So, yesterday, Jason Kenney announced that Alberta was going to sue the Federal Government for "trampling on provincial jurisdiction" with the Emergency Measures Act ... all of a few days after the Alberta government actually petitioned the Federal Government for assistance.
Now, what I want to discuss here isn't the nitty-gritty of the legal position the province is taking, or how it's own actions undermine the credibility of their actions - that will be a discussion in a later post once the dust has settled, and I have some time to spend actually dissecting the arguments involved and the various bits of law. Today I want to talk about the politics of Kenney's maneuvers and what a lot of this really represents.
Kenney is a political creature first and foremost. In other words everything that he does is filtered through a political lens. Absolutely nothing he does is done "in good faith" - if he doesn't see a political gain in it, he won't do it. So why file a lawsuit that has little chance of success, and rationally makes little sense?
Let's look at the political landscape that Kenney sees, and try to understand how his actions (or lack of them) are designed to play to a political audience.
In Alberta, Kenney faces a dire political situation. His polling numbers - both personally and politically have tanked. He's being outpaced by the NDP that he defeated in 2019. Even in typically hardline conservative ridings, polling has shifted from "Deep Blue" (would vote conservative regardless) to "Swinging Orange". Discontent within both the caucus and the broader UCP as a whole has triggered a Leadership Review this spring.
For Kenney personally, the situation in Alberta looks quite dire. Federally, it's a somewhat different picture. The current Liberal government is a minority government, making it vulnerable to attack on any number of procedural tracks. The LPC's numbers are fairly flat, and the CPC is in the midst of a leadership campaign having just given Erin O'Toole the boot. Leadership campaigns are often good for a few points of support in polling.
On top of that, with Canada emerging (hopefully) from a 2 year long pandemic, the government's finances are in a shambles, the world's economy is being hammered by supply chain issues and inflation at levels not seen in decades. To put it kindly, there is ample opportunity for the opposition parties to go after the governing Liberals.
So, what does the political calculation look like for Kenney?
First, let's recognize that the Alberta Government took a very soft approach to the border blockade at Coutts - allowing a relatively small contingent of malcontents to close the border down for almost 3 full weeks, costing the Alberta and Canadian economy millions each day, and feeding inflation further - increasing the cost of goods and services to most Albertans. Government MLAs showed up at the blockade (with seemingly no consequences afterwards), even when the government ministers were starting to actually condemn the blockade (after 2 weeks of utter silence...).
There were also talk of secret "back channel" negotiations with the Alberta government about ending the blockade. Although the reality is that the blockade didn't end until the RCMP moved in, and arrested 13 of the protestors on weapons and conspiracy charges ... an event which happened on the same day that the Federal Government invoked the powers in the Emergency Measures Act.
For those that remember, Kenney made a big deal about "stopping blockades of critical infrastructure" with Bill 1 - The Critical Infrastructure Defence Act back in 2019/2020. Yet, when it comes to this blockade of what is unquestionably a critical border crossing for Alberta, his government did nothing. They sat on their collective hands and did nothing except wag their fingers in the direction of the protestors.
On the Coutts blockade, it's pretty clear that Kenney saw this as an opportunity to poke the Federal Government in the eye with a stick. If he had any interest in doing his job as a Premier of a province, the lifespan of the Coutts blockade would have been measured in days not weeks. His thinking likely had far more to do with his hatred for Justin Trudeau and the Liberals than the affairs of Alberta.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Kenney's government has appeared to be balky and inconsistent. One day trying to appease the libertarian faction that refuses to believe there's a real threat even as hospitals fill up to the breaking point, the next being forced by public outcry to take action to mitigate things. Then lifting restrictions too soon, and triggering the next major wave of illness and death.
Then there's the rebellion brewing throughout his party, with a significant percentage of riding associations pushing to move the leadership review up in the most recent dust-up in caucus. Of course that was quelled by the party executive refusing to act on it, and more recently moving to displace uncooperative constituency association boards with more compliant leadership.
Right now, Kenney is bleeding in the water politically. His caucus is pissed off with him over numerous matters, and there have been several attempted revolts. The membership of his party is pissed off with him, and most importantly, the public at large is pissed off with him.
Kenney is one of those people that has to have an adversary that he can attack. Without an adversary, he's lost and really quite unable to unify people around a cause, and tends to become his own adversary. This lawsuit gambit is nothing more than attempting to direct focus away from his agenda and mismanagement of Alberta. He's chosen his default opponent - a Prime Minister whom he hates reflexively because the conservatives have spent decades vilifying the name 'Trudeau'.
The odds of this lawsuit going anywhere substantive, or even presenting an interesting opportunity to review Federal - Provincial jurisdiction in the midst of an emergency are practically nil. This is never going to be more than a prop that he uses at the lectern to quell the dissent in his party.
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