Playing the long game to oust an ‘accidental’ premier.
CHARGES NDP GOVERNMENT HAS PLACED ‘A RED FLAG’ ON ALBERTA’S ENERGY INDUSTRY
Alberta’s next provincial election is more than two years away, but for Jason Kenney — and the thousands packing his town halls to hear him speak about uniting the province’s two free- enterprise parties — the “project” to dismantle Rachel Notley’s NDP reign is well under way.
After a stop on Jan. 24 in Airdrie, a community north of Calgary off the main highway to Edmonton, he tweets to his almost 100,000 followers: “Another standing- room only @ UniteAlberta townhall, with over 200 out tonight in Airdrie. Many told me it was their 1st ever political event.”
Earlier that day at Calgary’s Blackfoot Truckstop Diner, a vintage hangout in the east end of downtown that doubles as his unofficial headquarters, Kenney outlined why he thinks his campaign is working.
“People are starting to see someone has a plan to fix this broken political system,” he said. “It’s a frustration, plus it’s a solution and people are getting involved.”
Frustration over the NDP’s high tax- and- spend agenda at a time of high unemployment and severe economic distress is rampant. Making it worse is that it is combined with Justin Trudeau’s policies to boost environmental costs and regulation, which will force Alberta into something other than what it wants to be: a producer of oil and gas that is globally competitive.
Kenney’s solution is to combine the Progressive Conservative and Wildrose parties ( conservatives split a decade ago largely over disagreements on oil and gas royalties, a reminder that oil is always a factor in Alberta politics), “park the resentment, the accumulation of baggage,” and form a new version of the party that dominated the province for four decades.
The conservative split eventually helped push Notley to the top — Kenney has called her government “accidental” — though widespread dismay over PC scandals and cronyism also fuelled a desire for change.
Kenney said the reunited party would restore the province as a bastion of free enterprise, a preferred destination for energy investment, and a champion for provincial interests against federal intrusions such as a national carbon price.
It’s not an easy plan, even for the former workhorse in Stephen Harper’s federal Conservative government, where he held the immigration, multiculturalism, employment and defence portfolios.
Kenney, 48, gave up his job as an MP, his sole source of income, to unify Alberta’s right. He’s been touring Alberta in his Dodge pickup since last summer and “couch surfing” among supporters. He faces an additional two years of uncertainty before knowing whether he gets Alberta’s top job.
So far, he’s on a roll. More than 80 per cent of delegates to the March 18 leadership contest support his unity plan, despite attempts by the party’s old guard to kick him out for wanting to dismantle the very party he seeks to lead.
Though many constituencies have yet to pick their delegates, Kenney is widely expected to become the leader of the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta at a convention in Calgary, where he faces three rivals.
If he succeeds, he will then negotiate an agreement to merge with Wildrose, which would pave the way for a founding convention to set up the new party’s principles and constitution. The next step is another leadership contest, which Kenney intends to join.
“I’m putting myself through the wringer,” he said.
Wildrose Leader Brian Jean on Thursday said he would be willing to compete with Kenney for the leadership of a united conservative party to give conservatives the best chance to win the next election, which will be on or before May 31, 2019.
The plan is akin to the unification of the right federally in 2003 by Harper and Peter MacKay. It’s no secret that Harper and his followers are very involved in Kenney’s leadership bid.
Duane Bratt, chair of Mount Royal University’s department of policy studies in Calgary, said Kenney’s message resonates with conservatives, and by all indications he will win the PC leadership by a landslide and successfully merge with Wildrose.
But defeating the NDP will be tougher and depend on the state of the provincial economy in two years, Bratt said.
“If the election were held today, Jason Kenney and the conservatives would win,” he said. “But if there is light at the end of the tunnel, if the deficit has been dropping, if we start seeing construction of pipelines that have been approved, if the unemployment rate is dropping, if these green shoots actually grow, that is a different question.”
Another big question is whether Albertans have moved closer to the centre, making the NDP less of an “accidental government,” as Kenney claims, and more one that is reflective of a growing urban population that is aligned with NDP values, Bratt said.
But count Calgary oil executive Bryan Gould as a fan. “He is listening to grassroots Albertans and has the courage to chart a course based on values that represent our population,” he said. “I trust in his big-tent vision.”
If elected, Kenney said he would to scrap many of the anti- business policies adopted by NDP, starting with the carbon tax that came into effect Jan. 1, which he said is opposed by two-thirds of Albertans.
Right after the election, “we would have the longest ever summer sitting of the legislature,” he said.
“We would turn off the air conditioners to focus people’s attention, introduce the carbon tax repeal act, and then begin repealing the most damaging legislation and regulations imposed by the NDP.”
Kenney admits the task will be difficult, especially since he believes the province will be mired in more than $ 60 billion of debt and a huge structural deficit.
“I would want to temper people’s expectations,” he said. “We would not be able to erase the economically destructive legacy of the NDP overnight.”
Kenney said he would also stabilize oil and gas royalties, restore a predictable regulatory regime, reduce tax rates to be competitive with other jurisdictions, and put Alberta back on track to be fiscally balanced. He said he wants many of the specifics to come from the people to avoid repeating the mistakes of previous governments that dictated policy from the top.
“One of the most problematic aspects of the NDP has been fundamentally undermining investor confidence in the province,” Kenney said. “It has a red flag placed on it in terms of major capital investment from across the country and around the world.”
Gone, as well, would be the days of Alberta acquiescence to Ottawa’s priorities.
Kenney said he would join Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall to fight Trudeau on a national carbon price in the court of public opinion and, if necessary, in the court of law. He believes there is a plausible constitutional argument that such a price would violate provincial jurisdiction.
“At any normal time in Alberta’s history, an Alberta government would be leading that fight, would be standing up for Alberta’s interests,” he said. “It’s one of the distinctive roles of Alberta in the federation.”
As a way to win social licence for energy projects, he argued, carbon taxes have been a catastrophic failure.
“I haven’t noticed any of the opposition abating,” Kenney said. “It is a very expensive talking point for some politicians, and that is all it is.”
Instead, he said he would make the case for boosting Canadian energy nationally, especially to a younger generation that has bought into negative views and remains unaware of energy’s economic benefits such as transfer payments and jobs.
“Many Canadians have accepted a kind of glib caricature of the oilsands as Mordor, to quote Tzeporah Berman,” the former Greenpeace leader, Kenney said. “This is absurd slander. Either one of the world’s best liberal democracies with the highest environmental standards is a major producer, or we relinquish it to kleptocracies and theocracies around the world.”
He said he would also strengthen Alberta’s presence in Washington to advance interests such as the Keystone XL pipeline, which U. S. President Donald Trump resurrected this week, while fighting its protectionist agenda, which could lead to border taxes for energy exports.
Kenney’s combativeness and Twitter fluency — he regularly tweets about his views and response to his campaign — has a flavour of Trump, who in his first week in power scrapped many of Barack Obama’s policies.
But he is no political neophyte and no Trump disciple. He is a consummate politician, fastidious with his words, and as wary of corporate interests as his former boss, Stephen Harper. Critical of Notley, he is also respectful and praises her for getting corporate money out of politics.
Oil companies in Alberta may even find Kenney harder to get along with than Notley, who has cultivated ties with some industry players to demonstrate support for her climate- change initiatives.
“I respectfully disagree with some of the people in industry here” for supporting economywide carbon taxes, Kenney said. “I am not a corporatist, and if I am forced to choose between the clever government relations and strategic play of CEOs in multinational energy companies who are multimillionaires, and ordinary people who are on fixed incomes, I will always choose the latter.”
Indeed, his role model, he said, is Ralph Klein, the beloved late premier who put the province on a severe spending diet, stayed out of business and slashed taxes to create what used to be known as the Alberta Advantage.
Klein held himself accountable to a mythical couple of everyday Albertans, Martha and Henry.
“He had an innate sense of the common sense of the common people, a great deal of political courage, and he personified a kind of responsible populism, as opposed to an angry divisive Trumpian populism,” Kenney said.
This week, Kenney found his own symbolic Alberta couple — Joan and Ralph — seniors who were dining at a McDonald’s in Strathmore.
“This is why I love what I am doing now,” he said. “I get to know these wonderfully wise, unpretentious, salt-of-the-earth people.”
He immortalized the encounter by tweeting their photo.
EITHER ONE OF THE WORLD’S BEST LIBERAL DEMOCRACIES WITH THE HIGHEST ENVIRONMENTAL STANDARDS IS A MAJOR PRODUCER, OR WE RELINQUISH IT TO KLEPTOCRACIES AND THEOCRACIES AROUND THE WORLD. — JASON KENNEY, ALBERTA PC LEADERSHIP CANDIDATE