It was finally starting to sink in with Alberta commentariat yesterday in the aftermath of the United Conservative Party’s annual general meeting that the lunatics really are running the asylum, to borrow a colourful metaphor from former premier and UCP founder Jason Kenney.
“It’s true that many moderate conservatives voted UCP in May,” wrote the Calgary Herald’s Don Braid yesterday. “But they don’t run this party anymore.”
Mr. Braid, at 81 the dean of establishment punditry in Alberta, may be a little late coming to this conclusion, but it suggests his faculties of observation remain sharp. Other mainstream pundits should now feel safe saying out loud what hitherto has been heard mostly from a few bloggers and podcasters.
Mr. Braid’s column quotes Cynthia Moore, the former party president who threw up her hands and didn’t seek reelection in the face of vicious attacks by the Take Back Alberta cadres who now own the party. “The people at this convention are not at all representative of the party’s wider base,” she said politely.
Mr. Braid also quoted an unidentified old-timey Conservative activist, who bitterly observed, “this isn’t a party crowd at all. I doubt if a fraction of them give a penny to their riding associations. It’s a single-issue group.”
For evidence, consider the policy resolutions (officially, “policy proposals”) the more than 3,700 paid-up AGM delegates voted for, among them: Enshrining the right to bear arms; opposing federal net-zero policies; defunding university diversity, equity and inclusion offices; banning “15-minute cities” (how one might do this remains a mystery); banning solar farms; defunding supervised consumption sites; letting parents censor school libraries; allowing professionals to break ethics rules when they’re not on the clock; not allowing trans women to serve their sentences in women’s jails; and making sure children can’t chose their own pronouns or names without telling their parents. There were also at least three intended to undermine public health measures and permit medical quackery.
If this isn’t evidence of a pervasive Qanon-adjacent MAGA mentality, what is?
In fairness, the resolution authors were not bereft of good ideas. The Conservative grassroots understand as well as the rest of us that their party has let gouging by insurance and electricity companies run wild, and something needs to be done. But will the caucus go along with that? That remains to be seen.
Surprisingly, party members voted down a resolution calling for school vouchers that was intended to undermine public education. The vote was close.
But all in all, as one wit observed on social media, the UCP’s weekend Calgary AGM was more of a convoy reunion than an annual business meeting!
What’s changed as of yesterday is that TBA and other like-minded groups in the UCP are no longer just a powerful faction of the party, they are the whole damn thing!
Unsurprisingly, the traditional Conservative talent pool – the deep bench that kept the Progressive Conservatives in power for nearly half a century – realized what was going on well before media cottoned on.
“We’re told that many of the ‘old’ organizers from the PC’s & early days of the UCP simply didn’t attend the AGM & have largely abandoned the party,” tweeted The Breakdown. “TBA was largely unopposed. We’re told not even anti-TBA UCP stalwart Chad Hallman was seen all weekend…”
In contrast to the TBA crowd, observed University of Calgary political scientist Lisa Young in an excellent Substack published yesterday, Premier Danielle Smith is starting to look like “a voice of reason, a moderating force relative to her party.” This observation would be hilarious if it weren’t true.
Mr. Braid noted that this UCP-TBA fusion puts the party at risk: “The members are fierce in their beliefs and expect the premier to bring their resolutions into law. Smith can’t possibly do this without abandoning all hope of expanding the party base and winning another election, after almost losing the last one.”
“You just keep marching along believing that,” responds TBA founder and chief executive David Parker, an occasional commenter on this blog, to such suggestions. Maybe he was channelling Pierre Trudeau’s just-watch-me moment in his remark yesterday.
Ms. Smith is left with the difficult task of balancing the demands of her party base and keeping her job – just like Mr. Kenney tried and failed to do before TBA and its fellow travellers sent him packing.
Professor Young concluded that Premier Smith’s references to Alberta’s potential for population growth in both the Government’s Throne Speech last week and her AGM remarks on Saturday were intended as a shot across TBA’s bow.
It raises an extremely interesting question: How is Take Back Alberta – which as the resolution suggests wants to take back Alberta from anything that smacks of diversity, equity and inclusion – going to react to a policy of encouraging Alberta’s population to double in a decade when they realize that many, perhaps most, of those new immigrants are going to come from places where most people “do not share the UCP members’ pasty complexions”?
New citizens, in other words, who aren’t likely to vote for the UCP or anything like it if it advocates what Dr. Young calls “a heaping side dish of racism and discrimination.”
It seems likely UCP members and their TBA leaders would react by turning on Ms. Smith, just as they turned on Mr. Kenney.
Nominal, or pseudo-conservatism is a slo-mo train wreck. Some of the Greater Anglo-Saxmaniacal parties put up a good fight for which gets its logo on the side of doomed boxcars and tank-cars, but it looks like it might be Danielle Smith who’ll be be driving the locomotive when the UCP brand chugs into the finish line first—with a special blazon on the caboose commemorating Ralph Klein, the last Conservative premier of Alberta to finish a whole term. It’s a painfully slow wreck but it’s almost impossible to look away.
Spaced-time only keeps slowing the more bitumen, coal, and other solids Engineer Smith shovels into the UCP boiler. Like a well-dilbitted watch the train pulls victorious into the scrapyard, right on time—twenty years before it left.
Climenhaga and Young cover this siding superbly as UCPR bullets past Doppler Flats as fast as a twin paradox, whistle stop for Dee, terminal for Dum—just up around the bend.
Conductor Parker checks his watch for dilation—“Yep, any year, now,” he chuckles as if the front’s not already squealing like a crumpling, sub-frequency screech while the caboose plays its 78s backwards, it seems, from another time.
Perched on a cow-catcher affront a hopeful beam of light Alberta Einstein assures us the slo-mo’s is only an illusion—it’ll be over before we know it.
Yeah, and Sigmund quips it only looks like a tunnel.
Sharing your meds? Please!
Christmas is nearly upon us, and in Alberta we now have a big pile of fruitcakes, with extra nuts in them. An unelected fringe believes they can dictate how Alberta is going to be run. This is just like a dictatorship, from a certain era in our world history. It’s like a cult too, and there has been more than one of those in North America, over the last several decades. It’s a shame that it had to come to this.
Q: What do you call a white men in a white hood who burns crosses on lawns in 2023?
A: A third party advertiser.
I wonder if one of the demands 0f TBA to Ottawa will be control of immigration. You know, tiki torch owners need only apply.
I saw a story on the CBC Saskatchewan page that the Saskatchewan Party also had a get together this past weekend, and Pierre Poilievre spoke at it. It does beg the question why he didn’t also manage an appearance at the UCP AGM as well. Was he not invited, or is the TBA/UCP duo even too toxic for Skippy, who is trying to sound like a voice of reason to the rest of Canada?
At least David Parker’s puerile behavior is entertaining.
I also noticed the awkward lack of applause at the AGM after the population growth/we’re going to build this province part of her speech. I initially thought that maybe that didn’t land with people because most were retired and had no intention of doing anything other than raging about stuff and cashing their dividend and pension cheques. I think I went to that conclusion because it seems the old so called conservatives these days are happy to dismantle the institutions that previous generations of Alberta conservatives helped to build. Interesting to hear Professor Young’s conclusion that it was a shot across the bow. Wonder how that is going to fester?
I think the UCP should be required to remove the word Conservative from their party name. If the UCP is totally over run with nut case Wild Rose, then they should be very clear with all Albertans what they really are, even most of those that follow this blog are aware of that. Or do they continue to hope they attract old staunch (real) Conservatives to vote for them. As we have all hoped for some time is the old guys would wake up and see the nefarious tricks these guys are up to.
I thought UCP stood for United Convoy Party, My mistake!
UCP = united conspiracy party OR united crazy party
Old Albertan You have nailed it. As long as the word Conservative wasn’t included in their name people knew there was nothing conservative about them and they got nowhere. Manning was a perfect example of why he never won a federal election. As soon as the word conservative was included the morons who only vote conservative, as they tell us, elected these idiots and the rest is history. What is so stupid about them is the fact that they are too dumb to understand what Klein and the rest of these idiots have done to us, and it doesn’t matter what facts you show them they deny them, they would rather believe the lies. A university professor friend told me a few years ago that these people are so dumb they will likely vote themselves into an early grave or financial ruin that’s how dumb they are. The fact is most are seniors and we know how smart they are. Us old conservatives certainly understand what’s going on, but there just aren’t enough of us.
While Smith is capable of flipping and turning on the extreme crowd that has taken back the UCP, as her past experience with the Wildrose Party indicates, I suspect she will not.
First of all, she learned a lesson from that past debacle and her long exile to the political wilderness, which is not to underestimate the political power of the extremists. Second, as a talk radio show host after she seemed to marinate herself in the world of kooky ideas. A world she now seems quite comfortable in.
Unfortunately for the UCP, many of the voices of moderate reason are gone and those remaining are now being ignored. So, I suspect it will now be full speed ahead for the UCP Titanic as it helds towards its political end.
Parties can and do become out of step with mainstream voters. They can ignore reality and warnings and keep going in a different direction for a while. However, in the end the voters deal with that.
Congratulations rural Alberta voters. TBA and more specifically, David Parker now runs the province, while Batshit Smith acts as his spokesperson. The fascist takeover is now complete. Four more years of this and worse.
So, what is David Parker’s next step on his journey of Napoleonic ambition?
He has declared that he wants TBA in every province and he intends to use Alberta public funds to bankroll it. I guess that War Room isn’t going to be shuttered just yet. There are certain political parties who are ready and willing to welcome TBA into their respective folds, among them the Dark Party and whatever is that thing that replaced the BC Liberal Party. Parker has already thrown it out there that the more So-CON the better. And with the Manitoba CONs in considerable disarray, they are also ripe for TBA new blood.
There can be no doubt that Parker is on a national mission and he intends to bring the CPC into the fold. That will take time, because Skippy Pollivere is enjoying his own high in the polls. But if there should be a fall, Gilead is coming.
Just Me—family in BC never thought of the BC Liberals as anything but Socreds in disguise; and their not united choice of the BCUP name was very intentional, imo.But with the Falcon losing members because of his ‘woke ‘ stands, PP is swooping down and circling on his territory. As for who Parker has his eyes on, it’s the Mad Max crowd , they aligned quite nicely with his “idealogy”— you know freedom of choice** etc. etc. unless of course you’re a mere woman.
Plus Max’s sterling record as FA Minister, would be considered a bonus, along with the former NL Premier(pickle). They had already tried the school board positions here. Luckily for us, we have alot of literate people here, and they got on to the quackery at the last election and kept them out.
** the hypocrisy of DP’s use of the word knows no bounds.
We are fighting for your freedom, but if you don’t vote how we want you to, you’re gone.
Okay boys and girls; can you say ‘petty little tyrant?’
Ever since Gregory Baum wrote an essay on the decline of “liberal” in 1981, I have watched the demise of same since. Baum did not predict, as other had/have done, that right-wing and authoritarian ‘movements’ would be on the ascendant, but that is what has happened. All those who espouse liberal values are now definitely on the defensive across the world with the likes of Orban, Modi, Xi, Putin, Trump, Ortega, Netanyahu, al-Assad, Kim, El-Sisi. These authoritarians go beyond the neoliberalism we in the West advocate and encourage for everyone else. Power is its own reward, and convincing their people to support them has many options, with fear a chief ingredient, along with advocacy of liberal injustice towards them.
Now that the TBA has advocated violence as an option, fear is indeed bubbling to the surface. Fear of children comes to mind! Fear of learning! Fear of losing to the ravages of climate change, thus denying it altogether [though ironically holding their convention in Calgary in the midst of that city’s drought and water shortage worries]! Luckily, one thing I have learned is that the next generation does come along and tells those of us with white beards that we were wrong, and they are going to do things better for themselves and their kids. That does not necessarily mean an advent of a new liberalism, but if polls about what what my grandkids are about, racism and inequality will no longer be a big part of their social policies.
What exactly are these “liberal” values, and who is “we” and what is “the west”? You’re actually trying to equate Ortega with Netanyahu or Putin? I can’t tell if you’re being facetious when you’re talking about “power” as “its own reward”. Neoliberalism is literally nothing but the accumulation of financial power by a minority as democratic constraints on this power in the form of state action are reduced or eliminated entirely. The worship of plutocracy by the alleged Progs is truly the end of anything that remotely resembled a civilization in the post-war industrialized nations. Possibly the only true thing ever emitted by the super-liberals of the Clinton regime was, “it’s the economy, stupid”. The populist demagogues were foisted on the working class of the world in lieu of actual agency in their economic lives, with a healthy century’s worth of capitalist propaganda to bolster this rubbish, so that they don’t get socialism and the elimination of the “liberal” billionaire class.
I would point out that attendance at the million person march in September saw large numbers of the recent immigrants that Dr. Young seems to think won’t vote for the UCP. It may take some convincing to bring these attendees around to the thinking that a party advocating for parental rights is somehow racist. It presents an interesting dilemma for the left, do they continue to advocate for mass immigration when those that come in do not share their values.
The “left” advocates for mass immigration? There is a difference between open immigration and mass immigration. I have no doubt that Alberta is currently attracting a large number of fascists from around the world and they should be allowed to come, no matter their religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, genetic makeup, epigenetics, name, moniker, identification, social status, etc.
I am confident that as long as multicultural immigrants with authoritarian leanings are helping TBA to appear popular then they will be welcomed. It is likely, however, that future TBA will use these immigrants as scapegoats as soon as possible. They will always need someone to blame for their actions.
Finally someone gets it..As long as the left leaning/progressive folks refuse to address dangerously high levels of immigration into the west and particularly into Canada..and want to continue to ride their hobby horse(s) of wokeism & multiculturalism ..the liberals or conservatives will take turn winning elections and making policy..the left will always be on the sidelines.
TBA is anti-SOGI so those people will vote for them. The anti-SOGI crowd didn’t appear to be very bright and they are ripe for manipulation.
I detect several through threads. https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a45752961/mike-johnson-porn-accountability-software/ Good luck!
At coffee today the joke was “Who are these idiots trying to take Alberta Back from when it’s been these conservatives who have been in power for so long. The truth is these Reformers are trying to destroy everything the conservatives created, there is nothing conservative about them. I keep hearing the voice of a late lawyer friend who correctly stated look at the fools at these conventions and you can bet they are mostly seniors being lead around by the nose and being treated like morons and are too dumb to realize it. That describes this weekend’s convention to a Tee. It was Ralph Klein who was heard to say, at a fund raising dinner, “I could tell these idiots anything and they would believe it.” People who were there said the audience consisted of around 80% seniors and they were certainly believing all Klein’s lies.
One could make trite observations about life imitating art, or the repetitive historical nature of the banal human theatrical stage show with all of its interchangeable acts, scenes, and actors:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwMVMbmQBug
The zealots and fanatics [possessing no real insight] will continue to do what they have always done:
“The Paranoid Style in American Politics”
by Richard Hofstadter
https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/
The current Alberta circus side show is simply the unimaginative and tedious low rent repeat of similar past events.
So, some questions.
Am I to understand that the moderate faction of the conservative movement have just given up? No meaningful pushback? Is this because they are disorganized, with no leaders coming forward to rally the voices of “reason”? Are they afraid of the donkeys, and head mule skinner Mr Parker?
Where are moderates to go? Who are they going to vote for? Are they keeping their powder dry, and prepping a new PROGRESSIVE Conservative Party. If so, we’ll need a Lougheed soon!
Or is it too early to say, and the moderates are hoping that the hillbillies, who truly believe they now “control” the government, will collapse under their extremism and inevitable incompetence?
How will the NDP, who must see a massive opportunity to attract these moderates to their party, at least in the short term, adapt to this development? Please God, give them wisdom and strength.
I must say that the epicaricacy I’m feeling at this most recent conservative buffoonery is pleasant enough. I love this province, and its many fine people. But I know the the bill is coming for the TBA japery, and it’s going to be steep.
Geronimo: There are excellent questions. I was surprised when the PCs just gave up and handed the keys over to the Wildrose Party when the UCP was created. I suppose with Jason Kenney at the helm, they may have felt the party was safe enough and in the hands of a real Conservative, if from the rightward side of the party. I think founding a new party would be a pretty steep hill for them to climb. Worse comes to worst, they’re more likely to have another go at taking over the Alberta Party. It’s pretty well moribund as things stand. But more likely, I think, they’ll wait for the hillbillies to fail, as you suggest. The NDP has a knack for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, and I wouldn’t put it past them to do it again. DJC
Agreed. As much as I like Rachel Notley, I’m very despondent about her lackluster election campaign. It should have been in the bag, but she was way to timid and failed to come out swinging against batshit. The AB NDP need to get nastier and find a real SOB who takes no prisoners to lead them, otherwise…
And, not to self (ABNDP) never ever announce a new tax when seeking election – unless you want to lose. What a bunch of morons.
Should the right in Alberta splinter into moderate and hard right factions, then it seems rather likely that the NDP read moderate and middle of the road, could win. The NDP would have to be sensible to remind voters that this is the party to rescue Albertans from voodoo right wing rubbish. They must also stay mildly left. Pragmatism rules. All that is required is a tepid response to the moderate conservative types if they revive, from the electorate, and continued voodoo medicine show right politics from the UCP, stoked by the would be Caesar of the Rockies. Vote splitting may well be key yet again. It will be interesting times no doubt.
Thank you for introducing me to the word “epicaricacy”, previously unknown to me but one for which I will no doubt find much use in the days to come.
I think this is who conservatives are. I don’t know to what degree Canada differs from the US. I think it has two things to its advantage, one, it’s something much closer to a real democracy, and two, its norms are less individualistic. But I’m not so sure that the center will gravitate to the NDP. There are too many people raised on neoliberalism and anti-communism who sincerely believe collective action is terrible and will put their lot in with fascists rather then accept any sort of Democratic Socialism.
Thanks David for your great writing. I happened to flip to the afternoon sitting at the Legislature and your MLA Marie Renaud mentioned you and one of your blogs as being interesting as it was sometime in March I believe where you talked about how many times can the UCP deny something and it still goes ahead. Marie indicated she would be tabling your blog today. Congratulations on making it to the big times!
Thanks, OA. Ms. Renaud is a very nice person and she is indeed my MLA. I’m not sure if having a post read into the record of the Legislature is hitting the big time, but it may have to do. The first time I was mentioned in Hansard was in 1990, and the second time was yesterday. Today will be the third, I guess. DJC
Sadly, Alberta’s Bible Belt has decades-long consistency in forcing the people of this province to suffer at the altar of its fundamentalist belief system. Folie à deux becomes folie à quatre million. We only need to look at settlement patterns in rural Alberta at the beginning of the 20th century to understand that not much has changed since these ideas were imported to this province from the U.S. when Alberta became a province. The imbalance of rural seats in the legislature has only served to amplify these voices. Now we see that fundamentalists of other persuasions have piled on. They want to live in a world that doesn’t exist anymore, too.
Rather true I think, about the initial U,S, immigration and perhaps later in the post war oil boom too.
Let’s always remember that none of this would be happening if not for the enthusiastic support of the majority of voting Albertans. This would be your neighbours, friends and relatives that have willingly brought this plague upon us. TBA or no TBA, Smith has not done anything to date that she has not talked about going back decades. Don’t blame Smith. Smith is just being Smith. If you want to scream at anyone, scream at your neighbours, friends and relatives that opened the door and invited her in.
And Mr. C. is correct about the Alberta NDP never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Courtesy of W.R.Churchill @ the Tyee…… this lady torches the UCP AGM …
(LOL, the lady speaks her truth….)
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMjWW..
Hello DJC,
I’m not sure if this really relates to your column, but I absolutely cannot fathom how Danielle Smith could even contemplate sharing a stage with Tucker Carlson. And yet, according to various news outlets, including Canadian Press, this is scheduled for January. Rachel Notley’s comments are far too mild. Saying that this is poor judgment is very much an understatement.
https://www.thestar.com/politics/alberta-premier-danielle-smith-to-share-stage-with-former-fox-host-tucker-carlson/article_1352c098-6740-56c7-980f-281fdfb80b9e.html
Well, when a person tells people who she is, believe her. Or him! No matter how revolting, and do remember behaviour and associates also are good co-indicators, as is past behaviour. Overall, Smith appears unfit for purpose.