Happy Victoria Day!
Over the weekend leading up to our national celebration of Victorian rectitude, imperialism and class inequality, prominent Alberta separatist Jeffrey Rath took to the Internet appearing to advocate an internal United Conservative Party coup to remove Premier Danielle Smith.
Her sin, in Mr. Rath’s obvious estimation, is that she’s been working too closely with Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney and playing both sides of Independence Avenue in her efforts to keep the party’s fraying coalition of outright separatists and traditional Canadian Conservatives in one piece.
His solution: The separatist cadres who now clearly control the UCP, but not quite yet either the government caucus or the provincial government, should dump her and replace her with a more ideologically acceptable leader and declare the party to be a separatist entity in the manner of the Parti Québécois.
Arguably, this could either be a sign of Ms. Smith’s increasing strength thanks to her latest deal with Mr. Carney, or of the separatists’ increasing strength as the holders of most of the internal power positions in the UCP party bureaucracy. Or, perhaps, a bit of both.
Ms. Smith’s strategy, as is well understood, has been to assert that only she can successfully keep the open separatists now embedded in the party, caucus and cabinet from scaring away electors accustomed to voting Conservative without thinking too deeply about what the party nowadays represents.
Likewise, as the vessel of Preston Manning’s strategy of blackmailing the federal government into doing Alberta’s bidding by threatening to become the 51st State, she is the only politician likely to be able to get away with perpetrating this political protection racket.
Talk of an internal party coup, though, should be taken seriously because Mr. Rath, who is legal counsel and for all practical purposes the self-appointed spokesperson for the Stay Free Alberta petition/Alberta Prosperity Project (SFA), is extremely influential within Alberta’s separatist faction. It is not clear if he has ambitions of his own in the new Alberta he hopes to create, but it is easy to assume that he must.
So when Mr. Rath was so blunt about what he thinks should happen next in a series of social media posts yesterday, we should pay attention. He speaks for many in the UCP.
“Premier Smith had no mandate from her membership to sign the Carbon Tax MOU with Mark Carney,” Mr. Rath posted at one point yesterday. “Danielle Smith no longer enjoys the confidence of the members of the UCP.” If that’s not a call for a coup, I don’t know what is.
“Enough is enough,” he said in another post. “We are a super majority of the party. Time to take it back from the Kenneyites.” (The “Kenneyites,” remember, basically purged the “Red Tories” from the UCP after former premier Jason Kenney engineered the double reverse hostile takeover of the Progressive Conservative Party and the Wildrose Party in the summer of 2017. This is an irony, since those Red Tories, had they still been around in any numbers, could have saved Mr. Kenney’s bacon in the fall of 2022.)
Here’s another, delivered Trump-style, in all caps: “DANIELLE SMITH HAS LOST HER MANDATE TO LEAD THE UCP!”
Mr. Rath’s message to the cadres in the UCP’s riding constituency associations: “MAKE SURE TO ATTEND YOUR LOCAL CA BOARD AGM AND ELECT A SLATE OF PRO-INDEPENDENCE BOARD MEMBERS. CONTACT YOUR LOCAL APP OR STAY FREE REGIONAL LEADERS FOR GUIDANCE.”
“We need to work to replace every non independence board in the province,” he said in part in another post.
All these messages were posted on X, the social media platform previously known as Twitter, a place a lot of moderate Albertans nowadays sensibly eschew, if only to keep their blood pressure down. Someone has to look in there, however, and I’m willing to take the risk so that the rest of you don’t have to.
If this was more than just an anticipatory outburst of exuberance in memory of the late grandmother of Europe’s titled classes it suggests Danielle Smith’s “United Conservative” coalition could actually be starting to fracture.
It’s worth noting that the separatists on social media are also infuriated by the possibility that when the pipe gets laid, it may not follow the route most of them prefer, that is, the one most likely to annoy the most British Columbians and First Nations along the way to Prince Rupert. (The British Columbia city of that name and the terminus of the Alberta separatists’ imagined Danzig Corridor to the sea, that is, not the first governor of the late Hudson’s Bay Co., just to be clear.)
Meanwhile, speaking of Independence Avenue, a metaphor lest you tried to look it up on Google Maps, Edmonton City Councillor Michael Janz yesterday announced he had applied on behalf of many of his constituents to rename the road in front of the Alberta Legislature “Forever Canadian Avenue.”
Mr. Janz – councillor for Ward papastew, located just across the North Saskatchewan River from the Legislature – said the renaming of two blocks of 99th Avenue between 107th Street and 109th Street “will celebrate the largest non-partisan citizen movement in Alberta’s history.”
“The Forever Canadian petition collected signatures from Albertans who want Alberta to proudly remain a Canadian province,” Mr. Janz explained in a statement. “This effort was prompted as a response to Premier Danielle Smith encouraging conversations about Alberta separation. The petition gathered 456,000 signatures and motivated more than 10,000 Albertans to volunteer in support of this work.”
Mr. Janz, who is a tireless progressive activist not unprepared to be a gadfly if that’s what it takes to accomplish something, was accompanied to an outdoor news conference yesterday by Forever Canadian petition proponent Thomas Lukaszuk, a former Progressive Conservative deputy premier of Alberta.
Mr. Janz will make application to the Edmonton Naming Committee, an independent body of volunteers appointed by the city. He pointed out that there is a precedent, when another city councillor successfully applied in 2018 to have a city road renamed Canadian Forces Trail.
If Mr. Janz succeeds with this one, it will drive the UCP and the SFA nuts.
It’s great to hear that Michael Janz and Thomas Lukaszuk have teamed up to goad Danielle Smith and the separatists in support of Forever Canada.
It’s time for all Canada first Albertans to proudly display their Canada flags, Canada hats, and Canada t-shirts.
We need more openly pro Canada patriotism on display at this moment in time.
As a lifelong proud Canadian and signatory to Mr Lukaszuk’s petition, I actually do not support Councillor Janz’s idea. I don’t want even the suggestion of Alberta separating from Canada to be given any oxygen in the future, when historians look back at this time in Alberta’s history.
I don’t want it preserved for posterity. I want it to become a distant, forgotten memory, revealed only in dusty cobwebbed archives.
This street sign would only perpetuate that odious idea.
Of course, since I don’t live in Edmonton, my opinion probably doesn’t carry much weight, but I offer it anyway, FWIW.
Toss away the stetson and he could bag first prize in the Donald Trump look-a-like contest.
So true.
Then put on a straw boater to look like WC Fields.
Jimmy: That was my thought, actually. Check out Janet French’s photo on the CBC. DJC
Thanks I will. The similarity has been long noticeable.
Hey, from what I saw on Twitter David Parker has bugged off to Texas. We can hope that is permanent. If the United Confederate Parry does become separatist, maybe that will lead to a split right wing vote? Let’s hope Rath believes his own puffery.
FA: I’m inclined to agree, but probably we should be careful what we wish for. DJC
Has anyone ever seen both Jeffrey Rath and Alex Jones at the same place at the same time?
Colour me, not surprised.
Dixie Dani played both sides of the aisle and now the crazies have called her out. Is anyone, surprised?
She did this to Kenney, now it’s being done to her. A clear case of “what goes around, comes around” and the results are likely to be similar. She will be ousted, the loonies will take over the asylum and the whole mess will just keep staggering along until the right person comes along and stomps on it with their size 12 Tony Lamas Alberta cowboy boots and grinds it into history’s dustbin.
B: Now who in the UCP Caucus and Cabinet would have Size 12 cowboy boots? I can think of two. And who in the same company would not be a complete idiot? I can only think of one. DJC
DJC
Point taken.
That may be the problem right there. I thought Alberta grew them big. If so, why are all the high school mopes in this club?
Ian Fleming in his cups said that intelligence services were built of weaselly little grey men nobody noticed and that James Bond was supposed to be a parody of what people wished spies, were.
Just a note to take in. Y’know…cuz…welp, ducks and all that.
Jason Nixon?
Correct. DJC
aka Lurch.
The lunatics have already taken over the asylum.
The Alberta Law Society disciplinary hearings and reprimands and the various court judgements against Jeffrey Rath seem to reveal a pattern of questionable behavior and other irregularities in character that should all be warning signs for any individual seeking to hitch their wagon to the Jeffrey Rath APP/separatist star.
There seems to be a consistent pattern of either not learning, or simply not caring about past errors in judgement.
See the following,
https://owlnews.ca/news/2026/3/8/apps-jeff-rath-reprehensible-scandalous-outrageous
Tin can, after reading the article, I have a question. Why hasn’t Rath been disbarred?
I suppose the Code of Conduct violations are simply not considered to be serious enough to merit disbarment.
https://documents.lawsociety.ab.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/14211909/Code.pdf
As for the reprimands see the following as an example,
https://documents.lawsociety.ab.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/29093605/Rath-Jeffrey-HE20240189-HCR-Public.pdf
Further background, examples of disbarment, and the criteria used can be found here,
https://www.lawsociety.ab.ca/regulation/notices/disbarment/
if you are interested.
Thanks, tin can, I appreciate this. I gave some thought when I moderated that comment to try to look this up, but there are only so many hours in the day. This is very helpful for readers. DJC
Separatists look at his sketchy record and see that as a feature, not a bug. Of course the same thinking got a pedophilic con artist elected down south. Oy to the vey.
As I was buzzed into a provincial riding office in Calgary, the woman at the desk was holding a plastic fork and looking at a styrofoam tray of food.
She seemed to be preoccupied, or, something.
I was there to tell her a political movement that approached me nearly two decades ago was ongoing. The political movement was told to me by a childhood friend whom I’d known well, our families knew each other, holidayed together. The friend had always been activist-ish, with strong opinions and energy for whatever caught her eye; prior to this, she was very enviro-health conscious.
This movement was/is aggressive, relentless. Manipulative and coercive. Absolutely well funded to ensure a one party rule of Alberta. Not government or management of, and by the people. A government modelled after The Peoples Republic of China. She was very particular about the China model of government.
Rule by some nebulous inner circle; twenty years ago the supporters of this movement didn’t seem to have fleshed out the details. My childhood friend had changed tactics and appeals towards me and other friends over about five years. White supremacy, no, wait how about christian supremacy, no, wait, how about academic supremacy, no, wait, how about native white albertan supremacy, how about anti gay, no, wait how about…
[The wing of the movement I was invited to join involved the business end, no bid contracts for things like maintaining grass and shrubs on provincially owned properties, construction of provincial buildings and so on. Basically, siphon off all the provincial revenue from taxes, fees, etc. into the friends of the movement.
The movement was compartmentalized into many, many different blocs.
All blocs were designed to keep one political party in power in Alberta.
All blocs were designed to keep the political power in the hands of one party by appealing to whatever each bloc wanted and concentrating the appeal to influencers of each bloc into legitimate votes.]
When I spoke to the woman in my constituent office she seemed to be impatient, like she had better things to do than talk to a constituent.
I was very hesitant to disclose information. For a reason.
I had been harassed for nearly two years by people who seemed to comprise a bloc of this movement. They came to my home; the children of the people of the movement watched for my car, chased it on their bicycles, banged on my garage with their feet, rang the doorbell, called me bitch, fuckin bitch, old bitch, and so on.
So I called the Calgary police. They came to my house, were professional, questioning.
By that time, I had photos, contemporaneous notes. But I didn’t know who the people were or where they lived, except for one person, one of the four adults.
This adult, the leader was someone my neighbour recognized. The police advised me about a week later that the matter was settled and that there would be no further harassment, but said to call them should there be any further incident. There was not.
What I heard from the woman in my constituent office was that “some” people are “vulnerable” to social media. Then she stared at her styrofoam tray of food, fork still nearby.
I left the constituency office feeling awful and dismissed.
This office is in Calgary.
To be clear, I have never met the MLA who works in this office.
This Alberta MLA was elected in the last election.
As an Alberta NDP.
Now this Alberta NDP MLA wants my money and help in an election decided by a few votes.
The Alberta NDP still has my vote because I believe in government by the people for all the people. The overall competency and seriousness of the Alberta NDP group has my vote.
Will the Calgary provincial riding I live in re-elect the current NDP representative? Does this Alberta MLA even want the job?
Could you be more vague ?
So, getting back to Bill 14. It removed the ability of constituency associations to confirm candidates. Instead, that honour rests solely with the party leader. Right now – Danielle Smith. The Wrath of Rath wants to ensure that every UCP candidate in next year’s election is a separatist. He needs to remove Smith and have either a ‘useful idiot’ (Jason Stephan?) or himself in charge. Otherwise, Smith could weed out the separatists and install only candidates who back her ‘sovereign Alberta’ line. Bill 14 – the grift that keeps on giving. Question – was that piece of legislation deliberately badly written? Wouldn’t a competent legal mind be able to anticipate last week’s court decision given the judge’s ruling in December? Possibly Bill 14 was designed to fail – and make the separatists look stupid. Not that making them look stupid takes much effort. They manage that more than adequately on their own.
@djc
Help me out here, didn’t a group once try a insider takeover of the AB NDP? And Rachel Notley’s response was to return their membership fees, punt, and then blacklist them? “Kudeta” or some thing like that?
Not that I want Smith do similar, I want the frankenparty to turn on her, and then walk off to the Arctic … can’t see Rath or Silvestre (or anyone else) stepping up after she’s gone.
Gerald: You are right. Here’s a piece I wrote on George Clark’s #kudatah attempt on the NDP, which ended pretty much as hyou describe. https://rabble.ca/politics/canadian-politics/alberta-kudatah-plan-expires-whimper-george-clark-abandoned-his/ DJC
Oh, the “kudatah”! Fun times lol.
Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mr Janz!!
Who said politics was going to be boring this summer? It will be interesting to see what Dingy Smith will do. She did mutter something about meeting with caucus and cabinet about the court decision on the separatist petition, but one thinks it will be more related to her future as premier than appealing the court decision.
I love the idea of renaming of the street in clear view of the legislature to Forever Canadian Avenue. Mr. Janz needs to watch out as Dingy Smith can remove any city official she does not like.
AB seppies share the same mindset as their favourite evangelical death cult. Boss Hawg Rath has this crazy notion that he’s the hero in this narrative. Now that David Parker is on the run, it’s Rath’s turn to be the most awesome fat white guy in the room. So he wants to take control of the UCP and make it a separatist juggernaut in his own image. This difference between Rath and Parker is that Rath has financial means; all Parker has is his big mouth and a gang of idiots. I suspect that there is suspicion that Queen Danielle is going to jump ship and accept a plum appointment from Carney, so Rath wants to jump in and fill her space. Does he have the gravitas? Barely
He has lots of gravity and gravy.
Someone , or someone(s) with deep pockets obviously funded David Parker, maybe some of those think tank fellows he was on the board of, there no way he’s swinging it on his own dime.
Ignore Parker at your own peril. He may come across as a home-schooled yokel (he is, to be fair) but a search of the organizations he’s been associated with show that he has the backing of some serious dark money. His shenanigans around the province also suggest this. And apparently the rules don’t apply to him as he’s made a fine mockery of Elections Alberta. Laws for thee but not for me…
FoF: Good point, but I don’t think Mr. Parker is a yokel, home schooled though he may be. His father is the graduate of an elite theological college at the heart of a great Laurentian university and I’m sure he played a role in his boy’s education, grounding him well in the Western Canon and the history of antiquity, which seems to have resonated with the lad. DJC
It’s hard to be a proud Canadian/Albertan. Divisive politics are turning voters away from the UCP.
The AB Separatist’s are eating their young! Again!
Well, nothing else will eat them.
With friends like Rath, it seems Smith doesn’t need enemies.
It seems the hard core separatists don’t trust her any more than the Forever Canadians. This is exactly the problem with trying to be ambiguous here. This is a yes/no issue and eventually one has to take a clear stand.
Smith who is very slippery, but good with her communications, can make all the smooth and glib statements she wants but many people will not be satisfied without a clear yes or no here.
The red tories have not gone away, nor has former Premier Kenney and there seems to be a broad alliance forming now that even may include left leaning councilors. Of course, it will not be permanent, but it’s strength is it better represents the majority of Albertans on the important issue of remaining in Canada or not than does Rath or Smith.
Alberta Conservatives can be very brutal when they sense their leader is out of line or starting to falter. Ask Klein, Stelmach, Redford or Kenney. Yes, different parties, but the UCP seems to have inherited its predecessors taste for Premierside.
With encouraging separatists and separatism, Smith has opened a Pandora’s box she may soon come to wish she hadn’t.
All this silliness is just a monumental waste of time. What is really going on is that the oil company shareholders like Exxon have succeeded in manipulating what we have been led to believe is a representative democracy to continue to pollute the air, the soil and the water unimpeded and have us pay for it, while they laugh all the way to the bank.
I heard that David Parker is also in Texas. Doesn’t want to pay his fines of over $100,000 to Elections Alberta. Somebody is going to have to make him pay those fines.
Poor Dave Parker had to bugger off to Texas to lick his wounds? I can understand why he went there. When I went to Texas I couldn’t believe how cheap the booze was… I saw a 60 pounder of vodka on sale for $9, down from a regular price of $12.
They free pour “cocktails” down there too, here is your pint of vodka sir !
I can see one possible upside to Rath’s threatened coup against Smith. If the UCP ever does become openly separatist, it’ll clarify the political situation. No UCP MLA will be able to avoid making a declaration—for Canada, or against Canada? Choose now.
BTW, when did Smith stop yammering about “a sovereign Alberta in a united Canada”? Did somebody point out this doesn’t play well in focus groups? Or did some PR flack say it’s a wordier version of the Parti Quebecois’ old slogan “sovereignty association”? Not a good look in English-speaking Canada…including Alberta.
I think she still pulls it out and waves it around, but nobody applauds; there is just the sound of eyes rolling.
The Gripes of Rath. A comedy.
That would have been a better headline. Next time. DJC
I think it has to be a dark comedy. From the very trusted AI (haha!)- dark comedy (or black comedy) is a subgenre of storytelling that finds humor in morbid, taboo, or painful subjects. It tackles serious themes—such as death, violence, disease, and existential dread—through irony, satire, and deadpan wit, forcing the audience to laugh at situations that would normally evoke discomfort or distress.
Most of those themes fit today’s separatists’ agenda.
Mike– if we’re doing comedy, Alberduh version:
Boss Hawg, his sidekick RossCo. with the hound Flash, her of the Velvet Ears….
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. If Rath want to get rid of Batshit Smith, I’m all in. Whatever happens afterwards, is another saga that many are willing to with when the time comes.
Man, it would be an amazing gift to both Canadians and albertans if the UCP openly rebrands as a separatist party. As *checks notes* Tyler Shandro!? Pointed out that’s not much of an election strategy but they’re welcome to it.
Getting pretty sick of listening to this lawyer cosplaying as a cowboy cosplaying as a tough guy. Kick Rocks Jeffrey, you lost.
Political conservatism is a malignant political pathology thats has metastasized into fascism, in every jurisdiction where it is ascendant.
Rath is just another loudmouthed fool who is angry at the world for not giving him the respect to which he believes he is entitled (but has never earned). Rath is a shockingly uninspiring leader who lacks the intellectual capacity to understand what the true consequences of separation would be for Alberta.
Man!–getting hard to keep all of Alberta’s partisan acronyms memorized! There’s the UCP, NDP, PTP, and RPA which represent parties in the running; then the political advocacy groups, three pro-secessionist and one pro-federalist: APP, SFA, TBA, and FC, respectively. Figure you gotta include the now-defunct PCP and WP (the latter doing double-duty as either Wildrose or Wexit parties) since the issue today is about keeping the two main precursor parties to the currently governing UCP actually a “United” party, given its schizophrenic history, its shotgun-wedding, and the rotating door to and from its caucus (whence the aforementioned “not-conservative” party but rather “Progressive” and “Tory”), which brings us to the final acronym–PCI–for the “in-and-out” Poop Cookie Independent MLA who was booted as a UCP candidate, won the riding as an Independent, and has since been readmitted to the UCP: she should be included with the other precursors for her contribution to the party’s bonds of complicity in one perfidy or other.
That’s over half the alphabet of acronymic letters (for partisan-political Scrabble™ aficionados, they are, with pluralities indicated: A4, B, C3, D, F2, I, N, P11, R, S, T2, U, and W). They might be arranged in one sort of divination or another, perhaps I-Ching~, Ifa~, or gematria-like, which would probably yield predictive analyses as good as any journalist’s, pundit’s, politician’s or partisan chauvinist’s. Maybe one could figure out how a busy working gal like Danelle Smith does it–not only maintaining some sort of detent between the diametrically opposed positions on secession espoused by either faction of her party, but also minding the ongoing war with federalism (identified as “Ottawa” by more trad Tories in caucus, and as “Canada” by her more rad TBA faction), plus intentionally mismanaging the public weal, and dodging culpabilities accumulating in her cabinet. That’s gotta be a busy day.
I do agree that Smith is probably the only politician who can perpetrate this “political protection racket,” but Ockham compels me to attribute such successes we cannot deny her to a simple fact: as much as the two factions of the UCP dislike each other, they both know that if they don’t hang together, they’ll probably hang separately–the kind of separation neither wants. So they remain “united” rather than “untied.” I just don’t believe it’s cliché, “we’re sticking it out for the kids’ sake…”
Yet the wrath of Jeff suggests the traditional sleeping in separate bedrooms couldn’t quell his ardour to indict–quite possibly marking the UCP zenith, or ‘peak-Danielle.’ On the other hand, a brief review of conservative schizophrenia might better yield the probability of further schism than, say, rolling the bones.
A kind of schizophrenia attends all conservatism, but more so in Alberta. Longtime bastion of the partisan-right, the province was once a normally staid, somewhat boring political landscape making the occasional bout of dual-mindedness all the more obvious, even when both minds were ostensibly of the same polity. Certainly loyal voters of the right were of two minds when over three decades of theocratic Socred government was defeated by a new kind of conservatism, “progressive,” meaning something perhaps not quite wholly Red Tory. That faction eventually set the record as longest-serving governing party in Canadian history.
Alberta ProgCons matched their federal namesake in dominating Alberta politics, even electing one of its federal MPs as Prime Minister in 1979, a not so happy episode but at least mercifully short, in sharp contrast to the province’s near-one-party dynasty. Joe Clark led the last federal ProgCon government from the West before Les Bleues moved the heart of neoconservatism to Quebec, whereupon another bout of schizophrenia eventually wiped out a legacy of two back-to-back, record-setting majorities, and the splitting personalities led their respective adherents off in two different directions.
While the Bloc half became a nationalist party of no particular political ideology other than Quebec independence, the Reform half experienced another bout of two-mindedness, first of its leader whose slogan once was “The West Wants In”–at that time a euphemism for ‘The West Wants Quebec Out.’ Ultimately it became “Unite the Right” when Reform leader Preston Manning realized a federal majority was impossible without Quebec Bleues whom he and his party so thoughtlessly rejected. The party thence split further, this time between Manning’s supporters and those of former Alberta ProgCon cabinet minister Stockwell Day who won the leadership of the new Reform-a-CRAP-a-Con-Alliance party and soon the Loyal Opposition in Ottawa–for obvious reasons called simply “Alliance.”
It did not, however, win the affections of the federal Tories who were slowly recovering from their two-seat drubbing of ’93. But that was the least of Day’s problems which included yet another subdivision of mind when nine of his caucus hived off to sit as an independent [Conservative] Democratic Representative Caucus in protest over his incompetent leadership. And then that snap election which caught Day with his pants down, disappointing all hope of an Alliance government and ushering in third Liberal majority for Jean Chrétien. Conservatives were furious about the snap election, but as any schizophrenic will tell you, there’s medicine to forestall an anger-triggering event which really ought to be taken. Of course many don’t.
The ProgCon rump was initially led interim by Jean Charest, the sole remaining, former Mulroney cabinet minister, then by good ole Joe Who who led the party back to 12-seat official status in 2002 and, through by-elections added three more. Clark spurned offers to ally with the Alliance. Yet the sober, resolute and slowly recuperating party still harboured a latent schizophrenic element who eventually lied to members at the ProgCon’s leadership convention that as leader he would never entertain amalgamating the ProgCon party with the bewildered Alliance party. Turned out it was the last leadership convention for the veteran Tory party as its new leader,
Peter MacKay, treacherously broke his promise and amalgamated the party with the Alliance anyway, now led by Stephen “Alberta Firewall” Harper, in return for guaranteed cabinet portfolios, most of which exceeded MacKay’s level of competence. The new party was christened CPC, the ‘P’ not standing for “progressive.”
As crazy as these events were at the federal level, they were getting crazier at the provincial level which, given their Alberta commonality, one wonders if there’s something in the air or water correlating to conflicted political minds. Premier Ralph Klein, extreme manifestation of incredible shrinking small-c conservatism, was of another mind than the Lougheedites (cƒ “Kenneyites”). Klein’s successor, Ed Stelmach, tried to remediate but wisely left the sanitorium before growing post-Klein Redmonton-Calgary schizophrenia claimed him as well, but not before symptoms of the affliction appeared, ironically by a merger of the Alberta Alliance party and the unregistered Wildrose party to form the Wildrose Alliance, the thin edge of a widening schism on the right.
Wildrose leader Paul Hinman won a by-election seat in 2009. Later, Danielle Smith was elected leader and, leading in the polls over the governing PCs and Opposition Liberals, attracted floor-crossers, two of them from the PC caucus. Smith failed to achieve the predicted win but nonetheless Wildrose became official Opposition. The rending of political wood became evermore audible when premier Allison Redford was ousted by her own PC caucus and replaced by former federal CPC cabinet minister Jim Prentice. However, it was Wildrose which was suddenly afflicted with the same mental disease than gave it birth: nine caucus members (cƒ the DRC nine in the HoC) including Opposition leader Danielle Smith herself split off and crossed the floor to the PCs in 2014.
Outraged voters, erstwhile supporters from both parties, reacted by way of the last, most-unified electoral decision ever seen since in Alberta–which altogether elected a majority for the longtime fringe NDP. It was a default win and only seemed like Dipper leader Rachel Notley had hammered the wedge clean through the PCs dying dynasty. In fact, it was Danielle Smith’s floor crossing which drove it home. She lost her PC nomination bid and didn’t run in that astounding 2015 upset. Neither the PCs nor Wildrose ever contested another election. The Wildrose split just kept on splitting like a factional fractal until Jason Kenney arrived to fatally reduce the shakes to kindling.
Conservatism, especially of this province, amply shows chronic symptoms of this pernicious disease. The K-Boy found out after founding, then leading the UCP to its maiden victory in 2019, only to discover that Albertans were of two minds about Covid, one enthusiastic about ousting him, the same one deluded into replacing him with the same Danielle Smith who was already instrumental in the destruction of two parties of the Alberta right.
It’s understood that the vast majority of voters who cast for the NDP in 2105 were former supporters of right-wing parties. The Dippers lost in 2019 but retained an Opposition caucus several times larger than it had before 2015. Of course many of those 2015 protest voters returned to the right in 2019, now the UCP on a maiden voyage so stormy, a goodly number of them returned to the NDP in 2023, making it the largest Opposition party in Alberta history. Yet it’s as if there are in fact three parties of the right: a centre-right NDP faction made up of former PC and Wildrose voters, a centre-right ProgCon faction of the UCP, and its far-right TBA faction. It’s hard to imagine how so many erstwhile conservative voters can get so whipsawed without resorting to some sort of antipsychotic medication.
It’s too easy to ascribe Rath’s call for Smith’s ouster to the long history of split-mindedness among Alberta’s right-wing parties. We should remind that there’s another possible reason, perhaps unique in the annuls of Alberta political history, one that’s related to the brewing storm over the massive voter-list leak which, in addition to Rath’s boast that he’s been consulting foreign entities interested in breaking Alberta away from Canada, could well have serious legal consequences for him and his ilk–another irony in that, despite mustering a divisive ousting of Smith as UCP leader, both sides realize that if the UCP loses power, many of them are likely to find themselves in a court of law to answer for a list of perfidies to numerous to list here. How serious can Rath’s call to oust Smith be?
I suspect Rath is acting out just like his tRumpublican idol: when in deep, deep shit, throw some of it at a distractive alternative. The window of opportunity looks like it’s closing for separatism and it’s time to panic for the party whose founder now calls an insane asylum.
Chronic schizophrenia or current circumstances, or a bit of both? Take your pick.
Hello DJC and fellow commenters,
I think that the title of the column is very funny. Lots of great comments and a number of particularly witty ones.
Birds of a feather flock together. Parker, Rath and Modry, all afoul or afowl, of various jurisdictions want to have a separate AB, likely to pardon and compensate each other for judicial overreach and persecution.
Modry’s charges are particularly heinous. he used his position to bilk his dementia afflicted relatives of $1.3M. And these guys are the ones that want to run the new country?