Decorum illustrates control Kenney has over his caucus

After being warned against any spontaneous floor crossing by his caucus members, Kenney settled for exchanging a little wave of the hand with the premier as they prepared to do verbal battle faceto-face for the first time.

“I intended to actually go over and shake her hand, but then all of my guys started shouting at me,” Kenney told journalists afterward.

“Apparently, you can’t cross the floor, metaphorically speaking, here. I did just want to salute her. At the end of the day, we’re going to disagree on a lot of things, agree on some, but we don’t have to be nasty about it.”

Kenney had told his caucus he wanted a “business-like question period” without “drama” or “fireworks.”

He didn’t even want applause, especially not the kind that has grown to what he called “ridiculous” levels in the House of Commons. The result was the Opposition MLAs acted like a legislative black hole, absorbing the noise and energy from the government side.

It was like watching a tennis match where one player is hitting balls across the net and the other player is catching them and putting them in his pockets.

The result was a question period with as much drama as an episode of Sesame Street.

But, having said that, it was also educational.

It illustrated the iron control Kenney has over his caucus. And it was another demonstration of the self-discipline and singlemindedness that have served Kenney so well over the past two years, elevating him from outsider to leader of Alberta’s new official Opposition party, the United Conservatives.

That’s not to say Kenney and Notley were dance partners on Monday. Kenny’s questions to her were loaded, slanted and at times misleading.

And he complained about her stealing his ideas. But then her answers were just as prone to be combative, dismissive and evasive. And she never acknowledged stealing his ideas.

If nothing else, we clearly saw the three topics of concern to Kenney and the UCP. In two words: carbon tax, carbon tax, carbon tax.

There was barely a question that didn’t rail against the carbon tax.

The government’s levy on everything from gasoline to heating fuel is controversial and unpopular. And therefore an easy target for the Opposition to hit.

A typical Kenney question: “Since the carbon tax hasn’t done anything to get us a pipeline, will the premier stand and commit today that she will not raise the carbon tax by a further 67 per cent just to satisfy her ally Justin Trudeau?”

A typical Notley answer. “What I would say to the member opposite is that climate denial is, quite frankly, a dead-end for Alberta. The UCP wants to walk down that road again. We say no.”

The carbon tax has components that are both fiscal and environmental.

Kenney is focused on the tax’s negative fiscal aspects and Notley is focused on the levy’s positive environmental features.

Kenney says the pipeline won’t get built. Notley says it will.

Nobody, of course, can say what’s going to happen.

They’re both making premature statements. But that’s the state of debate in the Alberta legislature these days. It might be more polite and civil on the surface, but it’s just as self-serving and unhelpful as ever.