The Formation of The UCP Sowed The Seeds of Its Failure

When Jason Kenney created the UCP he set up the preconditions for the party to get to where it is today, and its eventual demise.  What do I mean by this?  Kenney may have believed that he could control the extreme elements in the UCP in much the same way that Harper did so as leader of the CPC. 

Harper allowed the extremist factions in the CPC to exist and even to have something of a voice in the party, but at the moment that a given push looked like it would have a political cost for him, he would shut it down.  This was done through a combination of tools - Harper exercised considerable personal control over the party apparatus.  That meant that in large part, if you kept him happy, your career was secure.  The leader's office had the power to quash constituency decisions such as new nominees, and the "public face" of the party was carefully protected.  So, while the extremist wings of the CPC could make a certain level of noise - it was never enough to do more than keep their followers believing the party was aligned with them.  

However, Harper was able to do this because the Federal CPC is a much bigger entity than the UCP in Alberta - and although the Prairie Reform rump of the party clearly dominates it today, the party needs votes from outside the Prairies in order to have any hope of ever forming government.  Harper understood this, and was very careful to keep the extremes in check even though his own leadership depended on them. 

A party of the scale of the UCP is a much different animal, and that's where Kenney's choices failed. 

The Clarity Act and Alberta's Tricksy Question

This October, Albertans will vote on a referendum question that arguably rivals the word salad that René Levesque imposed on Quebeckers in 1980 for obfuscation and confusing wording: 

“Should Alberta remain a province of Canada or should the Government of Alberta commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada?”

I have seen a number of people argue that because Alberta's question does not directly entertain separation, that the Clarity Act does not apply.  I beg to differ.  I think that not only does the Clarity Act apply, but that there is a compelling set of arguments the can be made that would require principles similar to The Clarity Act to apply to all referendums in Canada.

An Exhausting Week In Alberta Politics

This week has been a whirlwind in politics, especially in Alberta. On Thursday, the Premier of Alberta announced what I can only call a farce of a referendum on separating Alberta from Canada.  Then the next day, Premier Smith started talking about rewriting S35 of The Constitution.  

The referendum question Smith proposes is annoying in its obfuscating language, and I think Albertans should be incredibly angry about it.  The question reads: 

“Should Alberta remain a province of Canada or should the Government of Alberta commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada?”

Reasonably intelligent readers should have already noticed this isn't a "yes/no" kind of question, it's actually two conflicting questions slammed together.  Rumour has it this will be a "select option A or option B" thing on the ballot, but that is still misleading and disingenuous because the second option actively contemplates separation, while simultaneously trying very hard not to look like it does.

Separatists Lose In Court

Alberta's rump of separatists suffered a major setback last week, when a judge overturned the Chief Electoral Officer of Alberta (CEO-A) decision that set the signature gathering process for the "Stay Free Alberta" petition.   If you're interested, the full ruling is here (warning: it's lengthy, and full of legal technical language).

I'm not going to spend a pile of time here dissecting the ruling - while I understand most of what's written in it (I think), a deep dive would be tedious and relatively uninteresting.  At the end of it all, the ruling has the net effect of rendering the entire signature gathering process that has gone on since January this year to be a legal fiction which "never happened".  

How does that work?  Central to the judge's ruling is the declaration that the decision of the CEO-A to grant the petition was "unreasonable", and that the crown had failed to execute any kind of consultation with affected First Nations, therefore the decision itself was quashed.  In doing so, the judge effectively turned the next 4 months of signature gathering into a legal ghost - the paper exists, but the authorization to gather those signatures doesn't and therefore the signatures themselves cannot be considered. 

This is unlikely to be the last we hear of this nonsense though.