Kenney, Smith in a battle for soul of UCP
Premier Jason Kenney has entered the United Conservative Party race to replace him as leader.
Not as a candidate — but as a meddler.
Kenney didn’t so much dive as belly-flop into the race this week, with an awkward attack on a proposal from perceived front-runner Danielle Smith. She is championing a controversial “Alberta Sovereignty Act” that she says would allow her, as premier, to ignore federal laws deemed to be un-Albertan.
After remaining quiet since the beginning of the leadership campaign in May, Kenney on Monday called the proposal unconstitutional, economically disastrous and just plain “nuts.”
In turn, Smith slammed Kenney’s comments as “premature, ill-informed and disrespectful to a large and growing majority of UCP members that support this important initiative.”
(Smith also dismissively referred to Kenney as “the acting UCP leader.” Kenney is, of course, the actual UCP leader — but Smith has started throwing so much shade at Kenney he needn’t bother with sunscreen this summer.)
The tussle between Kenney and potential successor Smith isn’t simply a spat over a dangerously naive policy proposal.
It is a fight for the soul of the United Conservative Party.
Kenney built this party in 2017 from the ashes of the old Progressive Conservatives and Wildrose through a combination of political ideology, historical revisionism, western alienation and personal ambition.
This was his party, his legacy, his vanity project.
And now Smith, the former Wildrose leader, is hijacking it.
Smith’s attacks against Kenney go as far back as 2019, when she wrote an op-ed for the Calgary Herald under the headline, “Alberta should become a nation within a nation,” in which she complained the province should “stop acting like a national doormat and take charge of its future.”
In a 2020 op-ed, she blamed Kenney for making a “shambles” of the province’s finances.
And as a radio talk-show host during the pandemic, she pushed back against restrictions and at times promoted quack treatments such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
Last November, she was one of the first leadership tire-kickers to express an interest in replacing Kenney.
The two now find themselves clashing yet again.
In his attacks on the sovereignty act, Kenney does not actually mention Smith. In fact, during a news conference Monday on a different topic where the sovereignty act came up, Kenney pleaded ignorance, saying he didn’t know which candidates were supporting the act and even implied he wasn’t even sure how many candidates were in the race.
“I’m not following this in great detail every day. So I’m not sure, of the seven, I believe, candidates, which all have endorsed this concept,” said Kenney, who has a reputation for being a politically astute micromanager — and having a penchant for being clueless when it suits him.
Kenney’s critique of the sovereignty act, by the way, wasn’t limited to a few off-the-cuff comments but was part of a seven-minutelong monologue on the topic.
As Kenney is no doubt aware, there is only one candidate aggressively endorsing this concept: Smith.
One other candidate, Todd Loewen, has expressed sympathy for a sovereignty act but the other five have criticized it as being, pretty much as Kenney said, “nuts.”
Kenney is trying to frame his attack on the sovereignty act as simply repeating his long-standing criticisms of the concept that first popped up last fall as part of a “Free Alberta Strategy” proposed by the “libertarian-minded” Alberta Institute.
“I did declare publicly my views about the so-called sovereignty act many times in the months preceding this leadership campaign, so I’m just restating my public position,” declared Kenney on Monday, trying to appear like an innocent bystander rather than the guy tossing grenades into the leadership race.
Not only is Smith the candidate adopting the entirety of the “Free Alberta Strategy,” the proposal was co-authored by lawyer Rob Anderson who happens to now be her campaign chair.
It’s worth noting that to become UCP leader, and premier, Smith doesn’t need the one million votes the UCP won in the 2019 general election; she needs only a simple majority of UCP members who cast a ballot in the race that will wrap up Oct. 6.
And in the leadership race, Smith is the only candidate setting the agenda, grabbing headlines and regularly packing in supporters to large rallies across the province.
According to the party president, the UCP has more than 100,000 members (with a final count to be announced within days). If all of them vote, Smith need only capture 50,000-or-so ballots to become leader and premier — and begin implementing her plans for an Alberta Sovereignty Act.
Kenney appears desperate to stop that.
Oh, he doesn’t frame his opposition to Smith and her takeover of his party in so many words, just as he claims not to be endorsing any candidate. But he has an obvious favourite: former finance minister Travis Toews. He is the establishment candidate.
Not only was Toews part of Kenney’s inner circle, his campaign is populated by key players from the Kenney government. Toews’ campaign manager, for example, is Kenney’s former executive assistant, Clancy Bouwman.
A Toews victory would maintain the status quo, not only in terms of government policy and Kenney’s legacy but would protect the jobs of all of the Kenney-ites in government.
In July, Jason Nixon, the government house leader (and the new finance minister who replaced Toews), also made a point of telling reporters that the sovereignty act would be illegal.
“Telling Albertans that you can accomplish something that you can’t accomplish is very problematic long term for our party,” said Nixon.
Nixon’s criticism is valid. But it’s also hypocritical coming from a government that in 2019 promised to “fight back” against Alberta’s enemies by setting up a “war room” against anti-oilsands activists, commissioning a public inquiry into anti-Alberta activities from environmental organizations, and holding a provincewide referendum aimed at scrapping the federal equalization program.
It was a cynical strategy that inflamed anger and frustration while promising easy solutions.
To use Nixon’s own words, the Kenney government was “telling Albertans you can accomplish something that you can’t accomplish.”
Smith is simply taking Kenney’s playbook, highlighting all the simplistically bombastic bits and ripping out any pages that might advise using caution. Just like Kenney, she is doing whatever it takes to win.
A Premier Smith would indeed be setting Alberta on a dangerous path, but it was Premier Kenney who blazed the way.
Smith and Kenney might seem like total opposites. They’re not.
Smith’s simplistic and cynical attacks against Kenney for political gain are just the kind of strategy he uses against his own enemies.
Smith and Kenney will change direction when it suits them, without actually admitting they’ve done an about-face.
They are both political opportunists.