Kenney evades duty in vote walkout
One of the strangest mysteries in Alberta political history — the case of the missing opposition — finally ended at 5 p.m. Wednesday.
Forty-five MLAs voted on the third and final reading of Bill 9, which expands no-harassment zones around abortion clinics.
Only one MLA voted against it — Independent MLA Derek Fildebrandt, who had been ejected from the United Conservative caucus earlier this year.
Absent were all 25 UCP members, including leader Jason Kenney.
During debate they had been utterly silent, feigning disinterest.
They left the chamber whenever a vote was called. Just quietly filed out.
Veteran parliamentarians say this is an unprecedented shunning of the opposition’s duty to criticize, analyze and offer improvements to government bills.
It dramatically illustrates Kenney’s political strategy — an intense focus on the economy, based on the conviction that Albertans care far more about that than divisive social issues.
But many Albertans do not regard such matters as abortion rights and LGBTQ policy as secondary.
Bill 9 is a genuine response to insults, threats, shaming and invasions of privacy — including video recordings — by anti-abortion activists around clinics in Calgary and Edmonton.
Dodging the issue leaves doubt about whether the UCP is, as the NDP always charges, an extreme right-wing party with a hidden agenda.
One has to wonder if Kenney won’t let MLAs say a word about abortion, is he afraid of what they’ll say?
His legislature avoidance appears to be entirely new for Alberta.
Never before has an official opposition, or any non-government party, refused to debate and vote on a government bill.
“I certainly never saw that,” says David McNeill, who retired in 2016 after 29 years as clerk of the legislature.
“Members are elected to debate and propose,” McNeill adds. “In my view, this is a total abrogation of an opposition’s responsibility.”
Jim Horsman, elected in 1975 as a PC member and a minister for two decades, also says: “I can never recall anything like that occurring.”
He, too, feels the UCP failed in its official duty.
The NDP caucus asked the legislature library to search for previous examples of an opposition boycotting a government bill.
The researchers found no parallel.
There are a few cases of MLAs excusing themselves from a vote because of personal conflicts of interest, as they’re required to do.
In 1981, the four-member Social Credit Official Opposition refused to vote on a $20 million payment for McDougall Centre. But that was over a spending warrant, not legislation.
Apart from that, there’s no record of a similar evasion of duty.
Fildebrandt was the sole UCP-style conservative who stayed to debate. He proposed amendments to Bill 9 because of his own convictions about free speech.
The amendments weren’t incorporated, but to him that’s not the point.
“Majority governments can pass whatever legislation they want, but the only check on their power is that the opposition opposes,” he says.
“When you refuse to even show up, you give the government a blank cheque to do much more.”
Kenney’s evasion of a controversial social policy issue extends beyond the legislature, into his own party.
At the recent UCP founding convention in Red Deer, he didn’t once speak on a policy issue. In fact, he never entered the room when these debates were occurring.
That led to trouble when a motion proposed that parents should be notified, and give consent, before their kids join a gay-straight alliance.
MLA Ric McIver pleaded with delegates: “This is about outing gay kids ... Don’t be called the Lake of Fire party, I’m begging you.”
Kenney, who did not want the motion to pass, could have come to the microphone and used his status as leader to defeat it. Leaders often do that when they sniff trouble at party policy conventions.
But he wasn’t there. The motion passed with 57 per cent of the vote.
Later, Kenney said as leader he gets to decide what motions mean. He interpreted this one as saying something entirely different from what nearly everybody else assumed.
From his awkward position under the bus, McIver mouthed agreement with the boss.
Kenney has always promised not to legislate on social issues. But that does not excuse the leader of Alberta’s Official Opposition from facing up to them. And it certainly doesn’t allow him to play legislature hooky.