There’s been some online chatter since the passage of Bill 81 about the possibility the United Conservative Party might use the Election Statutes Amendment Act, 2021, to seed the NDP with lunatic candidates who could destroy the Opposition party or secret neoliberals who would switch their allegiance once elected.
Since the act legalizes the for-all-practical-purposes corrupt practice of purchasing memberships for people who may not even know their names are being used or misused for that purpose, some have wondered if this kind of skullduggery will be used by the UCP directly against the NDP.
Have no fear, Dear Readers, there are many bad things that might happen to the NDP to diminish its chances of victory in 2023, but this is not one of them.
There are a number of reasons this is not going to happen and certainly a key one is that in 2023, or whenever the next election takes place, the UCP is going to be far too busy trying to ensure its own survival in an inhospitable electoral environment to try to engineer a secret takeover of its principal opponent.
The UCP brain trust will have neither the time nor the resources even to try to give the Alberta Party a gentle boost to split the progressive vote. Anyway, surely by now almost all progressively inclined voters in Alberta have figured out that there’s nothing progressive about the Alberta Party.
No, the Alberta Party’s best chance, if it materializes, will occur in the wake of the collapse of the UCP from its own contradictions and divisions, after which it could attempt to portray itself as a moderate and progressive conservative party, you know, like the Progressive Conservative Party we had for nearly 44 years and got tired of in 2015.
Nor is the UCP going to do anything that might result in less money flowing into its coffers in the runup to the next election – which would certainly happen if a bunch of secret Cons wanted so badly to infiltrate the NDP for whatever purposes that they were willing to pay membership fees for the privilege.
We’ve all read the stories about how badly UCP fund-raising has been going this year. Indeed, that’s part of the reason for Bill 81 – to allow membership fees paid by third parties to go straight into the party’s coffers, bypassing the usual contribution limits.
Even the nominal membership fees collected by the NDP would be too much for the UCP to forego.
Anyway, by the time the next election rolls around in a year and a half, the UCP may not have enough activists to fill its own decimated ranks! That’s probably an exaggeration, of course, but there’s certainly been talk the party has suffered a catastrophic membership loss.
Back in the day, the UCP used to claim it had about 160,000 members. That was always a lie, or at least a vast exaggeration, almost certainly based on memberships purchased illegally for fair-weather supporters of the party and even a few victims of outright identity theft. In 2019, Press Progress estimated that about 32,000 UCP members didn’t know they were members.
According to Airdrie-Cochrane UCP MLA Peter Guthrie, however, by last month the UCP’s membership had fallen to approximately 10,000. If true, that’s not a drop in numbers, it’s a collapse!
The NDP also has a rule that members may not join another party, but this is unenforceable, and therefore meaningless, and often honoured in the breach.
Nevertheless, the principal reason this is not going to happen is because party leaders can still disallow candidates they don’t like or don’t approve of.
If the leader won’t sign your nomination papers, you’re not going to be a candidate, and given the community of activists in any riding, it’s extremely unlikely that no one would smell a rat if some sneaky neoliberal was trying to pull a Wilberforce Project on the NDP and sneak in a secret UCP candidate.
No, if the NDP suffers a major bozo eruption or nominates a lunatic candidate, it will almost certainly be one of their own. This is a perennial problem for all parties in ridings where no good candidate wants to run because the chances of winning are small.
The only stealth neoliberal candidate I have ever heard of who snuck into the NDP and did it untold harm was in Saskatchewan, a woman named Janice MacKinnon.
Dr. MacKinnon, Jason Kenney’s favourite New Democrat, didn’t need Bill 81 to leave a trail of devastation through Saskatchewan and Alberta, of course. She was the Saskatchewan NDP’s own MLA, made finance minister by NDP premier Roy Romanow.
In that role, she closed 52 rural hospitals in the 1990s. In half-hearted defence of her austerity measures, Grant Devine’s Conservative government had basically left the cupboard bare when Mr. Romanow took over in 1991.
Pre-pandemic, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney put Dr. MacKinnon on his “blue-ribbon panel” to trot out the already-decided justification for his planned austerity binge, which has been partly derailed by the pandemic.
Subsequently, he appointed her to the University of Alberta’s board of governors to help oversee the diminishment of that great institute of learning into a regional trade college, work that is continuing apace.
UCP nomination voting for Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche by-election is under way
Voting in the UCP’s nomination contest for the Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche by-election is taking place this weekend. Former Wildrose Party leader Brian Jean is seeking the nomination, openly campaigning to replace Premier Jason Kenney in the event he becomes the MLA. Mr. Kenney’s minions are bound to be working hard to ensure the choice of nomination candidate Joshua Gogo.
I agree, this bill is certainly not targeted at other political parties. Kenney and the UCP have a lot of troubles right now and I suspect their main focus is getting through and somehow overcoming them. They are not very focused on other parties at the moment.
I think the main purpose of – shall we call them fake members?, is to allow Kenney to keep control of his own leadership and control of who gets nominated as UCP candidates. It is really just a legalization of what Kenney was alleged to have done when he won the leadership over Brian Jean, supposedly with the votes of some people who didn’t know they were UCP members. If that was what happened, perhaps Kenney and others involved figured if it worked before, it is worth trying again. Of course, one big problem for them with this is around legality, so perhaps this is a way to try fix that.
I am not that optimistic about the future of the Alberta Party, but if the UCP does explode like a supernova, it is likely some more moderate MLA’s will be ejected along with a number of more right wing ones. Some or all of the more moderate ones may consider joining the Alberta Party, which could give it a temporary boost. Of course, if history is any guide, most of those MLA’s will decide not to run again and the Alberta Party will be back once again where it started with zilch.
As for Brian Jean, he might want to start monitoring the road south of Fort McMurray carefully for bus loads of bible college students from other parts of Alberta who have suddenly decided to “go north young man”, or for similar things. Kenney has quite a bag of tricks and I suspect he will try to use everything he thinks he can get away with here to stop Jean from getting the UCP nomination.
I tend to think all of Kenney’s tricks even if successful will just delay the inevitable at this point. While he is clever in a somewhat diabolical way, he is also delusional and stubborn. I doubt he will easily accept reality and will continue to fight until he is rejected by either by his own party or the voters.
Great points, here, Mister Dave!
I sure agree with you about Kenney: “While he is clever in a somewhat diabolical way, he is also delusional and stubborn.”
I think this illustrates the fine distinction between hubris and hybris (the latter I had to look up—and when reading anything by Northrop Frye, I always have the Oxford Concise at my elbow). Both fit Jason Kenney’s politics quite well, however. He is as holistic as that.
“Hybris” is Ancient Greek for “hubris” with an evolution of meaning (the “fine distinction”) over time. The outstanding characteristic of the K-Boy is donkey-stubbornness, the essential question being: is he ass-holistic? To combine the features you describe, plus both evolutions of the Ancient Greek word, he must be.
“Hubris” means exceeding the limits of natural laws set out by the gods, most often used to describe the presumptuous mindset of those so afflicted. Certainly K-Boy exceeds modern secular laws as set out by the Constitution, especially with respect democratic- electoral mores, no question about it because he doesn’t even try to hide it, knowing full well any journalist worth his or her salt will ably articulate the revelation to rustier steel-traps (like mine).
“Hybris,“ the ancestral word, rather has the connotation of intentional violence in order to humiliate and degrade. Certainly K-Boy intends to humiliate and degrade any democratic attempts to derail his hubristic pathway (if I may say it like that), an obvious violation of rules, but implying the more disturbing threat of violence by way of his electorate proxies who threaten almost continually and, as the implementation of pandemic protocols—even as mild as they were in Alberta—shows, occasionally ramp it up to physical violence. (Assault of every kind is illegal so I often wonder why violators—bodily or uttering—protest mask-wearing bald-facedly: in almost all the cowboy movies I’ve ever seen, the bad guys always wear masks to hide their identity and evade justice. Ironic, no?)
Is it possible the UCP will go supernova? I rather expect something more like a sulphurnova befitting its “diabolical way.”
The UCP has never, ever been a supporter of democracy, or looking after the best interests of the general public, and it is so obvious. How else did the UCP get into power, other than by cheating and deceipt? Postmedia was involved with this, and likely another “media outlet”, that has a less than desirable reputation, did too. The evidence was so clear. How else do we explain why there were full cover ads endorsing the now head honcho of the UCP, before the 2019 provincial election in Alberta, on Postmedia newspapers? Why do we continue to hear those under the UCP tent getting fined for breaching election rules? Why did the head honcho of the UCP, in a cowardly move, while on a redundant excursion to the Lone Star State, get the Alberta Elections Commissioner, Lorne Gibson, sacked from his position, when he was proceeding with the investigation into the dubious rise to power of the head honcho of the UCP? Also, it is telling that the head honcho of the UCP wants the R.C.M.P replaced with a provincial police force, because the R.C.M.P are also investigating how the head honcho of the UCP got to his position of power. What else we see going on with the UCP and their dancing around election rules, via party memberships, is also quite suspect. The head honcho of the UCP, has other agendas too. It’s quite clear. Janice MacKinnon was an NDP MLA in Saskatchewan, under the Roy Romanow government. Before that, she was a Liberal. Grant Devine’s PC government basically turned a prior NDP government’s surpluses into constant deficits, and a ballooning debt for Saskatchewan. Janice MacKinnon was mimicking Ralph Klein’s slash and burn austerity policies, which were very harmful, and these same types of bad and harmful slash and burn policies were also done by Ontario PC premier, Mike Harris. These bad and harmful austerity policies were also done at the federal government level. Janice MacKinnon closed down all these rural hospitals in Saskatchewan, just like Ralph Klein closed down many rural hospitals in Alberta. Ralph Klein made such sharp cuts to healthcare in Alberta, which endangered people’s lives. He did this so he could find an excuse to get private for profit healthcare in Alberta. The head honcho of the UCP had put Janice MacKinnon on his Blue Ribbon Panel, so he could find a way to make even more cuts to healthcare in Alberta, so we could have private for profit healthcare, just like his hero, Ralph Klein wanted to do. Those NDP cuts in Saskatchewan, caused that government to be defeated. We have seen pretend conservatives and Liberals turned Reformers, like Ralph Klein, and the head honcho of the UCP, lose very large sums of money from improper tax policies, not collecting the proper oil royalties that Peter Lougheed got, and doing the most priciest shenanigans. Then they find ways to deal with their failures, like cuts to healthcare, education, and those on fixed and limited incomes, and we are no better off. Or, they tell lies, like Ottawa or Quebec took Alberta’s money, and people are foolish enough to believe it. Peter Lougheed sure had it right when he said Reformers can’t be trusted. Unfortunately, Albertans continue to fall for the lies of these pretend conservatives and Reformers, and the seniors tell their children and grandchildren to still vote for them, regardless of what damage is caused. Where’s the sense in that?
Anonymous: While Ralph Klein was guilty of many sins, including closing urban hospitals, I am pretty certain he cannot he accused of closing rural ones. He may have threatened to – my memory of the details grows dim – but when he took away 5 per cent of all public health care workers salaries he was able to claim to have saved enough money to keep expensive hospitals open in rural communities, which, after all, were and are the reliable beating heart of the Conservative base in Alberta. DJC
DAVID J CLIMENHAGA: Yes, Ralph Klein did get rural hospitals closed down. I know where I’m originally from in rural Alberta, that has happened.
Anonymous: Which rural hospitals were closed? DJC
Here is an article from 1995. I remember this well and am pretty sure that there are more, but it could be long term care facilities that were government run. It looks like the government of the day had plans to close many more.
https://www.producer.com/livestock/alberta-hospitals-closed/
DAVID J CLIMENHAGA: There were rural hospitals in Alberta shut down by Ralph Klein. One of them is in a place called Myrnam. I know Ralph Klein closed down hospitals in different parts of Alberta.
Eckville’s hospital was closed. A cooperative hospital built by the community in the 1940s. Taken over by Alberta Health in the 1950s. The Klein administration first outfitted it with all new hospital equipment. Beds, two full treatment rooms, a well equipped operating room with new x-ray and other diagnostic equipment. Less than a year later all that new equipment was sold off to the private sector. The remaining elderly patients were sent off to extended care homes across the province, all of which were almost a full day’s travel or even further from their families. They were all dead with 16 months. Watching this happen I learned to move from disagreeing with Conservatives to hating them. For many others, this hatred is directed at government in general. In the subsequent provincial election the districts around Eckville were split up between three separate constituencies to dilute the anti-conservative vote.
The conservatives/ucp are not above physical violence, vandalism and sabotage, so I be silent.
I fear you are in error; Klein did not “take away five percent of all health care workers salaries”.
Each individual health care union voted in favour of a of a five percent reduction in salary contained
in the proposed collective agreement up for ratification. It was a massive failure of nerve by the workers
who bought Klein’s BS.
Same difference. They were lied to and bullied and they caved, I agree. I believe most public sector unions in Alberta have learned from that experience and retained it in their collective memories. DJC
So, words do not matter. Yes really means No, when I vote?
The nursing union agreed to a cut with the promise that there would be no lay-offs. Like most conservative parties, they lied. Wasn’t long before massive lay-offs occurred.
?
Surely: “Surely by now.” Thanks you as always. My readers are my editors. DJC
Had a bit of a nasty thought the other day. The RCMP are a national police force, and as far as I know, they operate to the same standards everywhere in the country. If electoral laws were broken in another province, or even federally, would we see the same complete lack of enforcement we have seen in Alberta?
Another Steller Article David.
My Question is …Why aren’t Liberals invested in Alberta.
It seems as if it’s NDP or UPC. That making choices Very
Slim.
Largely because of rank incompetence, and not offering a meaningful alternative (as a centre right party ) to the other centre right party.
The other obvious answer is the NEP / Trudeau but let’s be honest they’re a terrible party.
If the UCP has only 10,000 members, how many will still be standing after the fifth wave brought on by Tuesday’s pending announcement of the Best Winter Ever™?
Seems our ICUs are hovering above the baseline capacity of 173 beds, so the premier has decided to relax pandemic restrictions over the holidays. What can possibly go wrong? Welcome to Kenney’s Kovid rollerKoaster, folks. There’s no escape from this fun park and all the Krazee Kenney Klowns™.
Abs: Shouldn’t that be spelled Kenney’s Kovidroller Koaster?
All great things have small beginnings.
Kenney’s bizarro world changes to Bill 81 do complicate things for the other parties, however. Could there be a stealthy move to, say, oust Rachel Notley for being not socialist enough? There were complaints during her tenure that he was too close to the O & G industry, too compliant with agri-business, and she even pulled some teeth from her needed labor reforms. I always believed that Notley was too compliant with those who she built a sound political career justifiably criticizing and denouncing for their cavalier destruction of all things vital to the public interest. Could she be open to a leadership challenge? If a suitable and truly progressive candidate stepped in to challenge her, it is very little that old grievances about her leadership could do her in. So, what if the UCP plants a compromised challenger to oppose Notley and promotes the idea that maybe it’s time for a TRUE progressive to take the helm and lead Alberta out of the 19thC? I will not be surprised if it happens, because Alberta is the place for all kinds of strange.
As for the UCP’s survivors presenting their party as a new and improved lunatic-free zone, there’s still Drew Barnes lurking with his Rural Bloc idea to impede the UCP establishment. 40+ seats are exclusively rural — Kenney and Notley can fight over the rest. It’s an intriguing idea to use the cultural rural/urban divides to exploit Kenney’s weakness. Barnes, usually a person for spouting mindless word salad, did articulate something in his recent interview with Rebel News. What has Kenney done for the SoCONs? Barnes asked this question and an awkward pause was returned. Even the interviewer from the usually Kenney-favoured media outlet couldn’t come up with a response that wasn’t laughable.
Exploiting the reasonable claim that Kenney has done nothing for soCONs is the one blow that could break him. If Brian Jean is denied the UCP nomination in Ft. McMurray, could he assemble a band of rebel UCP MLAs to walk from the party and join his own? The Alberta Party has a cool name that is generic enough to fit any ideological pants. Sure, Kenney could have the UCP flood the AP with memberships to prevent a Brian Jean takeover. But that’s fighting a two-front war, and Kenney is likely stupid enough to try to do that.
Shaking that bag or popcorn again.
Rachel Notley is not a socialist, cmon. She’s barely a social Democrat if even…
IMO a lot of well intentioned adults who grew up during the Cold War sincerely have no idea that there is a difference between “socialist” “communist” and “authoritarian”.
It wasn’t necessarily because Western CPC MPs’ influence in the party was declining, post-Harper, that Kenney took a pass on the 2017 leadership race (although it certainly was as Eastern members like Lisa Raitt, Michael Chong, Erin O’Toole, and Maxime Bernier—who darn near won—made apparent by entering the contest), nor that reactionaries would make the contest an embarrassing gong-show (with candidates like Kellie Leitch, Brad Trost, and, again, Maxime Bernier), nor that Kenney doesn’t like sitting in opposition (he actually relishes criticizing opponents but would rather be opposed in power than oppose power he doesn’t have).
So if Kenney has prime ministerial aspiration, why didn’t he have a go at the 2017 CPC leadership race? It was most likely because becoming Alberta premier was more of a sure thing and, as many have speculated, also a better springboard to go for the CPC leadership, thence prime ministry. He was right about it being easy, perhaps having strategically probed weak spots in the provincial electoral rules he could tactically exploit (it looks so much like he did, the RCMP is investigating) and knew Alberta’s distemper better than any of the reactionary CPC leadership candidates who otherwise might have appealed just as well to susceptible voters in the Wild Rose Province—with the possible exception of Quebec CPC contestants, naturally).
But, it looks like his speculated pathway back to Ottawa has be strewn with, probably, insurmountable obstacles. In the circumstance that now he absolutely must win re-election as premier to advance toward his real prize (alleged), he can’t let anything like electoral rules, neither his party’s nor the province’s, get in his way. And the circumstances really are dire: although he defeated the NDP government by wide margin, the Dippers became the Loyal Opposition with a surprising number of seats, presumably more dangerous for the UCP than before the NDP’s victorious 2015 election, have reaped in almost inverse proportion the UCP’s steep drop in popularity, and with Alberta plagued by deep, systemic problems which Kenney himself will own in the shorter haul until the next election (like socio-medically longer-haul Covid), look very likely to regain power.
It’s not a matter of how much K-Boy dares to get away with but, rather, simply a matter of doing whatever it takes to get re-elected. Without that, his supposed life-goal to be prime minister is toast. Thus, in the direst of circumstances, his hubris really shows, as hubris does, yet the tragic irony is that the further his quest takes him beyond the bounds of ethics, morals, and logic, the more likely it is he will lose—not just the premiership, but all he’s worked for.
But that’s his drama, the only one that matters to him. The real tragedy is the costs of all the fictions and rewrites and subplots and twists and staging and props and actors which have seriously diminished Alberta’s ability to rebound from real difficulties its been dealt these last seven years—by far the worst of them entirely on his watch. It could of course be spun into dramatic tragedy, replete with a fallen hero, but that’s not what voters base their public-administration critique on: they do it on real life, not theatre. Albertans will still be here no matter if “Mr Kenney Goes to Ottawa” is a smash hit or sizzles in an even hotter place. Where they go and how they get there is the priority and by election day it’s sure to be even higher than it is now at the end of Act II.
“…the further his quest takes him beyond the bounds of ethics, morals, and logic, the more likely it is he will lose—not just the premiership, but all he’s worked for”.
We can always hope, Scotty . But as you’ve made abundantly clear, Kenny is a canny political operator. Moreover, he has never lost an election or a leadership race. So, despite his many missteps, I wouldn’t bet the farm that he’ll be ousted as UCP leader, lose the next provincial election, or fail to become prime minister.
Trying to stack NDP nominations would likely work about as well as the ATA stacking the 2012 PC race in support of Alison Redford.
Doug: I know Conservatives like to repeat this dubious claim, but there’s really no evidence it happened that way. What did happen was that the PC Party, convinced it would win every election forever and ever amen, encouraged every man, woman and teen in Alberta to sign a card so they could vote for the new leader, supposedly the only political race in Alberta that mattered. Thousands did and, no doubt, a few of them were teachers. In its wisdom, or lack of same, many voted for Ms. Redford, who turned out (rather like Mr. Kenney) not to live up to expectations. I’m afraid any reasoned analysis of what happened suggests the most likely explanation for Ms. Redford’s failure was a domination of her own flaws and the arrogance and entitlement of the PCs, with a dash of old-fashioned misogyny thrown in. Blaming the ATA for the Redford disaster is like blaming the mixer for your hangover. DJC
I’m not blaming the ATA for trying to influence Alberta politics, or the disaster that Redford delivered. I’m pointing out that plans to game the system are high risk and agreeing with the assertation that the UCP will not try to mess with NDP nominations. Overall Bill 81 is a mess, but the step towards not allowing third party advertisers to affiliate with a political party is a tiny step in the right direction. What constitutes affiliation needs greater clarification and should provide as much discretion to Elections Alberta. I would push for “affiliation” to mean holding any role within a political party beyond being a member while also holding any type of decision making role with the third party advertiser. That would mean, for example, a shop steward holding any role in a political party other than member would preclude their union from third party advertising as well as that of any other third party, such as the Broadbent Instititue and its various tentacles, that receives contributions from that union.