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Tag: UCP
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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.
Is Brian Jean going to take down Jason Kenney? And can the United Conservative Party win the next Alberta election?
Those are compelling questions with no certain answers.
Despite what pollsters and pundits are saying, recent events didn’t make the picture much clearer.
Brian Jean, former contender for the UCP leadership and once again Kenney’s most vocal opponent, won the UCP nomination for the Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche by-election. The by-election will happen by March 2022.
Jean took the nomination by 529 votes, compared to Kenney’s preferred candidate Joshua Gogo, who received 250 votes.
Pundits are calling this a landslide and very bad news for Kenney.
How much can be assumed from Jean’s victory remains to be seen, however. The UCP candidate in the last election who’s resignation is prompting the by-election, won more than 9,800 votes in the 2019 general election.
Given the enormous spotlight on the nomination race and Jean’s aggressive and highly publicized campaign, it’s surprising there hasn’t been some musing about the rather paltry turnout for the nomination contest.
Jean is now thumping up and down the province on his campaign to unseat Kenney. He’s turning up in end of year interviews with all the provincial columnists and radio show hosts calling on the premier to resign.
Kenney meanwhile is not shy of the public eye, holding many press conferences on the recent economic upswing and the looming worries about the Omicron Covid strain. But the premier is maintaining a stony silence about Jean’s recent victory in Fort McMurray or his noisy leadership campaign.
While the premier did take a few potshots at Jean early in the Fort Mac race, he largely stayed out of the fray. He may be just hoping Jean will burn himself out.
Technically Kenney, as party leader, could refuse to sign Jean’s nomination papers for the by-election. Or if Jean wins, Kenney could turf him from caucus on the pretext that Jean is a danger to UCP unity. Both scenarios are unlikely, however.
There are enough vocal malcontents in caucus that singling out Jean would be an admission of fear from the premier. Plus the UCP admin folks kept a tight rein on the nomination contest, so trying to declare it invalid might cause even more of a split in the party.
Kenney faces a formal leadership review on April 9. If he were to punt Jean out of caucus right after a by-election victory in March, that too could unleash an even more divisive battle on the April convention floor.
A poll at the beginning of December suggested Albertans might be slightly more willing to vote UCP if Jean were the leader instead of Kenney. But the numbers weren’t startling and Jean still has plenty of time to make a major error, given how visible a target he is making of himself.
Jean may be an irritant, but Kenney so far hasn’t given any hint he’s breaking a major sweat about the threat.
Meanwhile in the past couple of weeks the premier has reversed course on some of his more eye popping policies, perhaps to buoy his own popularity and that of the UCP government.
He tugged a few threads loose on Covid restrictions this week to make Christmas a bit merrier for Albertans, but unlike his “best summer ever” declarations in August, his tone was measured and the changes relatively minor.
The UCP government has had a history of warring with the provincial civil service since the moment it was elected. But quietly this week, the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees signed a tentative deal which will give them job security until the end of next year and modest raises in 2023. It appears the UCP is clearing some of the acrimony out of the arena before the 2023 election campaign begins in earnest.
Kenney isn’t giving up his leadership position without a fight and the UCP is not throwing in the towel just because of historically low popularity numbers. The struggle for both the premier and the party isn’t over yet.
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.
While the fate of the leader of Alberta’s United Conservative Party has been stealing all the headlines, the party itself is facing enormous challenges of its own over the next six months.
The party was mashed together from the Progressive Conservative Party and the Alberta Wildrose Party only four years ago. Now it’s trying to find a way forward as members with deeply divergent backgrounds and views wrestle for control.
Back when he was running for the UCP leadership in 2017 Jason Kenney campaigned on a “grassroots guarantee”.
He said policy would come from party members. He blamed the original conservative movement fracture on “an arrogant, top-down style of leadership” on the part of the governing Progressive Conservatives.
But now he and the party are facing complaints that the UCP has abandoned the grassroots, the leader failed to listen to the membership through the pandemic and the government is making too many policy decisions without consultation.
The UCP board, led by new president Cynthia Moore, is grappling with a fractious membership as it tries to gear up toward the 2023 provincial election.
The first challenge took place last weekend with the annual general meeting. The party avoided a major gunfight, with Kenney receiving a polite reception from the assembled delegates rather than the open insurrection some pundits expected.
Next up is the UCP board’s Dec. 7 meeting. Moore says the board will formally respond to a motion from 22 constituency associations to force an early review of Jason Kenney’s leadership.
Many of the 22 constituencies seeking the early review are rural and are pushing for a wide open vote in February on Kenney’s leadership, with remote ballots allowed.
If the board finds a way to reject the motion, a review will happen in April, but it will be far more controllable, with only in-person delegates allowed to cast a ballot.
The party also has to deal with a fast approaching by-election. Kenney’s most prominent foe, former Wildrose leader Brian Jean, is vying for the UCP nomination in his Fort-McMurray home town constituency.
Jean suggests the show of support for Kenney at the AGM shouldn’t be taken at face value. He says party members believe the UCP can’t beat the NDP in the next election with Kenney at the helm. He is more than willing to step into the breach.
Jean is the magnet attracting former Wildrosers. A seat in the UCP caucus for Jean after the February by-election could embolden the Wildrose faction within the party.
A further complication for the party is Danielle Smith, also a former Wildrose leader who attempted to unite the Wildrose and the PCs by defecting to the PC government caucus in 2014.
Smith, a radio personality in Calgary, announced last week she would consider trying for the party leadership for the sake of UCP unity.
All those balls in the air must be dizzying for a UCP leadership which is also beleaguered by an inability to raise cash. The failure to fill party coffers at the same rate as the opposition NDP is yet another signal of member disenchantment with the current state of the party.
Moore addressed the elephant in the room at the AGM.
“Too many of us have forgotten that we are the United Conservatives. Some of us forget what brought us together and are now focusing on what divides us,” she said.
“Compromise isn’t always easy but is often the right thing to do. We must remember that politics is the art of negotiation and compromise.”
It would help if there was common ground and shared history to use as a base for that compromise. But the UCP is still finding its identity after difficult rifts in Alberta’s conservative movement.
In 2017 Kenney looked like the high powered leader who could push the party to power and enduring success. But, battered by unprecedented political challenges including Covid and oil price crashes, he proved to be a divisive figure.
No matter what the outcome is of the leadership review, the UCP’s struggles aren’t likely to vanish. With or without Kenney the rifts have to be dealt with by the party apparatus. Maintaining any big-tent party is a tough job. Some pretty icy drafts are blowing through the UCP’s makeshift seams.
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.
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.
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.
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