Wildrose and Tory members agree to put differences aside with vote
The course of Alberta politics dramatically shifted Saturday as members of both the Progressive Conservative and Wildrose parties overwhelmingly approved a plan to end hostilities and join together in a new United Conservative Party.
Each party announced 95 per cent support for the unity agreement in separate votes among their members, with Wildrose reporting shortly after 4 p.m. at a special meeting in Red Deer and the Tories announcing just before 7 p.m. on the Calgary Stampede grounds.
Though they were 150 kilometres apart, both Wildrose Leader Brian Jean and PC Leader Jason Kenney told jubilant supporters that the unity agreement was a first step in restoring conservative governance in Alberta and removing Rachel Notley’s NDP government.
“This is a great day for Alberta. Hope is on the horizon,” said Kenney, who stepped down as an MP last year to run for the PC leadership on a platform of unifying the parties. “We are renewing the Alberta Advantage with this democratic decision made today.”
Kenney announced that 25,692 out of 27,060 Tories who voted had supported the unity agreement, with 55 per cent turnout among members during three days of phone and online voting.
While the Tories needed a simple majority, Wildrose faced a 75-percent threshold for approval. Party returning officer Sam Magnus announced the results had smashed through that barrier, with 23,466 voters in favour and 1,132 opposed. Wildrose turnout was 57 per cent.
“Thank you for yes,” an excited Jean told the crowd in Red Deer.
“Today is not the end of Wildrose but a new beginning where we are one step closer to putting power back in the hands of the ordinary working people of Alberta.”
Alberta has seen a conservative civil war over the past decade between the Tories, who governed the province for 44 years, and the Wildrose, which has been powered by distaste over PC fiscal practices and a streak of social conservatism.
The mass floor-crossing of most of the Wildrose caucus to the then-PC government in 2014 appeared to herald reunification, but a widespread backlash to the move was a factor in the fall of the Tory dynasty in the 2015 election.
Yet the shocking arrival in power of NDP in that vote soon fuelled talk again of healing the breach between Alberta’s fractured right.
After Kenney’s leadership win in March, negotiating teams appointed by him and Jean hammered out a deal in May for members of each party to form the new UCP.
The creation of the new party will almost immediately set off a leadership race. Kenney and Jean each plan to run for the leadership.
Kenney said he would wait at least until Sunday before talking about his leadership aspirations but Jean was not so reserved.
“I plan on being Alberta’s next premier,” Jean said in his speech.
Calgary lawyer Doug Schweitzer has already thrown his hat in the ring, while Wildrose MLA Derek Fildebrandt is also considering a run. Fildebrandt, who has clashed with Jean in the past, said that no matter what, he would not support Jean in the contest.
“I’m not going to get into it right now,” Fildebrandt told reporters.
“We’ll have plenty of time to beat the crap out of each other in the coming weeks and months.”
While Kenney described the NDP as “panicking” at the prospect of the united party, deputy premier Sarah Hoffman took her own shot at the new party.
On Twitter, she posted that the UCP combines PC “entitlement” and Wildrose “extremism and cuts.”
“This weekend was really about the parties being ready to embrace the worst in each other,” Hoffman said from Edmonton.
The massive margin of victory for unity is likely to dampen concerns about defections from the UCP and a further potential split in the vote. However, some Wildrose members already plan to hold a meeting next weekend to discuss starting a new party that would hew to the party’s principles.
“The path is clear. We’ve laid out the plan and it’s going to go,” said Edmonton-South West riding president Marilyn Burns.
For the PCs, the successful unity deal means the end of the party that had the longest run in power of any in Canadian history and boasted Alberta icons such as Peter Lougheed and Ralph Klein at the helm.
But some prominent Tories have already left the party and have been working to build up a centrist alternative for the next election in 2019.
One question mark is whether Vermilion-Lloydminster MLA Richard Starke, who finished a distant second to Kenney in the PC leadership race, will join the UCP caucus.
He said recently he still had major reservations about the unity agreement and would decide his future after the vote results were known.
Starke could not be reached for comment Saturday.
But Sierra Garner, a vice-president of the PC Youth Association who supported Starke, said the unity vote was “like a bad breakup” for moderates in the party. She said she would see what the UCP was like down the road but wouldn’t be involved in its creation.
“It’s too far right from what I’ve seen and the tone is way too negative,” Garner said.
But Kenney, known as a redmeat conservative in Ottawa, reiterated that he doesn’t want to build a “narrow ideological enterprise” as he appealed to both Tories and Wildrose who had voted against the agreement.
“We need you. We want you in the United Conservative Party,” he said.
“If you have concerns about what the new party will end up standing for, then, please, the best way to express that concern is through your active involvement.”