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Tag: Jason Kenney
The clear majority of Albertans want the principle of equalization removed from the constitution.
Well, maybe not a clear majority. Slightly under 62 per cent of the around 38 per cent of eligible Albertans who voted in the recent municipal election voted that equalization should be dumped.
And Premier Jason Kenney suggests the referendum wasn’t really about killing the principle of equalization. For one thing, no single province can amend the constitution so the vote was a moot point.
Kenney says the referendum was really a lever to start negotiations with Ottawa about a “fair deal” for Alberta. It was about the big picture of how Alberta has been hard done by because the province’s oil and gas economic engine is being hampered by Ottawa’s plans to reduce Canada’s carbon emissions.
The referendum question didn’t really get into all that subtext. It just said: “Should Section 36(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982 – Parliament and the government of Canada’s commitment to the principle of making equalization payments – be removed from the Constitution?”
Voters who looked it up would know that the offending section says the government of Canada is committed to making payments to the provinces so they can all provide comparable levels of public services at reasonably comparable levels of taxation.
Some voters actually are aggrieved that their tax dollars get transferred to other other regions of the country. According to the provincial government, Albertans’ wealth is being transferred to provinces like Quebec where the provincial government is trying to strangle the Alberta oil and gas economy by opposing pipelines.
The premier suggests the majority referendum vote forces Ottawa to come to the table and discuss a much broader set of issues. He plans to rail against tanker bans and the long defunct Northern Gateway Pipeline and the inability of Ottawa to bring Joe Biden to his knees over Keystone XL.
He may toss in a few other nagging irritants between the two levels of government while he’s at it. The federal child care program isn’t finding favour with the UCP for instance.
Kenney spent more time during his remarks on the referendum on stymied pipelines and federal environmental legislation than the principle of equalization. It’s pretty tough to argue that Canadians living in have-not provinces don’t deserve the same services of those in wealthy provinces.
It is possible to quibble about the formula used to work out equalization transfers as being unfair to Alberta. But Kenney was a minister in the Conservative government that instituted the current equalization formula, so that’s a no-go zone.
No matter how few Albertans may have voted in the referendum or how confused the intent of the entire exercise may have been, Kenney at last has a win in a year of many painful losses. Fresh negative polls hint that his tenure as premier is hanging by a thread. His own party is anxious to test the waters at a leadership review in the spring.
While Covid numbers have finally begun to decline, the abysmal overall case count, hospitalization and death toll in Alberta are a grim legacy for the UCP regime.
Canada’s decades old commitment to equalization is in no danger from Alberta’s flurry at the ballot box. For any change, Kenney would need seven provinces on side. Only Saskatchewan is likely to rally to Alberta’s side on this one.
It’s also unlikely that the federal Liberals are going to walk back their environmental priorities and carbon-cutting policies to unfetter Alberta’s fossil fuel industry.
But for a brief time, the referendum win allows Kenney to change the channel and get back to his comfort zone. Railing at Ottawa is a time-tested strategy to buoy the fortunes of Alberta politicians.
When dealing with Ottawa, Kenney will use the vote to sum up Alberta’s current political sentiment as “we’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore.”
And for domestic consumption, the premier can site the referendum as proving he can still deliver the vote.
But more Albertans actually cast a ballot in provincial elections. And choosing a provincial government is more clear cut than messing with the Canadian Constitution.
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
Alberta’s new big city mayors aren’t much different from Alberta’s old big city mayors.
And that is not particularly good news for Premier Jason Kenney.
Kenney already has phoned Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek and Edmonton Mayor Amerjeet Sohi, presumably with the expected congratulations and assurances he is willing to play nice.
Municipal politics aren’t partisan, Kenney argued after the vote.
“Our government will work with all of the mayors and councillors elected to try to move in the same direction, obviously in addressing the COVID crisis, but in economic growth and recovery emerging from it.”
The mayors-elect are also saying some hopeful things about resetting the acrimonious relationship between city and province.
But already Gondek has suggested if the province can’t forge a day care agreement with Ottawa she is willing to try working directly with the feds on behalf of Calgary.
And despite his reputation as a consensus builder, Sohi’s baggage as a former Liberal cabinet minister must colour the relationship with Kenney.
Both new mayors were the clearly favoured candidates of predecessors Naheed Nenshi and Don Iveson, who both butted heads in public with Kenney over issues including the province’s pandemic response and the need for a big city charter for Alberta.
Gondek and Sohi defeated prominent right wing opponents Jeromy Farkas in Calgary and Mike Nickel in Edmonton. Nickel and Farkas were more aligned with the provincial government on fiscal policy, particularly the need to keep a tight rein on spending.
Gondek and Sohi campaigned on tackling issues which bleed significantly into provincial jurisdiction. Gondek has come out hard on climate change and the need to move beyond the oil and gas economy. Sohi wants to address inequity in terms of racism and homelessness.
Kenney probably hoped to have soul mates in the mayors chairs had Nickel and Farkas won. But the premier, already under the gun because of his brutal polls and poor Covid record, is not likely to get an easy ride from the ultimate victors.
The municipal vote also suggests that UCP MLAs may want to be door knocking in a hurry even though a provincial election is more than a year away.
Normally name recognition is an indicator of electability. Incumbents in theory have a leg up before the race starts. But in the vote this week a number of incumbents lost to newcomers both in the cities and in some smaller municipalities.
In Edmonton, four councillors failed to get re-elected, including three who supported Nickel in many votes. The shift to a more overall progressive council just further reflects how out of touch the UCP is with urban Alberta.
The two big city councils are now fresher, younger and more diverse. If these new teams jell, the provincial government, which has been trying to chip away at municipal powers and funding, will have an even rougher time asserting itself.
The one brightish spot out of the vote this week for Kenney was the equalization referendum. Although final results won’t be known until Oct. 26, it appears Albertans voted in favour of pulling equalization out of the Canadian constitution.
Alberta won’t be able to reach the bar of support from other provinces required for a constitutional change. But Kenney has made it plain he wanted a referendum win to exert some leverage when dealing wth Ottawa on the issue.
The leverage is a bit tepid, however. It appears the final result may hover around the 60 per cent mark, not an overwhelming win for the UCP, given the amount of time Kenney spends banging the drum that Alberta needs a “fair deal” with the rest of Canada.
The election this week underlined the big-picture trends in the Alberta political scene. The cities are becoming more progressive, leaning away from single-focus tax-cutting politicians. And the appetite for bare knuckle brawling wth central Canada may be waning.
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
This content is restricted to subscribers
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
This content is restricted to subscribers
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
In the wake of an election marked by nastiness we are unaccustomed to in this country, and violence against politicians like we have never really seen before, there has been a lot of hand-wringing about how things got this bad. While many are quick to blame the Americans for somehow exporting this to our country, others are quick to point out that no, this is on us because we’ve got bad actors too in this country. Nevertheless, there is a prevailing sense among many in mainstream conservatism in this country who somehow believe that they can flirt with right-wing populism and somehow avoid the negative consequences that come along with it, as though there were some kind of “good parts only” version available to them. The hubris of that belief has come home to roost.
One of the most prominent proponents of using right-wing populism to his political advantage is Alberta premier Jason Kenney, who had spent years honing the craft of stoking and directing anger and turning it to his political advantage. First he sent it toward then-premier Rachel Notley, blaming her for every ill under the sun, and once she was defeated in the provincial election, he turned that anger entirely toward prime minister Justin Trudeau. It wasn’t Trudeau’s fault that a global supply glut in oil was depressing world prices because OPEC decided to open the taps in order to try and make the American’s shale oil unprofitable (which was even worse for the oil sands, for whom the shale boom was already sounding a death knell for their expansion plans), but Kenney was perfectly happy to blame Trudeau regardless – even if Trudeau was offering the province federal assistance that Stephen Harper had refused to.
Already, the signs were there that this was turning ugly. The “protesters” that Kenney was attracting were already selling t-shirts that promised to lynch Trudeau (or journalists, for that matter). “Lock her up!” chants about Notley and whoever else was convenient were starting, imported from the ugly Trump campaign, and Kenney gave a cursory “now, now, we vote them out,” rather than forcefully denouncing the practice and coming down hard on it and all that it entailed. Around the same time, there was a Conservative leadership contest happening, where there were candidates who were also willing to import this same American rhetoric for their own purposes.
Some of you may remember the campaign that Kellie Leitch ran, promising “values tests” and dog-whistling to the far right – so much so that Maxime Bernier denounced her as a “Karaoke Donald Trump,” while he was trying to run on libertarian values (and very nearly succeeded). That Bernier later left the party and started his own that embraced this very same rhetoric and tactics shows that he too believes there was political value in embracing it – the biggest difference seeming to be that he doesn’t seem to care about the negative consequences that come with the embrace, or he is willing to turn a very blind eye to it.
It should be no surprise that this stoking of anger in the service of political point-scoring turned to violence, whether that was with the gravel-throwing incident against the prime minister, or Liberal incumbent Marc Serré being assaulted in his campaign headquarters. And sure, the leaders of the other parties – including Bernier – denounced these acts, but again, a single statement of denunciation doesn’t go very far when you’ve amped up irrational anger in a group of people who are looking to hurt those who you have blamed for their woes. That anger needs to go somewhere, and it’s more than just forcefully marking a ballot on election day.
These kinds of tactics are deliberate. O’Toole’s social media consulting firm makes a point about messages shocking people in order to “invoke anger, pride, excitement or fear.” Kenney is a month away from holding a series of provincial referendums, one of which is to explicitly stoke anger at the federal government by asking a torqued question about equalization payments, as though the referendum could do anything about it. That referendum will also be held alongside blatantly unconstitutional “Senate nomination elections,” which is something invented whole cloth by Alberta governments in the past as a fictional grievance that they can then stoke, which Kenney was all too happy to resurrect – because he needs to keep directing that anger elsewhere. It’s too late, however – all of the anger he’s fomented is now being directed at him, and he won’t last much longer in the job.
It’s also not a surprise that this anger, not just in Alberta but in other parts of the country where the messages resonate, have led to an increase in threats against not only the prime minister (it was only a few months ago that someone rammed through the gates of Rideau Hall with a truck full of loaded weapons, intending to harm Trudeau), but also Notley, and ministers like Catherine McKenna. And it wasn’t just Kenney or Bernier stoking it either. Both Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole made a point of winking and nodding to these crowds, whether it was addressing the Yellow Vesters under the credulous guise of only seeing them as their fig-leaf cover story of being oil workers concerned about carbon prices (when in truth they were the same far-right operators mobilized by M-103 the year previous), or in stoking conspiracy theories about the United Nations Compact on Global Migration, the Great Reset initiative, or even George Soros. They knew what they were doing, and thought it could work for them.
The fact that things have taken a turn to physical violence was the least surprising thing, and yet both the Conservatives and their apologists are acting shocked. They tried cherry-picking elements from the fetid swamp that is the eco-system of right-wing populism, and pretended that it wouldn’t come with consequences. But now that those ugly consequences have reared their heads, it’s time to dismantle this system before it festers, and that means the Conservatives making a conscious choice not to double down in the hopes of regaining PPC votes that they blame for losing them the election.
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
The knives may be out for Jason Kenney but at a news conference this week he donned his Kevlar vest and made it clear he’s not going down without a fight.
Rumours have been circulating for a couple of weeks that the bungling of the Alberta response to Covid would prompt a high profile resignation at the top of the provincial pyramid.
On Tuesday the resignation was announced — Heath Minister Tyler Shandro, who has taken flack from all sides through the pandemic, was shuffled off to the labour and immigration portfolio.
Kenney implied it was a voluntary leave-taking. Skeptics say it was a deflection by the leader to save his own skin.
Certainly Kenney made it clear he is not stepping down, despite the mounting criticism from his own party and beyond.
All camps in the UCP are griping about the premier. Not-enough-action on Covid and too-much-action on Covid camps are both up in arms.
Vaccine fan MLA Leela Aheer, who has already criticized the premier’s leadership, came out very clearly to a columnist this week saying he needs to be gone.
A United Conservative Party vice president penned an editorial in the right wing Western Standard calling for Kenney’s resignation after the imposition of a vaccination passport.
“Having listened to our party’s membership over the last several months, I believe the will of the membership is clear: it is time for Jason Kenney to go,” wrote Joel Mullan, policy vice-president the party.
A Calgary UCP MLA apologized on Facebook last week for not convincing the government to impose restrictions more quickly while remarking on the “lack of leadership at the helm”.
Kenney responded at the news conference with his trademark ambivalence.
He admitted there have been internal tensions about how to respond to Covid.
But he also said he has the confidence of “the members of my party, of our caucus, of our party board.”
He said an immediate leadership review would be a political sideshow at a time when the government and party needs to be focused on solving the pandemic crisis.
The argument that a life-and-death crisis that he failed to manage should prevent a challenge to his leadership is galling for a chunk of the general population as well as a growing number in his own party.
Despite that, Kenney survived what could have been an Ides of March moment at a Wednesday caucus meeting. There was no confidence vote, MLAs departing the meeting told reporters, adding that the caucus is unified on focusing on the pandemic.
There is no doubt a number of federal Conservatives who would like Kenney to get his comeuppance. The Conservatives still hold the vast majority of Alberta seats federally after this week’s election, but their popular vote took a worrying hit.
Kenney’s record is assumed to have contributed to the slump.
The predicament the UCP is now in has spawned some bizarre developments. According to the Western Standard, country singer George Canyon is considering a bid for presidency of the party on the basis he would call an immediate leadership review.
The party’s state of disarray is further compounded by its inability to raise money. The opposition NDP is outstripping the governing party in terms of both the war chest and the popularity polls.
Already there has been some caucus splintering, with two former members sitting as independents and the increasing leakage of news from internal ranks making it to media headlines.
But the UCP is so much a creature of Kenney’s own devising that it will be difficult to oust him before he is ready to go himself.
He hasn’t been able to save Albertans from the pandemic. Now the question is whether he can save the party he founded from himself.
This entire leadership drama is a bit of a political sideshow as Kenney says. The much bigger issue is the pandemic. Lives are at stake in that much larger story. Twenty-nine Albertans died in one day this week and Wednesday the first Albertan under 20 years of age died of the disease.
A governing party flailing around is the last thing the province needs. It might take the resignation of a controversial leader to put the focus back on the much more important task at hand.
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney apologized Wednesday night for being too optimistic this summer.
Seems a bit short of the mark given the mounting anger in the province as Covid ravages the health care system.
Kenney argued at a press conference announcing new restrictions that his big mistake was declaring Alberta open for good. But he also argued he was right to open the province up for the summer.
And he dodged bigger questions about his overall leadership during the pandemic.
The government’s new Covid restrictions continues a pattern of complex and contradictory measures in the face of an overwhelming health crisis.
The latest announcement about the new “restriction exemption program” outlines a set of new Covid rules that is sort of a vaccination mandate but still has odd loopholes.
Albertans can’t gather indoors in private with more than one other household and more than 10 people even if they are fully vaccinated.
Restaurants can get an exemption to the no indoor gathering rule if they require proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test at the door.
The premier had no choice but to admit that there is a huge emergency in the health care system. Alberta could run out of hospital staff and intensive care beds in the next 10 days, he said.
But he also crowed about the mortality rate in Alberta being less than the Canadian average and the U.S. That’s cold comfort for the families of the Albertans dying in this fourth punishing wave of the pandemic. On Wednesday 24 Albertans died of Covid.
As Albertans turn against the government, Kenney continues to be tone deaf to the increasing calls for humility and a steady hand.
Instead there were excuses.
“One thing we’ve learned about Covid is it simply is not predictable,” the premier said by way of explanation for his misjudgment.
That prompted a chorus of angry physicians, pundits and health care experts pointing out that there were plenty of warning signals and protests when the province opened wide for the summer.
Those protests continued through the intervening months. But Kenney was on holiday, leaving no designated cabinet hitter, for three weeks of that.
Perhaps the most eye poppingly ironic moment of the Kenney newser was this pronouncement: “Our focus is not on politics.”
Everything about the response is tinged with politics. The UCP caucus was locked in meetings for hours prior to the newser. The complexity of the final document is a testament to the many compromises and exceptions that likely came out of that meeting.
There are reports of dissension in the caucus ranks. One MLA tweeted out before the meeting supporting a column critical of Kenney’s response so far.
At this point in Alberta everything Covid related is bound tightly to politics as opponents from lockdown proponents to anti-vax zealots assail every word out of Kenney’s mouth.
Even if the latest restrictions had been pitch perfect, consistent and finely reasoned, a good chunk of the population would still be questioning Kenney’s leadership given his record so far in the pandemic.
Kenney himself alluded to the buy-in issue during the press conference. He argued that if he had maintained restrictions through the summer there would have been noncompliance and anger.
He’s already got the anger. The issue now is compliance.
No matter their political stripe, Albertans have to hope that the latest measures start bending the fourth wave curve.
Kenney said the time for analysis about what was done right or wrong will come after the crisis is over. It will also be a good time for a reality check about the leadership of the province.
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
If you won’t get vaccinated to save your own life or your granny’s, or even for a chance to win $1 million or a vacation, is $100 gift card enough to get you to fulfill your civic duty?
For a more and more entrenched segment of Alberta’s populace the answer is probably not. Resisting immunization has become a misguided commitment to some libertarian ideal for a surprising number of people.
But Alberta Premier Jason Kenney is still willing to give a $100 incentive a try as Covid cases, hospitalizations and deaths mount in the province with the lowest vaccination rate in the country.
The unvaccinated can score the gift card for getting first or second shots. Close to 30 per cent of the population has yet to get both needles despite all the imprecations from politicians, doctors and public servants.
Kenney has been increasingly panicked in his pleas. On his return last week from an extended vacation, during which he probably wished the pandemic would just evaporate, he sincerely asked his fellow Albertans to “for the love of God” get the shot.
The $100 bribe has ticked off responsible adults who have had the jab and left even the most moderate Albertans wondering how the government has gone so far off the rails.
To be fair, the government hasn’t put all its eggs in the gift card basket. A province wide indoor mask mandate and curfew was announced at the same time as the incentive.
But even that wasn’t without controversy.
The political flack that rained down over the past year prompted the government to exempt churches and gyms from the indoor mask rules. And you can’t mess with rodeos in Alberta, so rodeos are exempted from a 10 p.m. liquor serving curfew.
The frenzied effort to pander to the right wing base must present quite a challenge to UCP policy writers and comms professionals.
The UCP’s ineffectual efforts have gone too far for some of its members. Peter Guthrie, the MLA for Airdrie Cochrane, tweeted out a letter expressing concern that the government’s tone during its recent press conference was too accusatory in discussing those who haven’t been vaccinated.
If the need to push up vaccination numbers is the key, why hasn’t Alberta created a vaccine passport and the support for commercial, entertainment and institutional venues to require it?
Kenney vowed to not impose a passport from the beginning. A passport won’t fly with the right wing of his party so it’s a no-go zone.
And so the carrot approach of gift cards and million dollar lotteries trumps the stick of requiring two jabs to participate in a normal life.
The government’s playbook for these “incentives” comes from the U.S. Certainly Alberta has often been described as the most American of provinces, so it’s no surprise that Kenney looks south of the border.
The million lottery for the vaccinated announced at the beginning of the summer came from Ohio.
First doses ticked up after the lottery announcement in Alberta but then plateaued.
“There really was not any kind of indication that the lottery made a huge difference,” Dr. Stephanie Smith, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of Alberta Hospital, told a CBC reporter.
The gift card idea came from Colorado, where a jab is worth a gift card to Walmart or Chipotle or a discount on entry to a state park.
So how is Colorado doing? On Sept. 8th the Denver Post reported Covid cases are at their highest level since mid January.
The UCP’s ineffective response to Covid, driven by its mania to appease the right wing, is allowing the NDP opposition to score points in the centre. A recent Leger poll shows more than 75 per cent of Albertans favour a vaccine passport system for venues like bars, restaurants, festivals and gyms.
The gift card bribe just angered the 70 per cent of the population who have heeded the call to get the shot.
Keeping the committed anti-vaxxers happy is eroding whatever moderate support the UCP still retains.
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
Alberta is enduring a do-it-yourself Covid fourth wave as the provincial government disappears into the woodwork.
The province has skyrocketing case counts and rising hospitalizations. But the regime established in the summer when it appeared the plague was fading remains in place.
In the absence of guidance from the UCP government, cities and school boards are instituting their own mask mandates and regulations. A group of doctors is staging live pandemic updates as the Medical Officer of Health retreats to a tweet-only communication strategy.
With contract tracing at a bare minimum, word of mouth and social media have been deployed to alert the public to cases.
A pub in Calgary, for instance, took to Facebook to let patrons know that a vaccinated staff member had tested positive for Covid.
Edmonton’s city council decided this week to bring back a mask mandate for all indoor public spaces including retail stores and extend it to the end of the year or until case rates drop below 100 per 100,000 population for 10 straight days. The case rate at the beginning of the week was 238.2 per 100,000 people.
Some school boards across the province are tinkering with Covid masking and regulations just as classes start again.
So Albertans are taking the initiative to protect themselves. It may be better than nothing but it falls far short of what a co-ordinated provincial policy could achieve to turn back the current Covid tide.
The UCP government has been weirdly out of touch in the past three weeks as concerns rise.
Premier Jason Kenney has been “on vacation” and has chosen not to provide a designated hitter from cabinet to deal with the Covid issue.
In fact Culture Minister Ron Orr, caught by reporters at a newser to celebrate culture days, was effectively silenced by his press secretary, who brought an abrupt halt to the questioning when it turned to the absence of government comment on Covid.
Finance Minister Travis Toews decided to deflect questions at a fiscal update with comments about how the government had expected cases to rise and is keeping Albertans informed appropriately, presumably with canned press releases and social media announcements.
It appears the provincial government is trying to ride out the fourth wave. But for an increasing number of Albertans it looks more like they are drowning.
Three weeks ago, when Chief Medical Officer of Health Deena Hinshaw had to walk back plans to abandon public health pandemic measures altogether, she made it clear the province is moving forward, not backward, on dealing with Covid.
Basically the UCP is relying on vaccines to save the day.
A statement from Steve Buick, press secretary to the health minister, spells out the party line.
“The province is seeing an increase in hospitalizations due to Covid-19, overwhelmingly among unvaccinated Albertans….Vaccines remain the only sure way out of the pandemic. They protect us, our families and the wider community.”
As every good libertarian knows, you can’t force people to get vaccinated. Alberta is the province with the greatest percentage of vaccine resistant population.
The drive to get needles into arms has prompted the government to announce booster third shots for seniors in extended care settings and the immunocompromised.
That’s a sensible precaution but it doesn’t address the current crisis and runaway spread of the disease.
The fact that even the fully vaccinated can get Covid and pass it on doesn’t factor into the government’s strategy. Children under 12 still can’t get the shot. And there’s that nagging statistic that shows 17 per cent of hospitalized Covid patients are fully vaccinated.
The UCP, already battered by low popularity polls, is loathe to take responsibility for mask mandates and any lockdown measures. Kenney would have to admit that his “best summer ever” strategy of opening wide on July 1st failed.
It’s time to get back to business and take the necessary measures to wrestle down the numbers with a province-wide, science-based approach.
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
