O’TOOLE’S KENNEY PROBLEM
Federal Conservative leader must be wishing Alberta premier had held off a few days before announcing sweeping public health changes.
It’s a story as old as time. A figure rises up, hailed as hero by some, and conquers. Then, somewhere along the line, it all goes wrong.
In that tradition, if Jason Kenney was introduced to Alberta as a whip-smart federal minister on a crusade to unite the right, before rising to power with a climactic election win in 2019, he could now be said to be hurtling toward his demise, his province’s health-care system pushed to the brink. Whether the storyline plays out, of course, remains to be seen.
For months, Albertans have had what Kenney triumphantly called their “best summer ever,” whether they wanted to or not, after the government lifted all major COVID-19 restrictions for the start of July, then denounced naysayers as fearmongers or shills for the political opposition.
The slogan was printed on signs and on hats. A widely shared tweet sent by Matt Wolf, Kenney’s head of “issues management” in June may yet go down in history books: “The pandemic is ending. Accept it.”
And yet, a summer of forced frivolity appears set to give way to a deadly fall.
While a year and a half of headlines describing overwhelmed hospitals has left many Albertans numb, the province’s top doctor has said this fourth COVID-19 wave is already taking a greater toll than those that came before it. In just over a week, doctors may be forced to decide who gets critical care — and who does not.
And while the health and welfare of residents must take centre stage, this punishing wave of COVID-19 is also a crisis for the premier — a man who some say should pay the price for failing to contain the virus.
Like many places in the world, the pandemic has forced a reckoning of sorts for the divisions in Alberta that, prior the crisis, stayed buried below the surface — urban versus rural, right versus left, the need to protect the community versus the desire for unfettered liberty.
The official response has reflected the ideology of a governing party for whom restrictions and rules are anathema. But one person has been left holding the bag, observers say.
“From day one, the Kenney government has been centred around Jason Kenney. He created the United Conservative Party as a personal political vehicle. He has been the central figure,” says Lisa Young, a political scientist at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy.
Known for his hands-on style, Kenney arrived in office in Alberta with a list of priorities, from reining in finances to getting pipelines built, says Young. And perhaps if a little-known virus never made it out of China, he might have accomplished what he set out to. Instead, she says many of his plans have been derailed by crashing oil prices and a global pandemic.
Now, it may well be the pandemic that writes his legacy and curtails his political future, the shakiness of which is being openly discussed by observers and insiders alike.
Alberta’s pandemic response has been characterized by being a few steps behind other provinces in terms of public health measures, and the province has had the highest per capita case rate multiple times. Kenney himself has been criticized for appearing to lack the empathy possessed by his counterparts in other jurisdictions.
Three sources close to caucus said that anger is sizzling among a handful of the premier’s MLAs. As the name suggests, the governing United Conservatives in Alberta cobbles together progressive, largely urban conservatives, many who have watched cases rise with alarm, and those representatives who rage against restriction in any form.
Right now, some on both sides are as united as they’ve ever been, but in anger at their leader, sources say.
Even before the pandemic, Kenney’s leadership style was unpopular in some circles. He is generally said to be reluctant to take feedback and often attacks critics in public. But his pandemic approach has polarized his party in much the same way it’s divided his province.
For some, he hasn’t done enough to curb the spread of the virus, while others say he has done too much. Tensions between the party’s two solitudes have left the province lurching between approaches — let the virus run amok until strict measures are all but certain.
The end result has not been well received by the public, with his approval rating dropping to just 30 per cent by June, the lowest among premiers in the country.
This latest wave seems to have dialled up tensions yet again. For most of August, Kenney was away on vacation. When he returned to a serious COVID-19 problem in the province, he vowed not to bring in a vaccine passport system and instead offered $100 gift cards to people who got jabbed.
On Wednesday, in a dramatic about-face, he implemented a vaccine passport system and brought in wide-ranging public health restrictions limiting everything from businesses to private social gatherings.
“The flip-flopping is hard to keep up with,” acknowledges Payman Parseyan, a former UCP press secretary who no longer works in government. But he argues Kenney is trying to balance the “extreme polarity” that has taken over the province. If anything, the premier is likely to pay a price for bringing in vaccine passports, in defiance of a significant chunk of his base.
“He’s losing his own base with half of the decisions that he’s making,” says Parseyan.
“It should reflect on someone who’s not looking out for his own best interests but actually looking out for the best interests of the province.”
Still, the announcement of a proof-of-vaccination system, which the government is declining to call a vaccine passport, is for many, a comprise that satisfies no one.
As of Thursday, talk within Kenney’s party was moving quickly, according to one source close to the government caucus who said “calls are being made” about what to do, whether it be an effort to force Kenney out or simply a caucus meeting about leadership.
But in some ways, a party without Kenney is a horse without a rider. In recent weeks, he has largely hidden from public view — leaving a sense of government “paralysis” behind, Young says.
Alberta’s case count quickly began outpacing Ontario’s — a province with three times the population — and yet the medical officer of health and senior ministers stayed quiet.
Some of the MLAs are angry with Kenney’s leadership throughout the pandemic while others harbour resentment that started before the pandemic, noted another source.
Regardless of reason, remaining out of sight for a month would be a failure of leadership even if there wasn’t a one-in-ageneration crisis going on, says Duane Bratt, a political scientist at Mount Royal University in Calgary.
“But to disappear in a month when people are dying is unconscionable.”
On Wednesday, Kenney led by apologizing for reopening, but seemed to bristle when pressed by a reporter, eventually saying that lifting restrictions had made sense at the time.
“I mean, if you’d taken a drink of coffee you would have missed the apology,” Bratt says. “He was defiant. He was stubborn. He talked about how great Alberta has done. He ignores the fact that in that there were warnings about this being premature, critics were demonized as being NDP hacks, they were being trolled by the premier’s office all summer.
“And now we’re in this situation.”
“He’s losing his own base with half of the decisions that he’s making.” PAYMAN PARSEYAN FORMER UCP PRESS SECRETARY