Conservatives in Alberta unite to form new UCP
EDMONTON — The former president of Alberta’s Progressive Conservatives says some members feel adrift after a majority voted to embrace a new party, effectively consigning one of Canada’s great political brands to the ash heap of history.
Katherine O’Neill, in an interview Sunday, said she’s been hearing from many PC volunteers and members who now feel “politically homeless” in a party they feel is tacking too far right on social issues.
That plan came to fruition Saturday night when members of both parties, in separate votes, chose overwhelmingly to join forces as the new United Conservative Party.
O’Neill said is fiscally conservative, but socially progressive. She’s now heading up a political action committee called Alberta Together that is looking to back a party with similar values.
Many at the Alberta Together meetings have been embracing the centrist Alberta Party.
Dave Quest, a former PC legislature member, said he was cutting up his PC party membership card after three decades.
He said that under former PC premier Ed Stelmach the government had to fast-track infrastructure construction that had been allowed to lag when the PCs, under Ralph Klein in the 1990s, focused exclusively on debt reduction and budget cuts.
“Should (UCP) form government, it will be a 1990s fiscally driven agenda and it won’t be what’s best for the province.”
The PCs won power in 1971 and governed Alberta for almost 44 years before being defeated by Premier Rachel Notley and her NDP in 2015. The Wildrose lasted a decade.
Kenney has stressed vote splitting by the Wildrose and the PCs led to the NDP win and that only a coalition can prevent a repeat in the 2019 election. Other PCs, including most of the eightperson caucus, have embraced the Wildrose merger, and the race for a leader for the UCP has begun. That vote goes on Oct. 28.