. As such the UCP of today looks a lot less like the party described in the unity agreement, and more like the federal Liberal party of Justin Trudeau. This sort of leader-centric party is not and never will be acceptable over the long term for the rural conservative base in Alberta.

New leadership?

There is a movement within the UCP party currently seeking to replace Kenney with a leader more willing to embrace grassroots democracy. There is little reason to believe that lapsed UCP members will embrace such an approach. To succeed in the long term, the new leader would need to come from outside of government and immediately take steps to distance the party from Kenney’s team of political insiders.

The new leader would also need to have a track record of commitment to grassroots democracy, and the character necessary to do away with the dictatorial power Kenney has utilized to stay long past his best-before date.

Such a prospective leader does not exist at this time, and the truth is that leadership is only one part of the UCP’s problems. The party itself requires a constitutional and structural overhaul to guarantee that any future leader wouldn’t be able to turn it into such a toxic culture that seeks to control everything around it.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, the UCP is at best a failed attempt to bridge growing divides within the conservative movement. While the party was capable of defeating Notley and the NDP in 2019, we know that the next election won’t be about the NDP’s failures. The next election will be about the UCP’s failure to become what we had all poured our hopes and dreams into.

Without a compelling vision for our province that unites all conservatives, something the UCP has fully abandoned under Kenney, the party now exists solely for its leader’s own gratification. Albertans rejected this kind of PC party in 2015, and they will do so again in 2023.

If our goal is to prevent vote splitting and a second Notley NDP government, we need to start looking for alternatives now.