Uh-oh! Looks like those two Independent MLAs who want to reboot Alberta’s Progressive Conservative Party think they can use the moribund Alberta Party as the vector of their political resurrection story.
Hasn’t this been tried before by doomed Progressive Conservatives?
That was a rhetorical question: The answer is yes. By former Edmonton Mayor and PC cabinet minister Stephen Mandel in 2015.
Mr. Mandel’s Alberta Party gambit was his second political comeback bid after he retired from Edmonton civic politics in October 2013. It was marginally less successful than the first, in 2014, when PC premier Jim Prentice appointed him unelected to the health portfolio and he subsequently won a by-election in Edmonton-Whitemud that fall, serving as MLA for five and a half months until the PCs were swept away by the NDP in May 2015.
Credit where credit is due, though, Mr. Mandel did manage to raise the Alberta Party’s popular vote from 2.2 per cent to 9.1 per cent before he gave up the idea in June 2019 and retired from politics again. By 2023, the Alberta Party’s vote share was even lower than where it started when Mr. Mandel signed on, down to less than 1 per cent.
OK, Messrs. Guthrie and Sinclair aren’t doomed yet, but if they don’t want to be, it’s said here they should stay the heck away from the Alberta Party. Somebody should have told them about the Curse of the Alberta Party – the little party with a great name that just can’t get on the radar.
Well, they can’t say now they weren’t warned.
The story of the two MLAs’ Plan B was broken on Twitter/X yesterday by The Breakdown (not to be confused with the now defunct Brokedown), which managed to gets its hands on an email from Mr. Guthrie explaining to an unidentified someone that Danielle Smith’s UCP had managed to keep him and his sidekick from using the PC name, at least for the time being.
Instead, the email said, “last week, we began discussions with the Alberta Party, who reached out to us and expressed openness to collaboration. We’ve since agreed to move forward by expanding their board to include some of our team and initiating steps toward a name change via Elections Alberta …”
And yes, that email really was from him, Mr. Guthrie confirmed when asked by media later yesterday. UCP Executive Director Dustin van Vugt also told the media that his party had sent the two a cease-and-desist letter telling the two MLAs it still owned the name and they couldn’t use it. And Alberta Party Leader Lindsay Amantea was quoted in the same story saying “we are exploring opportunities and partnerships.”
The Alberta Party started out in the 1980s as an alliance of far-right fringe parties that a decade later somehow morphed into either a vaguely more progressive version of the Progressive Conservatives or a home for Alberta Liberals who recognized their party name would never allow them to form government, depending on whom you were talking to.
In 2011, former Alberta Liberal leader Dave Taylor crossed the floor to become the party’s first MLA. In 2015, party leader Greg Clark became the only Albertan ever to be elected as an Alberta Party MLA, a job he held until Mr. Mandel pushed him aside in 2018.
Just before that happened, in the fall of 2017, a Calgary New Democrat MLA crossed the floor and joined the Alberta Party. Karen McPherson didn’t do much for the party either, but she did sort of make it official that it’s the party of last resort in Alberta politics.
In 2018, Calgary MLA Rick Fraser, elected as a Progressive Conservative in 2012, joined the Alberta Party Caucus.
None of the floor-crossers were around after the UCP’s decisive victory under Jason Kenney in 2019.
Mr. Guthrie, MLA for Airdrie Cochrane, and Mr. Sinclair, MLA for Lesser Slave Lake, both of whom were kicked out of the UCP Caucus earlier this year for not toeing Premier Danielle Smith’s line, really looked like they were onto something when they came up with the idea of reviving the Progressive Conservative name at the start of July.
Media loved the story, which promised a more interesting contest than a two-horse race between the UCP and the NDP led by Naheed Nenshi, who back before he became mayor of Calgary was reputed to have an interest in the Alberta Party as a political vehicle too.
Before you knew it, political insiders were handing around a poll by a polling company that no one had ever heard of suggesting that if a Progressive-Conservative-labelled party entered the race before the next election, it would take votes from both the UCP and the NDP and be tied with the NDP in critical Calgary ridings.
Alas, the authors of the survey, which was in the field in the first week of July, never returned my emails, so my questions about their methodology remain unanswered. One of the company’s directors, according to corporate records, has the same name as the Alberta party’s interim leader.
But if the poll got it right about the potential for PC voters to find a new old home, you can see why the UCP is sending its rebel former MLAs cease-and-desist letters telling them to stop using the PC name and, as is widely rumoured, plotting an early election call next spring.
If the Alberta Party Curse holds, the UCP and the NDP can probably both now breathe a sigh of relief.
I do feel if the Alberta Party was cursed, it was mainly due to the name which was too generic and didn’t stand for anything. It was somewhat an empty vessel in which many tried to project whatever they wanted into it, but didn’t project enough to appeal to voters .
So I feel that renaming the party might actually be what breaks the curse. Actually it also isn’t far from what the Alberta Party was trying to become, a moderate version of the PC’s.
I don’t know if there is much goodwill left to the PC name. If there is, it probably has been diminished by the UCP. However, if the UCP could come about by a double reverse take over, then perhaps the PCs can also come back from extinction by taking over the Alberta Party. After all, stranger things have happened in Alberta politics.
This may not be good news for the NDP, but it is definitely not good news for the UCP.
Speaking of new parties ..on one platform, a little bit of homework and confirmation on Thomas Lukaszuk’s site, that raised the eyebrows.
” the APP ( Denis Modry and Jeffrey Rat(h) , went to Washington ** and spoke to d’rump official about a$500 million Alberta Independence loan……
So were they staying @ Marlaina’s Alberta embassy ??
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I suppose if Scott Moe can lead the Saskatchewan Party as a ‘conservative’ , Mssrs. Guthrie and Sinclair can use him as a point of reference.
Though imo– that easterly wind is bringing in more than smells of praire oysters, it’s more of a pungent odor of whale cactus, which could prove traumatic for the little girl sitting in the back seat…….drip drip drip
Autocorrect my foot…it was meant to be— ‘carcus’
Never having had an original idea in their lives, the conservatives in Alberta just want their own Bloc Quebecois.
They fail to understand that they have no “culture” of their own, to save. The don’t have a separate language, separate religion, separate history or separate cultural touchstones such as food, literature, film.
Worshipping Oil is not a religion.
BBQing steaks, eating corn on the cob with beer while watching a rodeo is ubiquitous to many regions.
They do not a culture, make.
I’m reminded of the before times when natural resources ruled: the era of the gold rush, coal mining, the lumber barons. All of those times came and went. The people left when the jobs dried up. There was nothing keeping communities together, just money. Alberta has many ghost towns from times that came and went. My parents took me to see them as a child. Some still had furniture, bought on time no doubt and left because it was too expensive to move. Never owe your soul to the company store, they said.
This is Alberta. We owe our souls to the company store. Soon we will learn that oil and gas is not a culture nor is it an identity. When it’s gone and the jobs dry up, people will pull stakes and move as they have always done in boomtowns, as they have done so many times before in Alberta. We never learn. We’re too far gone to diversify. We live in the past and refuse to change until the dinner plate goes empty. Our fate is sealed.
The only permanent culture in Alberta–because it has been money-driven are Aboriginal cultures.
First Nations folk do not want to separate and all of the Nations have made it clear. They won’t “leave” because they’re one with the land and have legal agreements and treaties in place. They’ve no desire to separate from Canada.
Separatist Albertans ignore this. They can’t take what they don’t own.
B: In their hearts, Alberta separatists think they can take what they want by main force. Mark my words. DJC
@DJC, oh I’ve no doubt they *think* that. They might well try. Which is why I suspect Dixie Dani created her own police force.
However the sh1tstorm of insurrection they’d face (and who knows what the feds would do in response at this point, the rest of Canada would face some serious decisions on who to support) wouldn’t just be the First Nations in Alberta…but from across the country because it threatens *all* of us and all the territories and agreements of all our relations.
Alberta Kons do have a separate religion, derived from their creation myth. They believe that a great catastrophe befell them as a people when an ancient demon assumed human form as Big Magus and a legion of communists stole all their oil and drove them into penury. These crypto-ghouls are now everywhere, fangs dripping as they scan for any opportunity to possess the souls of Albertans by turning them into Franco-homosexuals and making them pay taxes. It’s as real as any other culture, as far as I can tell.
The PCs were kicked for a reason. UCP guys that were kicked out are just hoping they can resurrect the old PC brand. Putting on a tee shirt does not make you any different. They are just UCP wearing new clothes – no change.
Alberta needs change. Alberta does not need to be run for the interests of the fringe. Alberta needs to be run for the benefit of Albertans.
Every party that gets kicked out gets kicked out for a reason. However, in many other places, outside Alberta those parties are chastened, have some humility, reflect and make some changes. Over time voters also forget why they are angry or it diminishes enough so they get another chance. The UCP had hoped by tying up the PC name, it would ensure this didn’t happen and the PC party would remain in suspended animation forever, but it seems their plan may not have worked.
Alberta is run for the benefit of Albertans. About 4000 of them.
The Alberta Party was never a serious endeavour. Apart from allowing Glen Clark a platform to move onto a patronage position, and serving as a third-party foil under Mandel, for the benefit of the UCP, one could say that the party was Jason Kenney’s favourite plaything. But this notion that the AP can be used as a means to resurrect the PCs is pretty wild. So wild, I suspect that there must be some pretty powerful edibles involved in this level of decision-making. Centrist positions have sold well in Alberta in the past, and always under the PC banner. (Though the ABNDP under Notley did shed almost all of their social-democratic cred for the sake of centrism.) At this time, the rust to the centre is coming from Nenshi’s ABNDP, which Queen Danielle wants to start her own country, with the help of the Mango Mussolini.
Am I the only one here that remembers the “Big Listen” exercise by the Alberta Party way back in 2010? Even our host’s fellow #ableg #abpoli blogger Daveberta was in on it …
https://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/11/15/the-alberta-partys-big-listen/
Jerry: I was talking with a friend about the Big Listen today. No one was listening, I joked. Well, the Big Listen spawned the Little Party that Couldn’t. DJC
I can’t understand why the UCP would ever be worried about any sort of opposition! The majority of voting Albertans are practically screaming to the UCP and Smith, “Define Me”. It’s embarrassing.
Jaundiced, is that “Define” or Defile” me. If the second, the UCP are doing an excellent job!
I may have been wrong, or possibly will be proven wrong. My original prediction was that these two would be paid handsomely by the UCP’s puppetmasters to go away permanently. Now it looks like they will be brought down by their own poor judgement and incompetence. Oh well.
Six o’ one, half a dozen o’ the other.
The political landscape in Alberta has gotten uglier under the UCP. What a mess.
I think joining the NDP would have been the smart thing to do instead of trying to build up an existing party. This will only divide votes and likely get these Reformers re-elected, and that’s not we want, is it?
The former PC Party is the Alberta ND Party given how many times Rachel quoted Peter Lougheed more than Tommy Douglas. I wish the NDs would offer bold policies as the PCs or actually do what New Democrats have done and use the government to give material benefits to people. Stop being UCP light!!!