Vote for UCP leader finally set to begin
As voting begins Thursday for the leadership of the UCP, its members have a clear choice
United Conservative Party members begin voting Thursday for the first official leader of the fledgling party.
Three candidates are left in the fray, each of whom coughed up $75,000 for a stab at the title — Brian Jean, Jason Kenney and Doug Schweitzer.
The official leadership race ran for about four months, but the unofficial contest has lasted far longer.
You could argue it began back in July 2016 when Kenney first started touting the idea of a unified provincial conservative party around Alberta.
Then still a Calgary Conservative MP — a job he kept until Sept. 20, 2016 — Kenney spent months criss-crossing Alberta in a blue pickup adorned with Unite Alberta signage, encouraging conservatives to get behind the cause as he vied for leader of the Alberta Progressive Conservative party.
His modus operandi was to sign up as many small-c conservatives as possible, securing their votes in the PC race so he could execute the first step in his five-point unity plan.
Even then, conservatives regularly asked, “What about Brian Jean?”
They seemed unsure if they would vote against the popular Wildrose leader, who brought his party back from the brink of destruction to the role of official Opposition in the 2015 election.
Kenney would kind of shrug and say he’d serve under anyone who could defeat the NDP. Their defeat, he would say, is bigger than any single ego, any single party.
Kenney’s answer was, essentially, first things first. And that first step was rallying enough support for a united right so the idea would come to fruition.
In January, Jean declared he was officially on board with a unity mandate. Two months later, Kenney romped to a win in the PC leadership race, securing 75 per cent of votes.
Figuring out the business of how the Wildrose and PC parties would come together took weeks of careful negotiation.
In May, Jean and Kenney held a joint media event announcing they had reached an agreement in principle. That day, they were asked if they’d each run for leader of the new party; Jean said yes immediately, but Kenney said he’d cross that bridge after the unity vote.
The vote came on July 22 this year. Just over half of each party’s members cast a unity ballot. It was a resounding victory for the Yes campaign, which won with 95 per cent of the votes.
The next step in the UCP’s journey to becoming a fully formed party is electing the leader. It will then hold a founding convention to sort out the intricacies of its framework and policy.
These are the three men running for leader.
BRIAN JEAN
Jean officially declared his run for the leadership July 25.
A past Fort McMurray MP, lawyer and business owner, Jean, 54, comes to the race with the benefit of being a familiar face in Alberta politics, with popularity on the conservative side of the divide.
Like Kenney, Jean spent many years as a federal Conservative MP in Ottawa. He was first elected to represent Athabasca in 2004, then Fort McMurray-Athabasca in 2006.
Jean served as a parliamentary secretary for a few years before declining reappointment to focus on his constituency. He resigned in January 2014 to spend time with his sick son.
The next year, he announced he’d enter politics once again, this time on a provincial stage as he vied for the Wildrose leadership. The party had been left rudderless, losing its leader and a chunk of MLAs during a series of floor-crossings under Danielle Smith.
Jean was elected Wildrose leader on March 28, 2015 — just days after the death of his son, and two months before the provincial election. He led the party from near destruction to official Opposition in the election.
As opposition leader, Jean has rallied against the carbon tax, mounting provincial debt under the NDP government, equalization calculations, crime and problems with the health-care system.
He regularly polls well among Albertans. He married his wife, Kim, last year, is comfortable in cowboy boots or riding a horse, and was applauded for how he handled the Fort McMurray wildfire that destroyed his own home.
But he has also faced internal pressures.
He bore the brunt of blame for a UCP caucus deficit that saw political staffers laid off, and was publicly dissed by then-Wildrose, now independent, MLA Derek Fildebrandt, who said on the day of the unity vote he’d never support his boss for leader of a united party.
Some former Wildrosers remain angry that Jean was even onside with unity. His party was, after all, created after a splinter of disillusioned Tories left over what they saw as misspending and a divergence from conservative ideals.
A decade of animosity between the two parties had created a ravine-like divide. Some still refuse to come onside with the UCP, including a group that has since formed a kind of Wildrose 2.0 called the Alberta Advantage Party.
Jean received endorsements from a good chunk of UCP MLAs from the Wildrose team, but hasn’t won over what used to be the PC bench, most of whom have gravitated towards Kenney.
Three exceptions are Wayne Drysdale, who’s backing Schweitzer; Richard Starke, who says he’ll remain a PC come the fall sitting; and Rick Fraser, who left the UCP altogether to sit as an independent.
An integral part of Jean’s leadership campaign has been policy. Only he and Schweitzer have released planks they say would form the backbone of their leadership.
JASON KENNEY
Kenney was once a heavy-hitter in then-prime minister Stephen Harper’s cabinet.
The Ontario-born 49-year-old was a rumoured contender in the race for federal Tory leader after his government lost power.
Instead, in 2016, he returned to Alberta — after nearly 20 years in Ottawa as a Calgary MP — in a bid to unite conservatives.
Kenney officially declared his intention to head the UCP on July 29. It marked his second leadership campaign in less than a year after he fought for the PC crown, winning handily.
Kenney has often brandished his time in Ottawa — in particular, his roles with federal cabinet — as proof he can lead the UCP to victory.
While Jean points to polls indicating he could win seats in Edmonton far more easily than his rival, Kenney tends to frame leadership not as a battle against Premier Rachel Notley, but against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
In Ottawa, Kenney made sweeping and controversial changes to the immigration program. More recently, he faced questions over how an immigrant accused of a September truck attack in Edmonton made it into Canada under his watch. But he also won over a large number of socially conservative immigrants, bringing them into the federal Tory fold.
He also served terms as defence and employment minister.
During the UCP leadership campaign, Kenney has brushed aside calls from rivals to release policy. He has, however, declared he would repeal the carbon tax and what he calls “damaging” NDP policies if elected.
Kenney is seen as more divisive than Jean on social policy.
He has said parents should sometimes know if their child joins a gay-straight alliance at school and has repeatedly hammered the NDP’s curriculum overhaul as social engineering. This week, he backed Catholic educators, saying they had every right to teach kids sex education as they see fit.
Kenney has continued to drive around the province in his blue Dodge pickup. He picked up 23 endorsements from federal Tory MPs on Wednesday, the same day Jean received an endorsement from former NHLer Theo Fleury.
Unlike the PC race, in which Kenney was fined by the party over a hospitality suite, he hasn’t been penalized for misbehaviour. After letting his UCP membership lapse, however, he did have to be granted a waiver to run for leader at all.
Kenney regularly uses the term “servant leadership” as his motivation for running.
DOUG SCHWEITZER
Calgary lawyer and political strategist Schweitzer, a 38-yearold married dad of two, brought to the race youth and a repeated dedication to socially progressive policy and fiscal conservatism.
His campaign comes with the tagline “the New Blue.”
Hitting coffee shops, gatherings and university bars across the province, Schweitzer focused on young UCP members who don’t want to see Alberta’s conservative party move back to debating issues such as abortion and gay-straight alliances.
As Jean and Kenney attacked one another directly or indirectly on social media, Schweitzer largely floated above the fray.
This week, though, when Kenney backed a Catholic sex-ed curriculum that consent can’t be taught as the threshold to have sex, Schweitzer jumped in with a news release saying “consent is black and white.” This is the exact kind of issue, he said, on which the UCP cannot be vague.
Schweitzer also hoped to court the vote of so-called Red Tories, who see Jean and Kenney as too right-leaning and too socially conservative.
When he first entered the race — on June 1, before the UCP was even voted into existence — Schweitzer would happily say most party members couldn’t pick him out of a lineup.
But he used that to his advantage, avoiding a target on his back by being the distinct underdog.
He’s not a career politician, Schweitzer is fond of saying. He’s an everyday Albertan who wants the province’s economic advantage back.
Like Jean and Kenney, Schweitzer says a UCP under his watch would roll back the carbon tax. Unlike the other two men, he would also roll back the minimum wage, arguing it hurts businesses and will shed jobs from the Alberta economy.
Schweitzer has been releasing policy ideas since he entered the race. Health care, infrastructure, education, reforming business regulations and closing the province’s gender gap have all formed part of his campaign.
As you might expect from a fiscal conservative, he also has a tax plan; he has proposed what he says is the largest tax relief in Alberta’s history, which would create jobs and curb government spending.
The UCP’s first leader will be announced Saturday in Calgary.
Kenney tends to frame leadership not as a battle against Premier Rachel Notley, but against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.