UCP POLICIES UNCLEAR
The UCP’s record could be seen as either a glass half full or a glass half empty one year after the party was created from the merger of the Wildrose and the Progressive Conservatives.
Jason Kenney had a series of major victories by winning election as head of the PCs, bringing together Alberta’s two biggest conservative parties and then being chosen leader. Ever since, the united right has led in opinion polls over the governing NDP and will be a force in the provincial election scheduled for next year.
Kenney, a long-serving federal cabinet minister under former prime minister Stephen Harper, has managed to capitalize on anger among segments of Alberta society about such issues as the carbon tax and the economy.
To cap off an eventful year, the UCP won two recent byelections, although this wasn’t surprising given that the ridings are conservative strongholds. But it isn’t all positive.
MLA Prab Gill resigned from caucus after being caught up in an alleged constituency ballot-stuffing scandal, and the party asked a candidate to drop out of the Brooks-Medicine Hat nomination race after he posted antiIslamic slurs on social media in 2017.
While Kenney properly declared last weekend that “Those who express hateful views towards entire groups of people are not welcome to run for the United Conservative Party,” what does it indicate about some of the people attracted to the UCP that he had to say it at all?
As Opposition leader, he has been quick to criticize, which of course is part of his job. However, the party platform is still a work in progress, leaving voters with little insight into what the UCP would do if it forms the government.
For example, after eliminating the carbon tax, what would be next — other measures to try to reduce emissions linked to global warming, or nothing at all?
And what would the UCP do that hasn’t been tried by multiple federal and Alberta governments to ensure the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is built?
The party missed a chance to clarify its bedrock principles last spring when MLAs repeatedly ducked debate on the bill to create protest-free “bubble zones” outside abortion clinics, even though UCP deputy house leader Angela Pitt called it “an incredibly contentious social issue.”
Being opposed or silent isn’t good enough for a party that wants to form government. The UCP must make clear where it would stand if it held Alberta’s levers of power.