UCP strikes back following latest ‘bozo eruption’

Condemns idea bigots welcome under umbrella

EDMONTON • When Alberta’s United Conservative Party ousted yet another candidate on Thursday — this time, for posing with members of the far-right group Soldiers of Odin at an Edmonton constituency association pub night — the party pushed back hard at the narrative the governing NDP has been trying to build, one that holds bigots have a habit of sidling up to Jason Kenney’s party.

“If you use dog-whistle politics enough, eventually ... people are going to respond to the whistle,” said Premier Rachel Notley on Tuesday.

Her comments came two days before the UCP gave nominee Lance Coulter the boot in a blistering letter signed by Janice Harrington, the party’s executive director. Coulter was one of three candidates for the party’s nomination in the Edmonton-West Henday riding who posed with members of the group — an anti-immigrant organization with its origins in Finland, founded in response to fears over the migrant crisis in Europe. The other two, Leila Houle and Nicole Williams, issued a joint statement saying they’d been unaware with whom they were posing: “Had we known at the time, we certainly would not have had our pictures taken with these individuals."

Coulter, however, said Wednesday he’d searched online before talking to them, and knew who they were. “Now I don’t know everything about them and where they stand, but they were polite. So any person who is polite to me, I’ll be polite back,” Coulter said, and so the next day he was out.

In Canada, the Soldiers of Odin have attempted to cultivate a gentler image: In Grande Prairie, Alta., the local chapter held a car wash to raise money to send children to summer camp. That gave the party no pause.

“We strongly disagree with your seemingly sympathetic assessment of Soldiers of Odin and are frankly disturbed with your cavalier attitude taken to a hate group attending a United Conservative Party (UCP) event,” Harrington’s letter says. “A polite racist is still a racist.”

That’s the insinuation the NDP seem once again to be making about the UCP — that if they’re not polite racists themselves, they’re at least willing to welcome those who are into the conservative tent. But in an interview with the Post, Harrington said the attacks from the NDP are expected.

“The only thing they can do is try to paint us with a brush because they can’t run on their own record,” Harrington said. “There’s always a chance that we’re going to have unique individuals, and I just find it interesting that the NDP is really arguing that they don’t have quirky members of their own with interesting views.”

Casting conservatives as bigots — or at least attempting to — is a time-tested tac- tic in Canadian politics. The Progressive Conservatives in Alberta once did it to the upstart Wildrose. David Moscrop, a communications post-doc at the University of Ottawa, also points to the Liberals’ long history of attacks at the federal level, against the PCs, then the Reform Party, then the Canadian Alliance and right through the Harper era to the present

“It’s a class of a broader tactic, which is make our opponents look unreasonable, out of touch, extreme, dangerous,” said Moscrop. “I think quite rightly, parties make a calculus that most of the country is centre, centreright a little bit ... if you can shove your opponent out of that range, then you’ve got the ring to yourself.”

Though Harrington kiboshed Coulter’s candidacy, he remains a party member, she said. (Reached by phone on Friday, Coulter declined to comment. But, in a Thursday Facebook post, he suggested he would try to appeal the decision.)

Faron Ellis, a University of Lethbridge professor, said Coulter’s mistake was “not so much bozo eruption as just dumbass,” because, echoing a sense within the party, he should’ve known better.

“Any candidate that’s running for the UCP that is not acutely aware that all of these types of incidents and everything they do will be under sharp scrutiny … should possibly be disqualified for bad political judgment, never mind the problems it will cause the party,” Ellis said.

A good reflection of what the party really stands for, said Harrington, are the nominees who have been successful. “They’re diverse examples of intelligent, articulate, reasoned people,” she said. “That’s the concepts that the members are expressing their will for.”

Notley, speaking after Coulter’s ouster, said "there’s no room for debate about how much racism is okay.

“Let’s just start there. There is a line that I believe the vast majority of Albertans understand exist, and the concept of neo-Nazism is well past that line. It’s on the very distant other side of the line,” she said.

Harrington said the party has made it clear that hateful views are not welcome, and taken strong steps when they emerge. She described the NDP attacks as “some sort of make-believe idea of what it is that we stand for.

“The evidence is pretty strong that these are not the cases, especially when it relates to Jason,” she said.

Both parties may be more susceptible to such attacks during this election cycle because of changes to Alberta’s elections legislation which mean anyone who’s even seeking a nomination has to register with the government — allowing candidates to theoretically announce they were seeking a nomination without having gone through the party’s vetting process — but leaving the party open to attack nonetheless.

“They can go out and they can say and do whatever they want without even having looked at our process or our rules,” said Harrington.