Nearly five months after Alberta NDP MLA Shannon Phillips resigned her seat in the Legislature, a by-election has been called in Lethbridge-West and it’s happening on December 18.
For the past five years, this urban riding located in southwest Alberta has been an electoral anomaly: a lone orange island surrounded by a sea of blue. The riding was one of two won by the NDP in 2023 that was outside of the immediate Edmonton and Calgary areas.
The seasons are changing and it’s not just the weather – the political seasons are changing too.
The first snow has fallen and the cold north winds are blowing across Alberta. The seasons are changing and it’s not just limited to the weather – the political seasons are changing too.
Five months after the 2023 provincial election, Alberta’s politicians will be back in the provincial capital on October 30 to start the first substantial sitting of this Legislative Assembly. MLAs met shortly after the election to choose a Speaker for the new Assembly (Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills MLA Nathan Cooper) but this fall’s session will see Premier Danielle Smith’s re-elected United Conservative Party government introduce its legislative agenda.
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There is no doubt that Jason Kenney changed the face of Alberta politics when he jumped into provincial politics in 2017.
He succeeded in leading the merger of the Wildrose opposition with the Progressive Conservatives remanent into the United Conservative Party.
And, for a period, he was able to convince the two warring factions to put aside their differences and focus on a higher goal: winning the 2019 election.
And it worked.
At least it did for a time.
The UCP won a big majority, but quickly discovered that all those things the PCs and Wildrosers didn’t like about each other still existed, but now they were in the same party.
Last night, Kenney announced his plans to step down as UCP leader after getting a weak 51.4 per cent endorsement an acrimonious, divisive and drawn-out leadership review.
How did we get here so fast?
The COVID-19 pandemic definitely derailed Kenney and his party, but that wasn’t his only mistake.
Let’s look back at the chaos of the past three years.
Kenney’s much promoted Open for Summer plan in 2021 alienated a large swath of Albertans who were uncomfortable with removing public health restrictions so quickly and haphazardly just for the Calgary Stampede.
Rachel Notley’s NDP were riding high in the polls and fundraising, and to a lot of Albertans it looked like Kenney was dropping the COVID-19 restrictions to fast to save his party’s fortunes and his own leadership.
But being forced to backtrack and reintroduce restrictions when COVID-19 cases and deaths predictably skyrocketed and hospitals and ICUs overflowed only served to alienate a growing group right-wing populists and Freedom Truckers who were then highly motivated to defeat Kenney in the leadership review.
Despite flirting with right-wing populism before the 2019 election and during his time as Premier, Kenney is not a populist.
Kenney is probably far more comfortable discussing the works of Ludwig von Mises in the salons of the Manhattan Institute than driving a big blue truck around rural Alberta.
He sold Albertans, and conservative activists, a bill of goods that he could not deliver on.
But again, it wasn’t just COVID-19 that sealed his fate in the leadership review
If Kenney had not been so deeply unpopular with Albertans and if the UCP hadn’t been trailing the NDP in almost every poll since late 2020, he would have had a stronger hand to play.
But he didn’t.
Let’s look at why.
Somewhere along the line Kenney and his ministers began to believe that the big electoral mandate they got in 2019 meant they could impose their platform with abandon and, perhaps fatally, not have to listen to Albertans who started pushing back.
While Kenney’s opponents were always going to oppose his plans to privatize health care and schools, it wasn’t just NDP partisans who pushed back.
It was normal Albertans.
And Kenney didn’t seem to realize this.
Kenney and Environment & Parks Minister Jason Nixon’s plans to close and sell more than 140 provincial parks sparked a province-wide lawn sign campaign that crossed the partisan divide.
After months of actively dismissing and attacking opponents of these plans, the UCP government was forced to back down.
The UCP’s eagerness to open the Rocky Mountains to open-pit coal mining produced a similar backlash.
Kenney and Energy Minister Sonya Savage pushed forward, again dismissing the opposition, which included dozens of southern Alberta municipal councils and country music artists like Corb Lund, Paul Brandt and Terri Clark, until they were forced to back down.
Kenney and Health Minster Tyler Shandro picked big fights with nurses and doctors during the pandemic, which almost certainly undermined public confidence in the government’s ability to handle the pandemic.
Kenney and Education Minister Adriana LaGrange were almost engaged in daily fights with teachers, even when the safety of children during the pandemic was the biggest concern for almost every Alberta parent.
Alberta can already be a notoriously difficult place to govern, but at times it looked like the UCP was actively trying to make it more difficult.
And then there were the scandals.
Shandro yelling at a doctor in his driveway.
Justice Minister Kaycee Madu phoning the chief of police after getting a traffic ticket.
Lawsuits alleging of drinking and sexual harassment of political staff by cabinet ministers.
Betting and losing $1.3 billion on the Keystone XL Pipeline.
And the theatrics.
The Energy War Room staffed by UCP-insiders.
The late and over budget Allan Inquiry into nefarious foreign interference that found nothing illegal.
A referendum about equalization that was always going to be ignored by Ottawa, and ironically, was ignored by most Albertans.
The never ending legal challenges against the federal government.
And then there’s the curriculum.
Pledging during the 2019 campaign to take ideology and politics out of the draft K-12 curriculum, Kenney’s government injected new levels of weird and outdated ideology.
Panned by teachers, reviled by curriculum experts, and mocked internationally as age-inappropriate, outdated, Eurocentric, jargon-riddled, inaccurate, unconcerned with developing critical thinking skills, and rife with plagiarism, is how columnist David Climenhaga described it.
And then there’s that thing about Kenney’s grandfather, Mart Kenney, showing up in the curriculum, which felt like weird pandering by the programme’s authors.
We never got a glimpse into who Kenney really is or anything about his life outside of politics really.
Aside from politics, we don’t really know what makes him tick.
We know he rented a room in mother’s basement, enjoys listening to Gregorian chants and is a devout Roman Catholic, but that’s almost all we were allowed to see.
Not that we are owed any more.
Politicians deserve their privacy but Kenney’s weird blank slate outside of politics probably contributed to him being not very relatable to most Albertans.
So it becomes a trust thing.
Kenney is popular with many white collar conservatives and former staffers in Ottawa who have fond memories of his two decades as a determined opposition critic and hard-working cabinet minister.
Many of them see him a kind of Philosopher King of Canadian Conservatism.
But whatever charm worked inside the Queensway didn’t translate in the Premier’s Office.
Maybe being a trusted lieutenant to Prime Minster Stephen Harper was a quite different job than being Premier of Alberta?
Someone who has known Kenney for a long time once told me that they believed one of his biggest weaknesses is that he still saw Alberta politics through a 1990s lens.
I’m not sure I totally believe that but I think there’s a hint of truth to it.
And it might be why he has misread Albertans so badly over the past three years.
Kenney got his start in Alberta politics in the early 1990s as the founding spokesperson of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
It was a heady time for deficit hawks and social conservatives, and Kenney frequently engaged in very public quarrels with then-Premier Ralph Klein over government expenses.
The young conservative activist with a trademark Nixonian five-o’clock shadow pioneered the CTF soundbite machine with great success.
It’s where he cut his teeth in politics.
Thirty-years later, Kenney will soon be ending the latest phase of his political career in the same building where he started.
But this time he might not be coming back.
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“Hey Dave, is Jason Kenney going to win the leadership review?”
It’s a question I get asked a lot these days.
My answer?
I don’t know.
Anyone who tells you different probably has a personal or career stake in the game.
What was supposed to be a big in-person vote in Red Deer back in April turned into a province-wide mail in vote. And that loud swooshing sound you heard wasn’t the sound of a late winter Chinook but the sound of the goal posts moving.
And there’s strong feelings on both sides of this fight.
Kenney’s opponents are outspoken. Especially the ones inside his own United Conservative Party caucus.
MLAs Brian Jean, Leela Aheer, Angela Pitt, Peter Guthrie, Jason Stephan, and Dave Hanson.
Plus Drew Barnes, Todd Loewen and friends.
They all want Kenney gone. They think the UCP is going to lose the next election to Rachel Notley’s NDP if he stays on as leader.
His former central Alberta organizer David Parker is leading Take Back Alberta, a group dedicated to defeating Kenney in the leadership review.
His former spokesperson Blaise Boehmer has become one of his biggest critics.
One former staffer has even taken him to court.
But the loyalists working in the Premier’s Office in Edmonton think his critics are bunch of clowns.
It’s a gong show.
Kenney says of his recent interactions with normal Albertans: “100% of the people who came up to me unprompted say things like: We’re behind you Jason, keep up the good work.”
Yeah, ok there, Mr. 22-per cent Approval Rating.
He spins a lot of yarn.
Kenney once claimed that he didn’t impose stricter COVID-19 public health restrictions because of a crying Venezuelan refugee who claimed the fled socialism.
The Venezuelan woman who believed she was used as part of Kenney’s argument remembers her encounter with the premier as much less dramatic.
But Kenney’s staffers loudly trumpet his good deeds.
Three loyal cabinet ministers – Ric McIver, Jason Nixon and Doug Schweitzer – told Kenney’s critics that they have to fall in line if he wins.
That’s doubtful.
If Kenney had the ability to silence his critics and re-unite his “United” Conservative Party he would have done that two years ago.
That ship has sailed.
Scratch that. The ship is leaking.
But is it going to sink?
Even if Kenney is a hot mess of a premier, he’s a still skilled campaigner, and that’s basically what he’s been doing for the past few months – campaigning.
He can even be, dare I say, dangerously charming on the campaign trail.
Kenney does get public support from some conservatives outside Alberta.
They see him as a kind of Philosopher King of Canadian conservatism.
Conservative pundit Sean Speer wrote a long defence of the beleaguered Kenney in the National Post praising his policy agenda.
But commentary by out-of-Alberta conservatives, who probably have fond memories of Kenney’s two decades in Ottawa, almost always omit how intentionally and aggressively divisive he has been since stepping into the Premier’s Office.
Albertans who oppose, or even just dare to criticize, his government’s policies have been routinely derided and attacked by Kenney.
Are you an Albertan who opposed closing and selling provincial parks?
Then you’re a radical urban eco-marxist.
Did you oppose open-pit coal mining in the Rocky Mountains?
Then you must be a radical urban eco-marxist who votes NDP (can you imagine telling that to a 5th generation cattle rancher from southern Alberta?).
You get the drift.
So, do Albertans see Kenney as the conservative philosopher king that his out-of-province admirers do?
Lol. No.
Do normal UCP members?
Definitely not.
Will Kenney win on May 18?
Will he get more than 50 per cent of the vote?
Your guess is probably as good as mine.
Will the deep divisions inside the UCP be healed?
Not a chance.
As veteran political columnist Graham Thomson signed off in a recent column, “No matter what happens that day, Alberta’s already wild politics will just get wilder.”
I’m trying something new. I’m hoping to share some thoughts on Alberta politics and history on a new Substack and share the platform with some pretty smart people.
Sign up at daveberta.substack.com
The Livingstone Landowners Group, a group that opposed the United Conservative Party government’s plans to allow open-pit coal mining in the Eastern Slopes of Alberta’s Rocky Mountains, has released a short video documentary about the importance of the rivers in the area and the impact coal mining would have on the water that is critical for life in southwest Alberta.
The Livingstone Landowners Group represents landowners and supporters of the Livingstone-Porcupine Hills area in southwest Alberta, some of the most biodiverse and sensitive ecosystems in the province.
The video was produced for the Livingstone Landowners Group with primary funding support from a Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y) Partnership Grant and premiered on Oct. 20, 2021.
The government announced this week that the Coal Policy Committee has been granted a second extension to submit its final report to Energy Minister Sonya Savage – now to Dec. 31, 2021. The committee was created in response to the widespread public backlash against the UCP’s unilateral decision to dissolve the province’s longstanding 1976 Coal Policy and open new areas of the Rockies to coal mining.
