Gatherin of Conservatives Calls For 3rd Party

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Don’t bet the farm on a “merger” between the Progressive Conservatives and the Alberta Party.

Metro reported late last week that a merger between the once governing PCs and the still irrelevant Alberta Party is “percolating.” Alas, what their reporter was smelling probably wasn’t coffee, exactly.

Still, the report is interesting, because a trial balloon was obviously being floated by someone for some reason.

The story said the presidents of the two parties wouldn’t be opposed to a merger, and quoted PC Party President Katherine O’Neill saying … “It wasn’t surprising there was part of our membership that said ‘if you’re going to do a merger, it should be with the centre.’ The Alberta Party came out more than others.”

Ummm … OK. That doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement of a merger with the largely meaningless Alberta Party to me.
Nor did it to Ms. O’Neill, apparently. She Tweeted after the story had appeared: “Disappointed w/ this story.” No, she also economically said in the same Tweet, the PCs are not involved in merger talks with any party.

Well, the PCs are involved in merger negotiations of a sort whether they like it or not – with the Wildrose Party, driven by the PC leadership candidacy of former federal Conservative cabinet minister Jason Kenney, who has big plan for a double reverse hostile takeover of both conservative parties. Since it seems increasingly likely Mr. Kenney will pull off the first stage of his scheme at the PC leadership convention on the first ballot on March 18 in Calgary, that means it’s much less likely the PCs will be part of any fight to occupy the centre of Alberta politics.

So worrying about a party with very few members, only one MLA and no discernible future – even if it does posses an excellent name – just doesn’t sound like anything the PCs are going to be spending much time thinking about in their present straits. And even if they were, they’d be talking about a takeover, not a merger.

Still, one thing the Metro story did get right, after a fashion, was that the centre is likely to be the ground over which Alberta’s next general election will be fought, at least in the province’s two biggest cities.

Meanwhile, Metro’s story quoted Alberta Party President Pat Cochrane denying outright her party is talking with the Tories – nope, they’re talking with the Liberals, she told Metro! My usually reliable Alberta Liberal source says it ain’t so.

But this raises the question, if the Metro story’s not completely out to lunch, who in the Alberta Party is talking with the Tories?

Alberta PoliticsA ‘merger’ between the Alberta Party and the Progressive Conservatives? Unlikely - Alberta Politics

 

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Wildrose Leader Brian Jean says he will soon present a better path forward for conservative unity than a party merger — even as one of his MLAs, Derek Fildebrandt, is calling for his party to amalgamate with the Progressive Conservatives.

The notion of uniting the right has become a key issue in Alberta politics, with former Conservative MP Jason Kenney running for the Tory leadership on a platform of merging the parties.

But Jean told Postmedia Thursday that Kenney’s initiative won’t fly and he intends to present a plan that will actually work.

He provided few details but suggested it could include ways for the Wildrose and PCs to co-operate without a formal merger

“It has to be something palatable to both sets of members,” said Jean. “And I think that our plan is, quite frankly, much more palatable to both sets of members.”

Jean said a year ago his party was willing to reach out on the grassroots levels to the Tories in an attempt to form a “consolidated conservative coalition.” But he shelved the idea in the spring when the PC convention rejected the merger idea and he has been cool to Kenney’s campaign.

However, Fildebrandt became the first Wildrose MLA to back the merger idea, telling a Whitecourt radio station Wednesday that the public wants the two conservative parties to come together.

“The NDP are too dangerous, they are too ideological, they are too destructive to the future of this province to take chances,” the Strathmore-Brooks MLA told XM1o5.

“I’m willing to put everything I’ve accomplished in politics on the line for this.”
Fildebrandt refused to comment to Postmedia Thursday but a spokesman for the MLA confirmed the story as accurate.

In late afternoon, the Wildrose caucus issued a statement from Fildebrandt saying he stood by his comments, but that they were consistent with what he and Jean have been saying: “That we want to see all conservatives united going into the next election to defeat and replace the NDP.”

Fildebrandt’s Whitecourt remarks echo Kenney, who commended the MLA for endorsing the merger of the “free enterprise parties.”
“There are a lot more MLAs who feel this way,” he said.

Fildebrandt was briefly suspended from the Wildrose caucus in the spring over his apparent endorsement of a homophobic Facebook post targeting Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne

Wildrose appears split over party merger with PCs

 

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Brian Jean fired a shot across the bow of Jason Kenney's unite-the-right campaign Thursday, saying he would be willing to step aside as Wildrose leader to seek the leadership of a new, united conservative party.

Jean said bringing Alberta's two right-wing parties together under a single banner would give conservatives in the province the best chance winning the next election, scheduled for 2019.

The man who has led the Wildrose since March 2015 made the announcement in a group email sent to party members and in a video posted on the party website.

He said his envisioned a united party would be viable only if it was ruled by the grassroots and recognized all members of the Wildrose and Progressive Conservative parties as equals.

"Let me be clear on this point, I plan to be Alberta's next premier," Jean said. "If our members approve a unity agreement with the PC party, I am prepared to stand down as leader of the Wildrose and to seek the leadership of our single, principled, conservative party in a race to be conducted this summer.

"We must remember that the members will decide the name for Alberta's conservative movement," he said. "And most importantly, time is of the essence."

The announcement seemed to herald a shift in Jean's thinking on the issue. In October, at the Wildrose annual general meeting in Red Deer, he rejected talk of a union with the PCs.

Taking aiming at the PC party, Jean said Albertans elected the NDP in May 2015 because many voters "soundly rejected those who put personal ambition ahead of principles."

In a warning to his own party members, Jean said conservative-minded voters can't afford to risk being caught off guard by an early election call.

"[Premier] Rachel Notley could very well call such an election if she sees any vulnerability in Alberta's conservative movement," Jean said. "Our party's survival has been put at risk by that type of cynical and jaded politics in the past, and I'm not willing to take that chance with Alberta's future.

"We cannot give Rachel Notley and the NDP a free pass. The leader of a consolidated party must be in place and ready to oppose the NDP's damaging legislative agenda, this fall."

Jean was elected Wildrose leader in March 2015, six weeks before the provincial election and only months after former leader Danielle Smith and eight party MLAs defected to the then-ruling Progressive Conservative party.
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Wildrose Leader Brian Jean willing to step down to head united conservative party - Edmonton - CBC News

 

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In short order throughout the day, three shoes dropped in the room upstairs. That leaves only one more to go … at least if there’s really a talking political horse up there.

First, PC leadership candidate Richard Starke, MLA for Vermilion-Lloydminster and one of the three men who as of this morning were still challenging Mr. Kenney’s plan to destroy the party as soon as he takes it over by merging it with the Wildrose Opposition, announced he had a plan for a PC-Wildrose coalition.

Then Wildrose Leader Brian Jean, MLA for Fort McMurray-Conklin, announced he was willing to step aside as leader of the Opposition on the condition there is a quick contest in which he can seek the leadership of a new and united right-wing opposition party.

Then Tory leadership candidate Stephen Khan, former MLA for St. Albert, announced just before 10 p.m. in a disillusioned sounding Tweet that he was quitting the race. He followed up with an angry and more detailed statement on his campaign website.

That leaves only candidate Byron Nelson, a Calgary lawyer, to provide the final thump we’re now all awaiting.

Calling his scheme a “necessary adjustment” to his campaign, Dr. Starke seemed to be proposing that Tories run in some ridings and Wildrosers in others, with an agreement to form a coalition government.

The plan must have been cobbled together quickly, because the details were sketchy in the news coverage most of us were forced to rely upon. It sounded to me at the time like a graceful way for the gentlemanly veterinarian to step out of the way of the Kenney juggernaut without appearing to have walked away from his doomed party, which not so long ago was Alberta’s governing dynasty.

As for Mr. Jean, he sounded feistier, even if he was hunkered down and using the group email to members of his caucus he’s been relying on for a lot of his announcements lately.

“Let me be clear on this point, I plan to be Alberta’s next premier,” Mr. Jean declared. “If our members approve a unity agreement with the PC party, I am prepared to stand down as leader of the Wildrose and to seek the leadership of our single, principled, conservative party in a race to be conducted this summer.”

Mr. Jean also said that members of the new party “will decide the name for Alberta’s conservative movement.” Not “Wildrose,” presumably.

Well, OK, but since in the past he’s rejected union with the PCs outright, this sounds a lot like a man who is having trouble controlling his own fractious caucus and party membership. Recent rumblings from the ranks have included Wildrose members bitterly complaining that Mr. Jean’s recent Facebook videos were produced without a membership vote and spreading rumours the party was broke.

If this was Mr. Jean’s big promised Unite-the-Right Plan, it is a significant disappointment after all the lead-up.

As for Mr. Khan, he apparently had no compunction about the need to save face and maintain the fiction all is well on the right side of the aisle in Alberta. “When the race is no longer about a vision and plan for our province, it’s time to step down,” he Tweeted.

“I was confident that this race would be one of ideas and hope for Alberta’s future and I expected it to be a well-run and principled campaign,” Mr. Khan elucidated on his campaign website last night. “Instead, it has devolved into vitriol, anger and division. As such, I can no longer participate in this race in good conscience, nor ask my family, volunteers and supporters to do the same on my behalf.”

“We have seen the reputation of the PC Party damaged so badly over the course of this campaign that our credibility may be beyond repair,” Mr. Khan continued. “More concerning, we have seen volunteers, organizers, leadership candidates, members of the Board of Directors, our party president and even some PC caucus members harassed and threatened.

“It is clear that there is no room in this race for competing ideas and we have seen more anger and division in the last three months than in the half-century legacy of this party,” Mr. Khan concluded.

Mr. Khan asked his supporters to vote for Dr. Starke.

I imagine that tonight Mr. Kenney feels as if the universe is unfolding as it should and looks a bit like a cat that ate a canary.


Alberta PoliticsProgressive Conservative leadership campaign rattles uncomfortably toward a seemingly inevitable Jason Kenney victory - Alberta Politics

 

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In case you’re still wondering how this unite-the-right thing is supposed to work, Wildrose Leader Brian Jean has clarified matters for you.

The party that emerges when the dust has settled will be the Wildrose Party, he told the world earlier this week. The Progressive Conservatives will be no more – although, certainly, the “new” Wildrose party (which will not be new at all, of course) will soon try to rebrand itself “conservative.”

Mr. Jean’s refreshing honesty is important, because up to now all would-be unite-the-righters – including Jason Kenney, who is all but certain to become the PC leader on March 18 in Calgary – have been pretending that what emerges after the next step in his double reverse hostile takeover would be a merger of Alberta’s two principal conservative parties.

For his part, Mr. Kenney has claimed what results will be an entirely new party, although he has not explained how that could happen over the objections of the Wildrose leadership, or what would happen to the estimated $1.5 million in PC constituency bank accounts and candidate trusts that Daveberta.ca has reported would have to be forfeited if the party was dissolved. The Wildrose Party would not lose as much, because it quickly spends most of the funds it raises.

So, despite the efforts of other Wildrosers to say it ain’t so – Finance Critic Derek Fildebrandt, for example, Tweeted this week that “unification should respect both Wildrose & PC members as equals” and called for negotiations closed to the media – for the reasons Mr. Jean pointed out, it cannot easily be so.

Mr. Jean made his clarifying statement while attending a Wildrose Party town hall meeting in Camrose on Monday. He told participants that if unification happens, it will be under the Wildrose structure, and furthermore that he will be a candidate to run the united party.

According to a media report, Mr. Jean told participants in the forum that joining up with the Tories “is a small price to pay if we can have Wildrose as the legal framework for the conservative movement going forward.”

And while the Wildrose Party has divisions of its own, as evidenced by constant rumours of factional warfare within the Opposition legislative caucus, it is hard to see how this could be any different without the consent of the Wildrose leader.

This presumably means the PCs under Mr. Kenney or anyone else are stuck with this reality if they decide to proceed with this union of unlike minds. At least, not without a Wildrose coup to depose Mr. Jean, and that would likely take too much time.

So if Alberta’s conservatives move to union – red Tories, progressive conservatives and the like take note – it will be as members of a new, possibly even more radical, version of the Wildrose Party that emerges as Alberta’s new “conservative” political entity.

Alberta PoliticsBrian Jean makes it clear, any new Alberta conservative party will be the Wildrose Party - Alberta Politics

 

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Former Kenney campaign organizer charged with assault after an incident at the PC convention.

Calgary police confirmed Saturday morning that officers were called to the Calgary Convention Centre just before midnight to deal with a disturbance involving Alan Hallman.

Hallman was cuffed by security and kept in a room until police arrived just after 1 a.m. He was charged with common assault and released on a promise to appear.

Hallman was suspended by the PC Party earlier this year for posting inappropriate tweets that breached the leadership code of conduct. Kenney said at the time Hallman was no longer part of his campaign team.

Albertans will know the next leader of the province’s Progressive Conservative party tonight.

The leadership vote at the Calgary Convention Centre could very well be the death knell for the party that ruled the province for 44 years, with frontrunner Jason Kenney proposing dissolution of the PCs to merge with Wildrose and form a conservative megaforce.

There are just three candidates left in the race — Kenney, the former MP for Calgary Mindapore, Lloydminster-Vermilion MLA Richard Starke, and Calgary lawyer Byron Nelson.

Nelson is the only one not running on a mandate of some form of cooperation with the Wildrose; Kenney wants to create a new united conservative force with both parties, whereas Starke supports a non-compete clause or similar.

Nelson isn’t against the unity concept in theory, he told the convention crowd Friday night, but thinks Kenney’s plan is too hasty and paves the way for another four years of the NDP.

The leadership convention kicked off Friday night with a candidate rally.

Alberta’s Progressive Conservatives pick their new leader Saturday | Edmonton Journal

 

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Jason Kenney wins Alberta PC leadership on first ballot


Jason Kenney wins Alberta PC leadership on first ballot - Calgary - CBC News

 

[Curious Cdn]

Jason Kenney wins Alberta PC leadership on first ballot


Jason Kenney wins Alberta PC leadership on first ballot - Calgary - CBC News

That's a good thing. He knows, by now, that there is more out there in the world than just Alberta. I expect a guy like that to take a leadership role among the Premiers, when he gets that far.

 

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So that’s the end of it, then.


Whatever happens, the old Progressive Conservative Party that ran Alberta for nigh unto 44 years is gone like the wind.

At the culmination of the party’s leadership convention in Calgary, yesterday afternoon delegates elected Jason Kenney, 48, the social conservative former Stephen Harper lieutenant who has pledged to dismantle the party and merge it with the Wildrose
Opposition in a double reverse hostile takeover modelled on the Reform/Alliance party’s capture and destruction of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada in 2003.

Aided by social conservative activists drawn from Wildrose Party ranks and signed up as new PC members, Mr. Kenney’s campaign triumphed as predicted on the first ballot just before 5 p.m. He had about 75 per cent of the vote.

“Today, it’s springtime in Alberta,” Mr. Kenney grandiloquently intoned in his victory peroration – presumably intending a tip o’ the top hat to Ronald Reagan, but raising the suspicion in some minds that Mel Brooks must be writing speeches for Mr. Kenney now.
He also made a pro forma pledge to PC members on the party’s once significant progressive side who are unhappy with his merger plan that he’ll be “inclusive and welcoming to all.”

But if you were looking for a more evocative signal of the party’s likely future course under Mr. Kenney’s leadership, it came about four hours earlier when the old PC Party’s standard bearer, Vermilion-Lloydminster MLA Richard Starke, was roundly booed from the floor by Kenney supporters.

Dr. Starke’s offence? He was warning delegates about the dangers of merging with the Wildrose party when the catcalls began ringing out: “We hold our breath hoping that none of our candidates believe that gay people spend eternity in a ‘lake of fire,’ hold our breath that one of our campus clubs doesn’t send out an email saying ‘feminism is a cancer. …’”

It seems to your blogger that Dr. Starke also made a reference to Wildrose Leader Brian Jean’s unfortunate joke about beating NDP Premier Rachel Notley in this passage of his speech as well, but if so, by the time I got around to writing the post, it had already disappeared down the mainstream media memory hole.

I suppose the Kenney PCs can now argue they were jeering at the genial veterinarian from Vermilion because he dared to suggest there’s a road to re-election for the NDP, but it sure sounded from up here in Edmonton as if they were endorsing homophobia and attacks on women.

We will see the true face of the new style Alberta Conservative party soon enough as Alberta’s conservative movement is hammered into the template set out in the Preston Manning playbook Mr. Kenney is following.

In his speech, Mr. Kenney also repeated his past vow – red meat to the Wildrose base – to repeal every single piece of NDP legislation regardless of its merits. This includes, presumably, even the law requiring students to be allowed to for gay-straight alliances in schools that was actually passed by Jim Prentice’s PC government.

The night before the speeches – in an act of not much significance, perhaps, but a certain symbolic power – a former Kenney campaign strategist, suspended from party membership for a year last January for calling someone he was arguing with an “*******” on social media – apparently took a swing at a security guard who tried to get him to leave the Telus Convention Centre. He was later taken away in handcuffs by police.

Can chants of “lock her up” be far behind? Oh, wait, they’ve already happened, led by one of the sad sack collection of candidates campaigning contemporaneously to lead the federal division of the combined Wildrose-Conservative Party.

Well, it may seem strange for an old Dipper to lament the passing of the PCs – Kenney backers would likely just say it’s proactive sour grapes ’cause they’re gonna win in 2019 and party like it’s Saturday night at Mar-a-Lago. But it’s not a good thing that the kind of conservatives who helped build Canada and actually believed in conserving valuable institutions we’ve created together no longer have a political home of their own in this province or this country.

If nothing else, occasional runs of progressive conservative government acted as a useful steam valve to relieve without too much damage the periodic dissatisfaction with the more progressive governments, whatever their label.

Peter Lougheed, premier of Alberta from 1971 to 1985 and the effective founder of the PC Dynasty in Alberta, must be spinning like a top in his grave in Calgary’s Union Cemetery tonight at the thought of someone like Mr. Kenney leading his party. Mr. Lougheed had his flaws, as readers of this blog point out from time to time, but he was neither a market fundamentalist ideologue nor a rage-steeped social conservative, and he certainly didn’t believe in unrestricted resource development or running roughshod over other provinces.

Mr. Jean, leader of the Opposition now in the legislature, has said he hopes to meet with Mr. Kenney tomorrow morning to talk about the future. Whether that meeting comes about on Mr. Jean’s schedule, or at all, will give us some hints about how Mr. Kenney and his advisors plan to roll out the next stage of their takeover plan.

Meanwhile, another open question is what those who loved the P in PC will do.

Will the majority of them look for a completely new home, gravitate toward another existing party or stick with the Kenney PCs and hope for the best?

It’s too soon to tell. But one thing is clear: the days when Alberta politics were boring have not yet returned.

Alberta PoliticsIt

 

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Jason Kenney is more interested in uniting Albertans against Premier Rachel Notley’s NDP Government than he is in “uniting the right.”

So it’s time for Albertans to have a sober conversation about the kind of policies he would likely implement if he won power, based on his political history and the platform implied by his successful leadership campaign.

Fresh off his first-ballot victory at the Progressive Conservative leadership convention in Calgary on March 18, Mr. Kenney and his supporters quickly pivoted to give his tarnished image a makeover.

Suddenly, Mr. Kenney was no longer the arch social conservative unafraid of being on the wrong side of history on gay marriage, LGBTQ rights, workers’ rights, women’s reproductive rights, environmental stewardship, or pretty much anything else that progressive Canadians support.

Overnight, or so we were told by Mr. Kenney’s backers, he had become as moderate as can be, especially since his bid to run the PC party began in earnest last summer.

The problem with this story is Mr. Kenney’s long track record as a Conservative Member of Parliament and the things he said in numerous social media posts and speeches he has made in in recent months.

It is no secret Mr. Kenney is a social conservative with some very unpalatable opinions that many claim would take us back to the 1950s – or at least to the 1990s when he left Alberta for Ottawa. He has voted in favour of Motion 312 in Parliament in 2012, for example, the failed attempt by Conservatives in Parliament to undermine women’s reproductive rights protected by the Criminal Code of Canada.

Wildrose Party Leader Brian Jean also supported that motion when he was a Conservative MP, by the way.

But even if we were to ignore Mr. Kenney’s voting record as an elected MP since 1997, his recent campaign for the PC leadership alone gives Albertans plenty to worry about.

The entire campaign, and especially its social media component, seems to be based on the idea Alberta is in a state of terminal decline. It implies that only a broader conservative movement led by Mr. Kenney himself can save us from an unpalatable fate.
The problem is that there is little evidence to support the idea Alberta is in an economic death spiral.

While it is true the province is undergoing an economic transition due to relatively low oil prices (in reality, what are historically average oil prices over the past 40 years), the Kenney campaign has done everything in its power to blame this situation on the “disastrous socialist” NDP Government, as he Tweeted earlier this month. Other hyperbolic and inaccurate expressions found regularly on Mr. Kenney’s Twitter feed include “drowning in debt,” “Alberta’s fiscal house is on fire,” “future mortgaged by debt,” “anti-growth policies,” and the like.

But as we can see from the two charts accompanying this story – both based on the trustworthy Royal Bank of Canada fiscal tables, updated as of March 22, 2017 – Alberta’s debt position, measured on a per capita basis or as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, is stronger than that of any other Canadian province.

Obviously, the former CEO of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation in the 1990s isn’t shy about using debt as a political weapon, even when the facts hardly warrant his hyperbole. Is Alberta really “drowning in debt”? If it is, what does this say about Canada’s other provinces?

The new PC narrative under Mr. Kenney that Alberta is a state of terminal decline serves to justify the Conservative claim a strong man is required to take severe countermeasures, much as we saw last week in Saskatchewan in Premier Brad Wall’s controversial budget.

The implied Kenney platform is that the privatization of public assets, severe cuts to public services, and downloading the lion’s share of taxation from corporations onto the backs of working people are all necessary given the current fiscal crunch.
This entire Kenney program is based on fear: Fear of debt, fear of decline, fear of fair taxation, and, above all, fear of the current provincial and federal governments.

It’s clear Mr. Kenney’s implied policies would inflict harm on Albertans, especially the most vulnerable who rely on social services.

Last year, the Alberta Federation of Labour calculated austerity inherent in the Wildrose Opposition’s policies would “usher in a second recession” by shrinking the economy by $10 billion per year. The author of that report found that such measures would result in 22,000 direct job losses in the public sector, plus an additional 16,000 in indirect job losses.

The Wildrose Party’s policy boils down to this: We will solve Alberta’s unemployment, caused by the decline in oil prices, by laying off even more people!

Mr. Kenney’s implied policies – with or without a successful union with the Wildrose Party – do not seem to be much different.

Every day I hear resignation and fear from acquaintances and colleagues that Mr. Kenney will sweep to power in Alberta, just as he swept the leadership of the PCs. The goal of the Kenney campaign’s narrative is to create a sense of invincibility about his ambition to lead Alberta. But this sort of pessimism is wrong-headed and defeatist.

Not only should we resist his well-financed campaign, we can do so in the confidence he has given us the tools to resist successfully in the things he has said and stood for.

Mr. Kenney’s track record is a key vulnerability for the next step in his campaign. His alarming social media campaign during the leadership race provides plenty of ammunition.

We certainly shouldn’t buy what Mr. Kenney is selling when even many on the right for good reason do not! We should recognize the danger he poses to our health care, education and social services in Alberta.

The reason Mr. Kenney won the PC leadership wasn’t because of what he offered to Alberta. It was because he out-organized everyone else in the rag-tag band of Tory traditionalists that opposed him. He successfully implied he has all the answers without actually discussing a single aspect of public policy other than his desire to repeal the carbon levy.

It’s no accident Mr. Kenney ran on a platform of destroying the PC party itself. Destruction is what he does.

So, we need to learn from the mistakes the PC traditionalists made and not underestimate Mr. Kenney’s organizational skills, or his willingness to achieve power by whipping up fear and self-loathing among enough Albertans to persuade them to throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater.

This is not so different from the mistake made by the Democratic Party in the United States, which underestimated Donald Trump’s ability and willingness to use pervasive notions of Western decline to his advantage.

Alberta PoliticsGuest Post: The time has come for a sober conversation about Jason Kenney

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

At the “Alberta Can’t Wait” meeting

the obvious solution was "It's down the hall on the left."

 

[Curious Cdn]

"This is not so different from the mistake made by the Democratic Party in the United States, which underestimated Donald Trump’s ability and willingness to use perverse notions of Western decline to his advantage."

 

[DaSleeper]

"This is not so different from the mistake made by the Democratic Party in the United States, which underestimated Donald Trump’s ability and willingness to use perverse notions of Western decline to his advantage."

 

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A last-minute news conference with PC leader Jason Kenney Friday morning posed a glimmer of unite-plan possibilities, but that faded when it became clear Wildrose Leader Brian Jean wasn’t coming.

Instead, as the NDP marked two years since the 2015 election that shot them into power, Kenney slammed the government for what he called two years of “ideological, socialist” rule.

“This is the reason why free-enterprise Albertans need to unite — to ensure the defeat of this government next election — and we’re working hard on that,” Kenney said.

It was six weeks ago that Kenney stood in the same spot in front of the Alberta Federal Building in Edmonton and declared his optimism there would be a roadmap to unity in four to six weeks.

On Friday, Kenney said that had been more of an aspirational goal than anything.

Unity is getting close, Kenney said, with the differences between the Wildrose and PCs narrowing considerably.

He wouldn’t weigh into what those differences are, saying he won’t negotiate in public, but said there are dozens of issues to sort out, from legal and governance questions to developing a statement of principles.

“I’m optimistic we’ll come in close to our timeline here,” he said, but would go no further than the word “soon.”

Jean has also bandied that word around, doing so again in a YouTube video posted online Friday.

“The news I have is encouraging,” he said.

“The unity discussion group has made significant headway and I’m very optimistic they will come out of this with a proposal for our members to review.”

Like Kenney, Jean has been hesitant to weigh into negotiations publicly, although he reiterated this week that he’s still behind the idea of a new united party being built on the Wildrose framework.

Jean’s argument in the past has been it would preserve his party’s strong legal basis.

It would also allow Wildrose to keep its significant war chest, since Alberta elections law doesn’t allow the transfer of assets between parties.

The PC leader received some criticism last week when he showed up in Vancouver, where a provincial election is currently being fought.

On Friday, Kenney denied he was campaigning for the Liberals, saying he was there mostly for a conference, but also attended one event with some “personal political friends” and one with the Vancouver Centre Conservative Party of Canada constituency association.

Kenney said a new conservative force might look a lot like the B.C. Liberal Party, but that doesn’t mean he agrees with the Liberals on every policy.

No matter the nature of a proposed unity agreement, Kenney is targeting — and expects — a majority vote far greater than 50 per cent plus one.

“At the end of the day, the members are in charge of the direction of the party, and 75 per cent of the members gave me a mandate to go in the unity direction,” he said.

“I’m going to be shooting for the biggest number we can get.”

As conservative unity deadline passes, Jason Kenney says it’s ‘close’ | Edmonton Journal

 

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Maybe they should go with the WildCons........


Seriously, United Conservative Party? Well, it could’ve been worse. After all, it was basically the same group of people who floated the idea of the Canadian Reform Alliance Party around the turn of the century.

Yesterday, the PCs under Mr. Kenney and the Wildrosers led by Opposition Leader Brian Jean held a news conference in Edmonton to announce they’ve come up with a plan – a tentative one, actually – to merge the two parties. They’ve signed an agreement in principle that calls for members of both parties to vote on the deal on July 22 and choose a leader on Oct. 28 if they say yes.

This will not necessarily be easy. The Wildrose constitution requires a 75-per-cent ratification; the PCs’ 51 per cent. Many technical details remain to be resolved.

Alberta’s New Democrats certainly take this very seriously. Even with two competing conservative parties – which could still happen if the deal making comes a cropper, although it’s said here that’s unlikely – it will not be easy for New Democrats to get re-elected in this province. However, it is not, as so many on the right fervently believe, impossible.

Mr. Kenney certainly gave the impression at yesterday’s news conference in Edmonton that he thinks once the two conservative parties are united, the end of Premier Rachel Notley’s NDP Government is a slam-dunk the instant an election is called.

“This agreement ensures the defeat of this disastrous NDP government and the election of a free enterprise government that will renew the Alberta Advantage,” Mr. Kenney said in the clip Edmonton radio stations played over and over yesterday afternoon.

Mr. Jean’s comment was more thoughtful. The deal, he said, “cannot be based on a principle of gaining power for power’s sake. It must be about more than that.”

Arguably, three negative factors from the conservative perspective contributed directly to the election of the NDP in 2015. Only one was the division of the province’s right wing parties into two warring camps, which in many ridings didn’t make as much of a difference as the pro-conservative media’s narrative nowadays suggests.

The other two were Alberta voters’ distrust of the extremist far-right social conservative tendencies that seemed obvious at the time in the Wildrose Party, and the arrogance, entitlement and contempt for voters shown by the long-in-the-tooth PCs. Alert readers will recall that the PCs, who were coming up on their 45th anniversary in power, had in late 2014 engineered the attempted takeover of the Wildrose Party’s legislative caucus, a cynical maneuver Albertans across the political spectrum reacted to with revulsion.

Combined, these factors kept many voters who were fed up to here with the PCs from switching their votes as commentators expected to what was left of the Wildrose Party.

It is hard to see how the leadership of an intemperate social conservative like Mr. Kenney will remedy either of those problems for the Alberta right. Together in the UCP, it seems likely we will have a powerful political entity that combines the worst instincts of each party. This is quite clearly illustrated by Mr. Kenney’s news conference commentary.

Returning to the 2015 campaign, a positive factor helping the NDP was Premier Notley’s remarkable ability to leave voters with the impression she understood and respected them for voting for her opponents for so many years.

Given centrist voters’ dilemma in the spring of 2015, her political talent and empathetic personality, not to mention her law-trained debating skills, made it easy for them to give the NDP a whirl.

Mr. Kenney, by contrast, makes it clear in remarks like yesterday’s that he views Alberta voters with contempt for daring to support his political opponents, even once. His caricature of Ms. Notley’s pragmatic government in cartoonish ideological terms may please his most extreme supporters, but treats most middle-of-the-road voters as fools. His ongoing purge of moderate elements in his own party may satisfy the Wildrose hard core, but it will deprive him of the Red Tory early warning system when he oversteps his bounds and perhaps result in the creation of a new centre-right alternative party.

In this regard, Mr. Jean would be a better spokesperson for a united right, but the big money of the Tory Old Boys’ network has settled on Mr. Kenney as the most likely character to give them carte blanche if “conservative” government returns. This kind of insider entitlement is presumably what Mr. Kenney has in mind when he speaks of the return of the “Alberta Advantage.”

But the long-established conservative voting habits of Albertans will be hard for the NDP to overcome after a single term in office, though continuing improvement in the regional economy and Mr. Kenney’s obvious hubris and social conservative baggage may help.

So while the You See Pee may enter the 2019 election favoured by political odds makers, they are as capable of blowing their lead as they were in 2015 under Jim Prentice, the conservatives’ last Great Hope From Ottawa.

As Premier Notley observed yesterday, “whether it’s the Wildrose or the Tories, they clearly agree on things like making massive cuts to services in order to finance tax breaks for people at the top of the one per cent. They agree collectively on the fact that they’re not particularly sympathetic or supportive of LGBT rights. … They’re a group that are moving increasingly to more and more extreme positions, to the point where they may fall right off the map.”

Alberta PoliticsTories, Wildrosers agree to call new entity United Conservative Party

 

[taxslave]

The problem with"uniting the right" is there are two basically distinct groups that are labeled as right. The religious fanatics, who are truly dangerous and the fiscal conservatives who are what is needed to run the economy. There are some that are in both groups but many fiscal conservatives cannot align with the fundies.

 

[tay]

It's far from a done deal. Ratification requires a 'yes' vote from 75 per cent of Wildrose members and 50 per cent of Conservative members.

An executive member of the Lacombe Ponoka PC constituency association, Eileen Banks won't be one of them.

"It was a hostile takeover," said Banks. "There was no respect shown for the long-term members and supporters of the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta — zero respect."

And while the proposed agreement lays out principles such as compassion for the less fortunate, that doesn't do enough to alleviate concerns held by Banks, who says Kenney hasn't clearly outlined his position on abortion or gay-straight alliances.

Banks said she and others plan to purchase a Wildrose membership, and vote 'no' twice. She urged others do the same. "Hold your nose, buy a Wildrose membership and sink this."

Banks said if the merger fails she expects Kenney to resign, which will allow Progressive Conservatives to rebuild their party.

In the meantime, she plans to vote NDP in the next election because of their "proven track record" in meeting her standards, adding they have done an "outstanding job under difficult circumstances."

Yager said the branding of the Wildrose "as a bunch of small-town, right-wing, knuckle-dragging wackos" continues to distress him. "I think it's free-enterprise with a social conscience."

The vote takes place July 22.

Wildrose, PC members urged to support merger while some plot its undoing - Edmonton - CBC News

 

[Curious Cdn]

The problem with"uniting the right" is there are two basically distinct groups that are labeled as right. The religious fanatics, who are truly dangerous and the fiscal conservatives who are what is needed to run the economy. There are some that are in both groups but many fiscal conservatives cannot align with the fundies.

Amen. Steven Harper was masterful at keeping a lid on the former group. They wanted to outlaw abortion, for instance but Harper obviously knew that the debate itself is political Kryptonite and his govenment stuck with fiscal conservancy, up to near the end, anyway. Lots of Canadian conservatives confuse themselves with being northern Republicans. Our cultures are sufficiently divergent between the two countries that what works there, clangs like a bell here.

 

[tay]

'This is do or die’: Jason Kenney rallies supporters as conservative unity vote nears

With less than three weeks to go until Progressive Conservative (PC) and Wildrose party members vote on whether to unite and form a new conservative party in Alberta, PC leader Jason Kenney

yheld a town hall at a south Edmonton hotel where he encouraged his supporters to vote yes to bringing them together.

“We have to make a hard decision on July 22,” Kenney said to reporters after his speech Wednesday night.

‘This is do or die’: Jason Kenney rallies supporters as conservative unity vote nears | Globalnews.ca

 

[tay]

A new Mainstreet poll find the United Conservative Party would form a majority government if an election were held today. The Mainstreet poll has a margin of error of ± 2.14%, 19 times out of 20.

“It appears to be a summer of love for the newly minted United Conservative Party (UCP) in Alberta. Just over a week ago, both the Progressive Conservative Party and the Wildrose Party membership voted overwhelmingly to ratify the unification deal struck by the parties and that appears to be paying immediate dividends,” said Quito Maggi, President of Mainstreet Research. “But of course, there is no election yet – and more importantly, the UCP still needs a permanent leader. One side-effect of the merger vote appears to be a spike in the number of undecided voters. In April, 15% of voters were undecided, that number is now 27% on the generic ballot, nearly double.”

NDP 29% (+5), UCP 57% (NEW), Liberal 4% (-1), Alberta 9% (+4)

“Now we enter the Leadership contest between the frontrunners Jason Kenney, recently elected leader of the Progressive Conservatives and Brian Jean of the Wildrose. If we learned anything from the recent PC leadership contest, it is the divisive and combative nature of such contests can take a toll on a political brand. Jason Kenney who began the contest with a highly positive net favourability score ended the contest (which he won handily) with just a +9 net favourability score (41% favourable, 32% unfavourable).”

“The caution for the United Conservative Party leadership hopefuls is that a spirited contest can lead to increased excitement and support, but it can also have a negative effect on candidates. These numbers point to a majority government in the next election, but Rachel Notley and the NDP have time on their side. That combined with renewed strength in the economy in Alberta, means a unified Conservative Party cannot take anything for granted leading up to the 2019 election.”

http://www.mainstreetresearch.ca/conservative-summer-love/