Populist manifesto means chaos

With the wedding of Alberta’s rightwing parties complete, former Wildrose Party leader and MP Brian Jean was first out of the gate last week with a formal campaign for the leadership of the United Conservatives. Jean released what he would call a list of policies, and what I would probably just call a pamphlet, on the general theme of democratic reform.

Like any such list it is a mix of the good and the bad. Jean wants to have a provincewide referendum on police use of photo radar, letting the results in each municipality dictate whether it can be used there — a sort of “local option” system.

Sure, this is cheap populism, but cheap populism is what you get when governments and police forces invent odious new forms of sponging and surveillance. If Jean wins and makes good on this promise, I predict that the “local” option to forbid photo radar will end up being universal in Alberta when the votes are counted.

Jean also wants to reverse NDP changes to labour law that introduced a “card check” system to Alberta, allowing unions to be certified immediately in a workplace after a count of signed cards gathered by organizers. Jean’s policy would make secret ballots for certification mandatory. Card checks provide obvious opportunities for compulsion by union heavies, and the New Democrats’ introduction of them was a distasteful spasm of ideology — as well being an obnoxious gift to friends from Rachel Notley’s old pre-electoral world.

So Jean’s democratic reform package has some merit, and likely broad appeal.

Unfortunately it also includes the curious promise to “Hold a referendum to force constitutional discussions on equalization.” This seems like a recipe for future trouble along the precise lines of Justin Trudeau’s vow to end first-pastthe-post federal elections, and UCP leadership voters ought to take note. How an Alberta referendum would “force” other provinces to enter into constitutional discussions has not been explained, and anyone mindful of Canadian history might ask what the referendum question would even look like.

If you don’t think the photo-radar referendum and the yell-at-Canadaabout-equalization referendum would keep Alberta busy enough, Jean also has a plan for a voter recall law. Voter recall of MLAs between general elections has always been a popular idea in Alberta, but within Canada it actually exists only in B.C.

There is a simple reason for this: B.C. has usually had two or more political parties which contend for power in a meaningful way, and Alberta hardly ever has. During Alberta’s four decades of Progressive Conservative ultra-dominance, PC premiers could always keep a boot planted firmly on various sprouts and buddings of direct democracy, however keen Reform Party-type backbenchers might be.

Alberta has actually had voter-recall legislation, though most people do not remember the details, which are obscure even in the history books. Recall was part of the revolutionary election platform of the Social Credit movement in 1935, when monetary crankery swept the province and brought the millenarian radio star William Aberhart to power.

Aberhart, whose bible college and radio station were in Calgary, had not run for a seat in the general election; when it became obvious that no one else would do the trick as a Social Credit premier, Aberhart had to persuade a rural member, William Morrison of Okotoks-High River, to step aside for him.

Unfortunately, Aberhart may have been terrific on the radio (though his appeal as a performer makes no more sense to present-day ears than Hitler’s does), but he was as bad as you could imagine as a constituency MLA.

After giving brusque, almost abusive treatment to visitors and delegations from his riding, he became the target of Alberta’s first and only recall campaign. Needless to say, the legislature was barely able to meet in time to repeal the Recall Act, retroactive to the date of royal assent.

This short-lived experiment in direct democracy required a recall petition to have signatures from twothirds of a constituency’s eligible voters for success. (By all accounts, the ranks of the disillusioned in Aberhart’s riding were well clear of this standard.) B.C.’s recall law sets the bar at 40 per cent, a level that experience has shown to make recall all but impossible in practice.

The interesting thing about Jean’s recall proposal is that a Wildrose private members’ bill, introduced unsuccessfully in 2015, included a rule that only 20 per cent of a constituency’s eligible voters would have to sign a petition in order to instantly vacate a legislature seat.

If this is still the Brian Jean doctrine, the effects of such a law could be extraordinary. There were losing candidates in the 2015 Alberta election who got votes from 20 per cent of the eligible electors all by themselves. Seventeen of the losers, by my math, were over 18 per cent.

In the typical Alberta riding, around 30 per cent of eligible electors voted for someone other than the winner.

You can see how this might end up: the day the Alberta general election ends, the preparation for a formal recall campaign begins — in 10 or 20 different ridings.

Why, when I imagine the ceaseless chaos, the instability in the assembly, the pockets of engineered, contrived strife ... it is almost enough to make me warm to the idea.