Blue Tories behind Alberta divide
Conservative split history is decades old
The Wildrose juggernaut that now threatens to bring down the Tory dynasty was painstakingly constructed over the past five years by disaffected blue Tories, with help from key strategists allied with Stephen Harper’s federal Conservatives.
While the party’s surge in the polls might seem to have come out of nowhere, its backers have been carefully setting the stage for the Wildrose ascendance for more than five years.
The movement began in earnest in 2007, when former premier Ed Stelmach announced an independent review of oil and gas royalties. Mount Royal University political science professor Duane Bratt said the big-tent Tory party had always contained a small, very conservative right wing, which alternately tried to gain control or break away, to no avail. The royalty review made the split possible.
“The royalty review was critical to the rise of the Wildrose,” Bratt said. “That’s when money started to flow to the Wildrose . . . . It gave them a base. It gave them some anger to work with. They mobilized.”
That anger was primarily in the oilpatch, and the money was flowing in from the towers in Calgary. But from the outset the party cultivated a strong populist stance, and a review of contribution records shows money coming from individual Albertans as well.
The Wildrose party Albertans know today was born in 2008 after a merger between the Alberta Alliance and the Wildrose Party.
In the year before the merger, the Alberta Alliance got just $97,000 in contributions from supporters — tens of thousands less than the left-wing New Democratic Party. After the merger, the Wildrose Alliance raised more than $230,000; in 2009 revenue more than doubled to $700,000; and in 2010 contributions doubled again, to $1.8 million.
The most recent figures, released this week, show the party brought in $2.7 million in 2011, nearly as much as the governing Tories, who received $3.4 million in contributions.
The increasing revenue provided hard evidence of growing support and put the Wildrose in a position to challenge the Tory dynasty for the first time since the Liberals put a scare into them in 1993.
The money also gave disaffected Tories the fuel they
THE ROYALTY REVIEW WAS CRITICAL TO THE RISE OF THE WILDROSE MRU POLITICAL SCIENCE PROFESSOR DUANE BRATT
needed to reignite a “family feud” simmering in Canada’s conservative movement since at least the 1970s. The fight pits blue Tories who value selfreliance and small government against red Tories who believe the government has a bigger role to play.
Essentially, the battle playing out on the Alberta hustings in 2012 is the same conservative rift that caused the split between the federal Progressive Conservatives and the Reform party in 1988. Indeed, many of the players are the same.
Tom Flanagan, the key strategist for the Wildrose, is a member of the University of Calgary’s conservative Calgary School of thinkers, an early supporter of the Reform movement and the man who orchestrated the reunion of the federal Conservatives. He was also key to getting Stephen Harper elected leader and, later, prime minister.
Campaign manager Cliff Fryers did the same job for Reform party leader Preston Manning and was his chief of staff while in office. He later became chairman of the board of the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, and chairman of Enmax.
“In terms of the campaign team, Tom (Flanagan) and Cliff Fryers were both heavily involved with Stephen Harper in the early days, and those two are basically organizing and directing the campaign,” said Barry Cooper, a University of Calgary political science professor also aligned with the Calgary School.
“Those two guys have had a lot of experience under very trying circumstances . . . . It’s not that the Tories are an easy target or soft target, but there aren’t that many people who have had really competitive, in-your-face experience.”
Like the federal Conservatives, Cooper said, the Wildrose promotes blue-tory views, such as small government and fiscal conservatism. Since Smith was elected as leader, the party has come to reflect her strong libertarian views as well, he said.
By contrast, he said, “the senior leadership of the Alberta PC party are all ‘red Tories.’ That basically is an attitude that says conservatives can use the state to take responsibility for the weaker members of the society, and use the power of the state to ensure outcomes they think are desirable.”
“It comes down to individual responsibility versus state responsibility,” Cooper said. “With the libertarians or the blue Tories, the question is: why should the state do this? The problem with the red Tories is there is no limiting principle. What should the state not do?”
Marco Navarro is a student of the Calgary school who works as research director for the right-wing Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
He says there are similarities between the federal Conservative party and the Wildrose, but there are differences, too.
“The Tories in Ottawa have talked the talk, but only now are they beginning to walk it,” he said, referring to principles of fiscal conservatism.
He said there is also a populist attitude in Wildrose that is uniquely Albertan.
“It’s the idea that, in the words of Preston Manning, following the common sense of the common people.
“Populists portray themselves as people who are ‘of the people,’ as leaders who are an expression of the popular will, in the corner with the little guy,” Navarro said, contrasting the idea with government by elites.
He cast the fight between the Wildrose and the Tories as a family feud that is likely to get nasty.
He notes Conservative Leader Alison Redford was once married to Rob Hawkes, who led her transition team after she was elected leader of the provincial Conservatives in October 2011. Hawkes is the son of former federal Calgary-west MP Jim Hawkes, who worked with former prime minister Joe Clark — a red Tory — as far back as 1976. In the mid-1980s, Jim Hawkes hired Harper as an aide, and in 1993 Harper challenged him for the seat, and won. Harper was a Reform candidate, and a blue Tory.
When Harper resigned his seat in 1997, Rob Anders held it for the Reform, Navarro said. In 2004, Redford — a former Clark aide — challenged Anders for the nomination, but lost. Since then, he said, Redford’s ex-husband has continued to field candidates hoping to oust Anders.
Redford worked for Nelson Mandela in post-apartheid South Africa; Anders voted against giving him honorary Canadian citizenship, calling him a terrorist, according to reports at the time.
As for Danielle Smith, she attended the University of Calgary with Anders, the two share a birthday — April 1 — and were roommates for a time, Navarro said.
“Family feuds tend to be often the most conflicting,” he said. “All the bars are removed. There’ll be high tempers flying, and name calling, and a great deal of emotion going on.”