The Tory battle for Alberta
• For candidates for the federal Conservative leadership, the route to victory runs through Alberta, chock- full as it is of party faithfuls whose votes are so valuable to winning the party’s race.
The path for a future Conservative leader to the prime minister’s office, however, wends its way through Ontario and Quebec, where the nation’s electoral votes are most heavily concentrated, and where Conservatives have failed in the last two elections to make an winning case to the non-party faithful.
In recent weeks, Erin O’toole and Peter Mackay, the two front- runners to head up the Tory party, have found themselves in Wild Rose Country, offering a pitch that recognizes the anger and frustration of westerners, while attempting to maintain a vision of a party and policies that they can sell in the 905 suburbs around Toronto.
As longtime conservative operator Ken Boessenkool recently put it, in a commentary for the CBC, “It is the irony of Conservative politics that people in Calgary need to worry about how the Conservative Party is selling itself around Toronto.” The key question facing the party and its leaders is: How does a party whose soul is so heavily western, with all the pro-oil, pro-pipeline and anti- carbon- tax commitment that requires, sell itself to the rest of the country where, for so many potential voters, those issues aren’t exactly top of mind.
On Thursday, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney officially threw his support behind leadership candidate Erin O’toole because, Kenney said, O’toole was the one who could best bridge that divide.
Melanee Thomas, a University of Calgary political science professor, said there’s a considerable amount of appeal in the idea of ideological purity, and that moving toward the mushy middle is a terrible way to win elections — unless you’re in Canada.
“Actually having that clarity of position is useful, and certainly makes things more interesting to talk about, but in terms of actually winning federal elections in Canada, you’ve got to take this into account, the contextual history with Quebec,” Thomas said.
O’toole and Kenney have sounded similar at times in how they channel western anger.
O’toole, who placed third in the last party leadership race, has emphasized the need to “push back and fight” against what he calls “foreign- funded sources of influence” working to shut down the western resource economy and hurt workers.
The video to launch his leadership campaign — which he began in Calgary — features a shot of Leonardo Dicaprio, whose celebrity climate posturing has targeted Alberta, and announced that his leadership would be one that “fights for ( the) needs” of Canadians, “instead of fighting for attention from global celebrities.”
Mackay, a former member of Parliament from Nova Scotia, who’s returning to politics after retiring in 2015, would of course claim that he can join Conservatives west and east even better than O’toole can. His approach, however, appears to rely more on emphasizing the benefits of unity, than on riding western anger.
Speaking in a conference ballroom in Edmonton early on Thursday morning, Mackay offered a speech heavy on the rhetoric of unity for the party and country. The speech relied less heavily on actual policy and
Alberta- specific questions, and Mackay mostly steered clear of the language of vigorous western populism. There were no denunciations of “foreign- funded” enemies or “eco-radicals” attacking Alberta’s industry.
“Goodness knows, we don’t need more drama, or dressing up, or dancing; we really need outcomes and results, we need authenticity, we need action,” Mackay said Thursday.
Indeed, even when talking about Kenney’s quest for a “fair deal” for Alberta, Mackay avoided saying outright that the province is getting shafted, a big part of the western Conservative belief system. He said he’s open to discussions about reforming equalization, but didn’t commit outright to overhauling the system, which is widely seen in Alberta as being severely unfair.
While he was willing to show his appreciation for Albertans’ contributions, saying the “sweat equity” of the province’s workers has done much good across the country, he stayed focused on the healing the divisions in the country, tying their cause to that of other provinces.
But O’toole has said specifically he can sell Conservative ideas across the country, and has already proven it by winning his riding of Durham, in the Toronto suburbs.
“I’m not running because I’m from Ontario,” O’toole told an audience in Leduc, Alta. “I’m running for Alberta because I can win in Ontario.”
As much as having Alberta on board is key to any leader’s success — not just for the votes, but also the bludgeon it provides to use against Justin Trudeau — the critical mass to a majority government can’t depend solely on Western Canada.
“This goes back to Manning versus Harper,” said Thomas. “These tensions are not new, right?”
One Conservative official told TVO in an interview after the 2019 election that the Conservatives had banked much of their last election campaign on affordability and the economy, which played well in the struggling provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. But one day, after hours of knocking on doors of million- dollar homes in Toronto, he realized this narrative just wasn’t going to work in the GTA.
“These people didn’t feel vulnerable; they felt lucky,” the official said, adding that the message to the West needed to be tweaked for Toronto, but wasn’t.
That certainly suggests party insiders are as aware as anyone of the challenge of finding a message that both speaks from the party’s western soul in a words that Ontarians will understand. It will be up to whomever wins the leadership to find it.
you’ve got to take this into account, the contextual
history with Quebec.