UCP entering its seven-year itch

They united for power, but only some are enjoying the spoils.

The basic idea behind the "seven-year itch" is that romantic partners experience turbulence and a potential point-of-reckoning around seven years together. Viewed as a critical juncture, the seven-year itch is defined as a time when couples re-evaluate: They either realize that their relationship isn't working, or they feel deeply satisfied and committed to their relationship.

Psychology Today, February 15, 2020

The United Conservative Party’s seventh year together is almost complete and — if the expulsion of two decent members, the creation of the Alberta Republican party, the majority of separatist sentiment among its members, and the backlash against coal mining in a solidly conservative-voting rural riding is anything to go by — the relationship is experiencing strain.

If Albertans are seen as claiming exception to much of what happens in Ottawa, rural Alberta is as often claiming exception to much of what happens in Edmonton.

In his bid to unite the conservative vote in the province, Jason Kenney built consensus by manipulating a fracture within the Wildrose Party under then-leader Brian Jean. By recruiting Wildrose influencers like Alberta Can’t Wait co-leader Prem Singh, former Strathmore-Brooks MLA Derek Fildebrandt, former Wildrose President Jeff Callaway and organizer Cam Davies to champion the movement from the inside, Jason Kenney was able to focus on the Progressive Conservative leadership and selling his vision of a united party to a single membership while the others worked the Wildrose.

One thing almost all of those people have in common is that Jason Kenney was no longer taking their calls by the time the UCP enjoyed its “historic” win in 2019. As few from the Wildrose benches made it through the “merger” as well, there was an undercurrent of mistrust within the former party’s circles and a general feeling that they’d been had.

Those feelings may have been tempered by the UCP’s return to power but were easily reignited thanks to then-Premier Jason Kenney’s flip-flopping on health and vaccine mandates during the pandemic. Much of the pushback came from rural areas that didn’t have to deal directly with the dangers of hospital overcrowding, and also aren’t regions of the province that typically appreciate government intervention at the best of times.

Those feelings of mistrust were further exploited through David Parker’s creation of Take Back Alberta; whose work to exacerbate the resentment over a pandemic disrupting their lives is largely credited for Premier Jason Kenney’s resignation after barely passing his leadership review, as well as the return of former Wildrose leader Danielle Smith.

For her part, the newly appointed Premier claimed that the province would, under her leadership, be led by the dictates of rural Alberta. She made good on many of the niche demands from the region including the Alberta Sovereignty (within a united Canada) Act, updates to property rights in the Alberta Bill of Rights, and placed a moratorium on affordable electricity generation and its subsequent “pristine views” restriction on future renewable energy projects.

Each of these decisions, made with the intention of meeting the demands of a minority of rural voters, have only succeeded in emboldening still more minority interest groups to get their demands on the table, too; like reducing the number of signatures needed to petition for a referendum on Alberta separation.

While the Premier has claimed she doesn’t personally support separation, and that the United Conservative Party’s founding documents specifically state that the party supports remaining part of Canada, the party’s constituency associations (CA’s) are led by separatism advocates like Mitch Sylvestre, CEO of Alberta Prosperity Project (which advocates strongly for separation) in Bonnyville-Cold Lake, and the Calgary-Lougheed CA is confident enough to host fundraising events that only invite those who support separatism to speak.

I’d say it looks like the party does, in fact, actively support separatist sentiment if not separation specifically.

Ms. Smith, for her part, is certainly holding up her end of the leader’s bargain in terms of building support for the party. She’s held numerous fundraisers along the Queen Elizabeth Highway (Edmonton, Red Deer, and Calgary) and has thus far been rewarded with growing support, according to recent polling.

Like many of her predecessors, Ms. Smith has used Ottawa, a Trudeau, and the federal Liberals as her personal punching bag. Few have been lucky enough to hit the trifecta but both Mr. Kenney and Ms. Smith were able to take advantage of that once in a generation opportunity.

In capitalizing on the familiar talking points for over a solid decade, though, a new expectation was able to get a foothold: action.

They’re certainly good at acting

Although Mr. Kenney was able to shed many of the people he used to secure support for the new united party, he was unable to get rid of the members. Wildrose had a particularly active membership base who at one time had tried, unsuccessfully, to get their people into leadership roles in the PCs. They’d tried to start others in an attempt to capitalize on federal successes but didn’t find success until the Wildrose. That party struggled to find success in most urban ridings. There’s a good possibility they would have won in the 2015 or ‘16 election against an unpopular PC party and an untested NDP had Ms. Smith not crossed the floor, but who has time to waste on what might have been?

In an attempt to appease the very active membership he now had, Mr. Kenney held his “Fair Deal Panel” on the decades-old promises of a provincial police force, an Alberta Pension Fund, and creating a local tax collection agency. Former Premier Ralph Klein allowed then-MLA Doug Griffiths an opportunity to study the potential for each of these “Firewall Letter” recommendations and discovered that they all had one thing in common: duplicating services our federal taxes already pay for would mean higher costs for Albertans.

In the tax-averse province of Alberta, few Premiers have managed to sell paying for services (and it’s still the tale the separatists are telling now). Mr. Klein was the only one to date who was able to reason with those who pay personal and business taxes and charge ahead on increased taxes put in place by his predecessor, Don Getty, to pay down the province’s debt. He promised to return the tax rates as soon as it was paid off and he made good on that promise before overseeing a swift return to deficit spending because apparently only European countries can tax their way to prosperity and Alberta has yet to figure out how to cut its way there.

Though if every historical example of what a separation referendum does to the economic potential of the region holding it plays out in the same way it has before, Alberta will quickly discover that it’s harder not to pay for services when there’s even less money going to the Treasury.

Doubling down on Donald Trump’s 51st state rhetoric and the separatist cries is Cam Davies (from above, yes) with his “Alberta Republican Party” and the eye-rolling goal of peeling away separatists… from the governing party that’s already going out of their way to support them.

It’s a questionable political play. What is a party with one seat going to do for the separatists that Premier Danielle Smith won’t? Mr. Davies has said the UCP should be willing to put their name behind the referendum and hold it without making anyone work for it, but UCP supporters aren’t worried about that.

Cam Davies’ Republican Party is a downgrade; it’s an opposition party when they’ve already got a direct line to government decision-making. The Premier gave them the Sovereignty Act. The Premier gave them a reduction in the signatures needed to get a separation referendum in front of Albertans. A third party could not do that, so why would they vote for it?

Mr. Davies promises to be more angry at Ottawa, unflinchingly support the demands of the most ridiculous, and use all the buzzwords in the manipulator’s handbook. Essentially, he would have run for the UCP if they hadn’t chewed him up and spit him out already.

Fun fact: it’s possible Mr. Davies could get zero votes because he doesn’t live in the riding and cannot even cast a vote for himself. It’s the kind of silver lining I live for.

Most Albertans just want to be part of a conservative party

The separatists have got a good thing going and they’ve never managed to be in control of a party, or a premier, before; they aren’t going anywhere.

Ms. Smith, meanwhile, is doing her damnedest to prove Stephen Harper wrong. Mr. Harper once said that he didn’t understand why centrists or moderates would want to be part of a conservative party. Almost as if he wasn’t from Alberta.

The Alberta identity is very strongly tied to conservatism and I’m confident politicians of all stripes know it. It’s why the UCP can hurl insults at the NDP every day and mock the federal party’s dismal showing in the recent election, and the NDP cannot lob anything back; because to insult a conservative politician will be made into an insult to every conservative. Demanding accountability from the premier, or any female ministers, is “an attack on strong conservative women”. Insulting a professional rage-baiting propaganda outlet is an insult to everyone who votes conservative (they said it was an insult to the regular folk rather than the rage-baiting propaganda outlet, but it worked on such a wide variety of people that it was glaringly obvious that people just wanted to be angry; and they wanted to be angry at the people who were elected under an orange banner instead of a blue one).

It’s not just Alberta, either — if someone with Mark Carney’s background had been leading the CPC, it would have been a wipe out.

That Danielle Smith, as a leader with an appalling lack of ethics, accountability, and common sense, has been able to increase her party’s support despite a pretty terrible record on spending, health, and education outcomes, is concerning. And the NDP can’t count on the UCP to choose worse and worse leadership until they look that much better in comparison and think Alberta will come out of that unscathed.

While the party managed to do well enough under Rachel Notley, the floor of support for a conservative party has remained higher than the NDP’s ceiling; even with a leader many conservatives didn’t even trust, let alone like.

The perceived chasm between the parties (as “right” and “left”) is possibly insurmountable and in the meantime, we’re stuck with dumb, dumber, and wtaf.

It’s why I look to the two former UCP caucus members. Pete Guthrie, who has proven he is far more ethical than his former leader or her party, and Scott Sinclair, who has stood up for Alberta’s place in our country. Two things that the current crop of elected UCP haven’t managed and I think we deserve.

If there is any hope of pushing the separatists back into their dark corners, I’m more convinced than ever that the only ones who can do it are conservatives themselves — everyone else can be ignored.

I don’t like the fact that the UCP shamelessly manipulates their own supporters, but there’s nothing to be gained by pretending it isn’t embarrassingly successful. There’s a reason Cam Davies sounds exactly like them — there’s a long-settled script that works really well on rural conservative voters: “Ottawa bad, governing bad; we’re so angry!” Of course, it has less of a kick when the party they already like is saying the same thing.

I don’t dislike the NDP, and I quite like the representatives they have. I don’t subscribe to the idea that parties only exist to form government — good opposition, particularly opposition that the government knows people will vote for and is therefore willing to listen to, is necessary in a healthy democracy. It’s helpful, too, as seen in Mark Carney’s willingness to adopt all of the palatable ideas the conservatives were proposing; or the PCs taking much of the Alberta Party proposals. If everyone thinks alike, there’s no new ideas.

However, if Albertans are stuck on voting conservative, but we can have a decent party in government while the nutters are pushed back to opposition, I’m willing to accept it. If that’s the bar, then the best we can hope for is that good people lead. At least it would be miles ahead of where we are now.

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