Take Back Alberta, far right radical group, continues its effort to take over UCP

What is the money behind Take Back Alberta? And why isn’t this being included in news stories?

For a province whose political history is so staid —or at least blocky in multi-decadal chunks that seem natural for the time and place—Albertan voters have been in a mood to try new something new—and politicians try to keep up with the electorate’s perceived fickleness.

The results have been extremely variable on politicians’ parts, so voters are probably still in the mood for something new—still searching in the dust storm. The UCP—still less-experienced than its NDP rival which governed for the single, previous term—certainly promises something new, radically new, while the NDP—with which voters actually have more experience and, probably, more reason to expect more reasonable governance—has so far kept its conspicuously-larger war chest dry as a desert. Yet the most mysterious politicians of all are the ProgCon faction of the UCP: although it alone has the greatest potential to try something new, it hasn’t much offered it—as if it’s still not sure if voters are as much in a mood for taking a chance with something new as the Wildrose faction—their own colleagues— prays they are.

It began about 35 years ago with the slogan, “The West Wants In,” and drastically changed the federal partisan right. Despite precipitating the creation of several parties of the right ever since, Western Prairie voters returned to their traditional, staid loyalty to a single one: the new CPC’s Alberta cohort dominating in Ottawa, toppling the Liberal minority and governing for three consecutive terms. Western voters have painted nearly the entire electoral map CPC blue, from BC’s Interior and Prairie grasslands to the Canadian Shield, for the last two decades—although fringe Western factionalism has reappeared as CPC ridings became more evenly balanced between East and West since the party lost power in 2015.

Yet this federal partisan consistency didn’t match Alberta’s provincial scene which is often—perhaps too often—seen as largely overlapping, its chronological features being quite similar: c1990, c2011, and of course, 2015. During the calm before the storm, the Progressive Conservative party began to deKlein then struggle as Wildrose hove off to the right; finally, the WR, now-official opposition, lost a general election it was expected to win, and after its leader Danielle Smith crossed the floor to the listing ProgCons with half her caucus hoping to achieve more radical policy by democratic shortcut, the longest-governing party in Canadian history was dragged down to defeat in 2015.

While pundits were parsing the Wildrose scratches on the wall left by Smith’s unprecedented floor-crossing, nobody expected Albertans to elect a nominally socialist party in the historically most-conservative province in the country. Voters were in a mood for something new, but not for waiting on politicians to provide it. Neither the ProgCons nor the Wildrose parties would contest another general election. Wholesale changes were afoot.

Political flux is more intense in Alberta right now than anywhere else in the country. The electorate appears unafraid of something new, and that’s dangerous because, right now, it’s Danielle Smith who is offering just that while the rival party seems only to offer a return to normalcy. I for one would a lot sooner normalcy instead of anything, absolutely anything Smith can dream up, and I suspect most Albertans do too. The problem is that many centre-right citizens are getting swamped in calculus that the ProgCon faction will somehow temper the UCP and, however much it succeeds, it’ll be better than the socialist bogeyperson it lamely portrays the NDP as. In fact, Rachel Notley’s government was so good that the UCP’s only parry is to associate it with its primary bogeyman, Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister, making it difficult for Notley to boast that she and he were successful at agreeing to a pipeline deal, TMX (which is controversial everywhere else except for the PMO and Notley’s caucus, and maybe the UCP’s which compares so poorly in this regard). Nevertheless, it’s bad news for the NDP if the mood is simply change for its own sake because the way things stand now, it’s Notley’s NDP which is the known quantity and unless it announces something different from its governing position, it looks relatively retro compared to the UCP which remains and unknown quantity. It’s perverse, I know—and Dippers surely do, too, in my favourite province away from home. What gets me is that so do many in the UCP’s ProgCon faction and their electoral supporters, most of whom, I’m guessing, don’t really want change for its own sake, or anything as radical as Smith’s dopey ideas, for Pete’s sake!

Another perversity, or maybe just an irony, might be that whenever a ProgCon politician, former, sitting, or candidate says chi won’t vote UCP (because it has departed far from prudent conservative principles ), the NDP looks like it might take that as a credit it can count on, relieving it of having to bring the fight to the enemy, or to follow too closely Napoleon’s edict that the enemy will defeat itself if our side merely gets out of the way.

On another front, the Dippers must up their tactical game, replete with vigorous counter-attack, surprise, and spoiling actions. There’s nothing to negotiate here.

Let’s not forget that the Dippers didn’t win on policy in 2015, but rather by circumstance and luck. Many voters, especially of the partisan right, aimed to punish the ProgCons and, to some extent, Wildrose, too: once that was done and presuming desired change by shake-up, they would resume voting for the partisan right again, abandoning the NDP as a convenient protest vehicle. But to many observers’ surprise, Notley did provide good government, even under duress, and, moreover, many erstwhile ProgCons obviously did not resume voting for the new right-wing party. If their idea was to complete the job of neutering radicalism from the conservative movement by way of defeating the UCP, expelling the radical faction, reforming it and only then resume voting for it, it’s job is only half done. The good news is—or could be—, it is precisely these moderate Tories who have the greatest potential to do just that—much greater than the NDP has . And the greatest potential of all is found among the ProgCon faction in the UCP caucus: what’s stopping it is the fact that to organize a reformed or wholly renewed centre-right party will probably take at least a term or two (personally, I think it would be rewarded for the effort and courage). In yet another irony in the province of, the NDP could also be rewarded by encouraging such a move. Heck, it could even use reverse psychology and offer its temporary endorsement, just like voters offered theirs in 2015.

Finally, the NDP winning in just 73 days from today would indeed be something new, and probably steal a march on moderate conservatism toward a stable future for the province. This is doubtlessly what moderates Tories want. In the strangest way—which is the Alberta way these days—Tories and Dippers can cooperate to bring Albertans back to the staid political realm they once had.

But isn’t that what political parties used to do?—respect and work with each other, and criticize only in contribution to the public good? The NDP can certainly make this case in comparison to the batshit crazy UCP, but the ProgCon voter can make it happen if it lets go of the odium and radicalism behind which Danielle hides her ineptitude.