So, Danielle Smith was booed at the UCP annual convention last night. Why? Because she signed a deal with Ottawa. Nobody should be surprised by this - least of all Danielle Smith.
I'm not going to analyze the "MOU" that was signed in this post - that's a topic for another post when I have some time to digest the implications of that deal. This is about the UCP and the fundamental nature of the party.
Formation of the UCP
The UCP is not a "reasonable party", and it was never intended to be. The UCP arose not from the PCs, but from most radicalized wings of the Wildrose Party - the ones who remained after the disastrous floor crossing that Smith and Prentice engineered in 2015. That was always the foundation group. Then Kenney spent much of 2016-17 cobbling together an "alliance" of PCs upset that they lost the 2015 election, and a collection of increasingly radicalized groups including known neo-nazi groups, separatists, and the usual assortment of religious extremist groups and so on.
Now, while I don't count Kenney among the separatist and neo-nazi types, his own background is hardly one of moderation. He learned to stow his worst instincts in the mill of Ottawa politics, where moderation is an absolute because you won't get very far if you piss off various major factions. Kenney himself comes straight out of the Prairie Reform movement, and his entry into politics had a lot to do with a stint as an anti-abortion activist in a US college. He is rumoured to be connected to the hardline Catholic group Opus Dei. His opposition to gay marriage was vocal and persistent, even after the fight was long lost.
Naively, Kenney believed that he could do the same thing his buddy Harper had done federally - hold them together with a combination of identity politics and an iron fist. That fell apart when the COVID pandemic hit, and suddenly the necessities of governing required Kenney to act pragmatically, rather than ideologically.
Instead of acting decisively on the pandemic, Kenney waffled about attempting to both assuage the fears of everyday Albertans who were looking at what was happening in China, Italy, and other countries with horror, and simultaneously trying to keep a base of party members who had swallowed the paranoid conspiracy theories around COVID.
Make no mistake, Kenney gave oxygen to conspiracy theorists and other radicalized types by providing direct support to the "Yellow Vest Convoy" (remember that?), and then tacit (and back channel) support to the "protestors" who occupied the Coutts border crossing as part of the larger "Convoy Protest" in Ottawa.
Kenney's Downfall
What Kenney no doubt tried to frame as "pragmatic governance" didn't mollify the radicalized types in his party like David Parker, who set about engineering Kenney's ouster in late 2022, paving the way for Danielle Smith to take over with the backing of Take Back Alberta and others.
As he was exiting his role as party leader, Kenney darkly quipped about "the lunatics are taking over". He was correct, but in doing so was ignoring his own role in their power in the party. Whether he admits it or not, he gave the extremists a political home, and then fed them.
Remember his threats about "Alberta Separatism" in 2019? 2019 Jason Kenney saw these people as tools he could control and manipulate the way that Harper did. He misunderstood the dangers that giving extremists a voice carries in politics. Extremists - and yes, I include Manning-era Reform backers in this group - don't want to listen, and they resent any effort to reason with them. They're convinced they know the answers already.
Kenney the political organizer met his match in David Parker - also a political organizer. Kenney's miscalculation cost him his opportunity to step back into Federal politics with a reputation in CPC circles as an organizer who knows what he's doing, and with "cred" having been a "successful premier". Kenney didn't fight back publicly against Parker's paranoid conspiracy theory laden activism. Instead he tried to play things through the back channels of the party - a party which he constructed, but also that had the very internal weaknesses that had plagued Kenney's efforts in Ottawa.
He acquired the nickname "Bumbles" in conservative Ottawa circles for the inevitable fumbles and overplays that seemed to follow him. That same blindness to optics, and a belief that he could lie his way out of anything, ultimately came at a very high price for Kenney as Parker organized a backroom ouster right under Kenney's nose by leveraging paranoid conspiracy theories left and right.
Kenney's UCP was fundamentally a vehicle for Kenney to ride back into federal politics, and hopefully the Prime Minister's offices. From that perspective, the UCP was little more than a cynical creation of a man driven not by ideology, but by power. Kenney was an opportunist, but he was also bounded by his experiences in Ottawa. He wasn't a good premier per se, but he wasn't the authoritarian we see in Smith.
The Rise of Smith's UCP
In the wake of Kenney's ouster at the 2022 AGM, who should emerge as a replacement for Kenney but none other than Danielle Smith. Smith's political history is one of making a bigger mess every time she surfaces. Her first foray into elected politics was as a Trustee for the Calgary Board of Education (CBE). That was cut short when the province stepped in and dissolved the board because of the levels of dysfunction and conflict that Smith herself played a central role in creating.
Smith would disappear from elected politics for a while, surviving as a columnist for the Calgary Herald - writing such illuminating works as arguing that there might actually be benefits to smoking, among other gems of wisdom. She would return to elected politics by becoming the leader of the Wildrose Party in 2010 - only to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in the 2012 election. This was followed by a disastrous floor crossing exercise in 2014, which torpedoed her support.
Again, Smith left elected politics, this time becoming a lobbyist for the energy industry, and sometime talk radio host.
I'm sure you see the pattern by now - every time Smith gets involved in elected politics, she makes decisions which are horribly detrimental to those around her. In this respect, "Smith's UCP" really isn't her party. It's the party of malcontents like David Parker and TBA, with Smith as the "useful idiot" figurehead.
Smith's UCP (or perhaps more accurately TBA's UCP) is clearly authoritarian - and not in a good way. Smith and her government are ignoring Albertan's voices and concerns, plowing ahead with an agenda which they actively avoided campaigning on during the 2023 election cycle.
More pointedly, the government has taken the approach that their first legislative priority is based on whatever the party slid into the "party platform" during the last AGM. This was made abundantly clear in 2024 when Smith announced a series of legislation attacking the transgender community. That was definitely not a matter on the election agenda, and outside of the queer community, I'm pretty sure that most people were stunned by it.
Then, let's look at their approach to "negotiating" with teachers. Instead of negotiating, the UCP legislated them back to work (a perfectly common approach). However, the legislation was very telling. Instead of committing to binding arbitration, the government simply legislated a contract that had been overwhelmingly rejected twice by teachers, and then slammed the door on any kind of "labour action" by invoking the Notwithstanding Clause (S33) in The Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Meanwhile, they are actively tearing apart the healthcare system, without the consent of Alberta voters. This dismantling is again, largely driven by the manufactured outrage of TBA and its leadership in the wake of the COVID pandemic. Policy driven by anger, or other emotions, is seldom "good policy", similarly, policy which is not carefully moderated by pragmatic consideration is also going to be bad policy. It's not new in Alberta that there has been a faction that wants to align the province with US policy on many fronts (usually with the greatest amount of cruelty possible).
Past governments have carefully avoided following those pressures, knowing full well that such things are contrary to the broader values of Albertans. Not the UCP. The UCP forges ahead in the most violent way possible - taking a wrecking ball to the infrastructure of civil society, and using moral panics like their attacks on transgender people as a distraction.
This is not a party that actually supports individual freedom, it is now a party that supports "freedom for me, not for thee" - if they don't "approve" of your particular brand of freedom (e.g. being transgender), well - expect them to legislate it away from you and then tell you that it's their right do so.
Smith herself may or may not be an "authoritarian", or she may simply be their "useful idiot" who is willingly standing in front of the public and doing as she is told. It doesn't really matter - either way, she has cast her lot with people who ARE authoritarians, and have decided that instead of having a discussion with Albertans, they are going to seize power and impose their will on the rest of us.
There is no reasoning with the UCP in its current form. The best we can hope for is that they continue to break into factions fighting over control of the party. Hopefully those factional squabbles will eventually tear the party apart, as it should have done once the project Kenney set the party up for collapsed on itself.
