What’s Alberta PC policy beyond unity?

For a former political dynasty that ruled the province for four decades, Albertans suddenly know surprisingly little about the Progressive Conservative party. This strange, new unfamiliarity starts at the top with its new leader. People may recall Jason Kenney was a former MP and federal cabinet minister in the Harper government but ordinary Albertans can be forgiven for wondering just where he stands now that he’s on the provincial stage.

Sure, they know he wants to amalgamate the Tories with the rival Wildrose in a new conservative alliance to unseat the NDP government. It’s a popular stance he rode to an easy victory in the PC leadership race. The problem is, uniting the right is the only policy most Albertans have heard the new party leader articulate at any length.

For a leadership race that will likely transform Alberta politics, the months-long contest offered little debate on policies. The spotlight focused on the question and logistics of unity while rarely straying into matters of policy substance.

Albertans heard over and over that the party stands against the NDP. It left many wondering what does it stand for? What is Kenney’s vision for the province? Does he have one, beyond the scenario where the NDP loses the next election?

To abhor the direction Premier Rachel Notley is taking the province makes for political theatre, and Kenney masterfully plays the role of foil.

It’s a performance he repeated on the weekend when he vowed the party’s first act after winning the 2019 election would be to repeal the carbon tax and other policies. “We are going to work hard to repeal each element of the disastrous NDP legislative and regulatory record,” Kenney said.

What he failed to share were any ideas of his own to replace the NDP’s. Kenney is now a provincial politician, the leader of a major political party; he is no longer an outsider who has the luxury of sniping from afar or drive-by broadsides. It’s worrying he is in no rush to seek a seat in a byelection. “My emphasis would be on building the united party,” Kenney told

columnist Don Braid. “We have a competent team in the legislature that would hold the NDP to account.”

But Albertans also deserve to be able to hold Kenney himself to account. At the very least, they deserve to know what he stands for and how he would vote on proposed legislation. He speaks now for the party’s eight elected members and should take centre stage instead of directing from behind the curtain. extreme scenarios of accidents and weather. It found no likely or even improbable set of circumstances that would result in a radiation release to the public — due partly to the great depth of the repository, ideal geology, and low seismic activity across vast spans of time.

Similarly, Simpson’s concern about the next expected period of glaciers is an argument for the DGR, not against it. The DGR rock at a depth of 680 metres has survived intact through nine glaciers in the last million years alone. Surface storage would not be immune to the next round of glaciers in 20,000 to 60,000 years — one more reason to bury the waste in a deep geologic vault.

She worries that no containers have been invented that will last hundreds of thousands of years. As the scientists who studied the DGR site and geology have shown, to the satisfaction of a federal Joint review Panel led by eminent experts, the rock — among the tightest in the world — is itself the impermeable container for the waste in the very long term. A molecule of water takes tens of thousands of years to move just one metre in this rock.

OPG is confident in the science behind the DGR and takes its responsibilities for protecting the environment seriously. The DGR is the responsible permanent solution for the waste for future generations.