Jordan
If you asked a random Canadian voter about Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, the answers you’d get back would would mostly amount to he’s the definition of a right wing Prairie conservative. I’m reasonably sure that Kenney himself would agree with that. However, if you ask members of his own right wing conservative prairie party, a whole bunch of them would call him something else and they wouldn’t be kind about it either. The question of how many people in Kenney’s United Conservative Party are angry at him right now can best be summed up by pointing out that Kenney himself agreed to move up a review of his leadership to this month, and then as his party planned for it, well…
News Clip
…the vote to determine the fate of Premier Jason Kenney’s leadership of the UCP has been changed from an in person vote to mail in ballots. That sudden change comes after thousands signed up to vote…
Jordan
Meanwhile, Kenney has been caught on tape in private party meetings, calling a bunch of members of his own party ‘Kooks’ and claiming that he is standing in the way of ‘lunatics trying to take over the asylum.’ It wasn’t long ago that Kenney was the Conservative darling. He left Ottawa, he returned to Alberta, he united the conservatives under one party, and they took down the NDP in a blowout election win. So what happened since 2019? What happens now as the leadership review results come in? What happens to the United Conservative Party and what happens in the next election because of all of this?
I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings, this is The Big Story. Jason Markusoff is a staff writer for Maclean’s based in Alberta, where absolutely nothing weird is going on in politics. Hi, Jason.
Jason Markusoff
Good day.
Jordan
Can you tell me in general how things are going in the Alberta political landscape right now? Not so smoothly?
Jason Markusoff
Especially not if you’re Jason Kenney. It hasn’t been smooth for quite a while for Jason Kenney. It’s been more than a year that we’ve had people basically openly calling for his ouster, and that includes members of caucus who may have been talking on the down low now talking openly, presidents of riding associations throughout the province, seem to be a pretty decent critical mass, if not a majority. Certainly a majority of the province doesn’t like him. Trust levels, approval levels seem to be stuck around the 30s and within his party, well, I guess we’ll see when there’s actually a leadership review result.
Jordan
We’ll talk about that result coming up and whether or not people will get his head. But I first have to ask, before we get into that stuff, how did we get here? It’s not that long ago, 2019, Jason Kenney rode back into Alberta, took the province back in a massive victory. He was a Conservative hero back then. That was not that long ago.
Jason Markusoff
Yeah, he had an outright majority of Albertans voting for him, about three quarters of the seats his party won, he seemed to have locked things up. He united the old progressive Conservatives and Wild Rose Party, unite the right, to easily oust the Rachel Notley NDP after one term. COVID and a few other things that came with that, including a deep oil price crash and job issues, really helped show how tenuous that unity was among Conservatives. Especially when Jason Kenney had spent several months during the second wave, third wave and fourth wave of the pandemic, dumping on vaccine mandates, dumping on mask mandates, preaching liberty, preaching free choice and personal responsibility, having to turn around, and then in all those cases having to impose mask mandates, vaccine rules, just to prevent our hospitals from getting into deep trouble, having to triage patients away from ICU because they were too full. That really upset a lot of people who believed in his libertarian streak. That has really helped further the cause of people who don’t like him, don’t trust him, don’t want him there, wants somebody who won’t be so attentive to the public health dictates, people who will get firmer action against Trudeau. It’s a funny place we’re in right now, but Jason Kenney is appealing to moderates within the conservative umbrella to save his bacon.
Jordan
You mentioned moderates, you mentioned Wild Rose and the former Conservative Party. Maybe if you could, as we talk about the leadership review, just quickly sketch out sort of the factions that are fighting over this.
Jason Markusoff
It’s probably too easy to say just rural and urban are the two factions, but that’s probably just a neat shorthand for it. The Wild Rose Party was a largely rural, pretty hard line, hard edge conservative, very anti Ottawa, very grassroots movement. Jason Kenney merged them with the more urban, more moderate, more centrist Progressive Conservatives that had governed Alberta for more than 40 years until being dumped by Rachel Notley. He united them by the lure of power. And then once they were in power, he gave people on both sides of that coin reason to be disillusioned. Some of his moves on defending the oil sector from environmental criticism, curriculum reform, and some of his tack on COVID had really alienated the urban moderates. And then him eventually abandoning that tack on the pandemic and imposing rules had alienated him and developed a distrust in him among the hardliners, old Wild Rose types, and just people who really believed in liberty and people who were more supportive of the convoy arguments, the antivaxx crowd, they got really animated. And so he has people in both camps, and MLAs in both camps, wanting his head now.
Jordan
And so there’s a leadership review happening, which was I understand was originally supposed to take place in full this weekend, but the plan has been broadened. Can you kind of just explain what’s going to happen to him?
Jason Markusoff
Sure. What was supposed to happen was on April 9, Saturday, in Red Deer, which is the city in between Calgary and Edmonton, kind of the big central Alberta hub. There was supposed to be a special general meeting just held for the purposes of holding a leadership review for Jason Kenney. It’s very unusual. They were supposed to have this leadership review originally in the fall of 2022 during an annual general meeting, during a regular convention like other parties do. Kenney, under pressure from people who wanted his head, moved the leadership review into this special general meeting in April 2022, a full year ahead of the spring 2023 general election, so the party, if they wanted to get rid of their leader, would have time to replace him and find a new leader. And the idea behind this was that they’d have a few thousand people registering for this leadership, holding memberships, paying $100 to vote in person in Red Deer, up or down, yes or no, keep Jason Kenney or don’t keep him.
Thing was, there was a whole lot more interest in this leadership review than the party or Kenney expected. There were 15,000, and there was no way you could fit 15,000 people into that Red Deer convention hall, nor was there a way to get 15,000 people to physically vote over a few hours span in person. So the April 9 in person Red Deer vote was out the window based on sheer logistics. One, and two, Jason Kenney knew if there were thousands and thousands of more people than he expected registering to vote for this thing, those people were probably not champing at the bit to keep him in power. So this created a both logistical challenge and a political challenge for Jason Kenney and this leadership review. So instead of having a big in person vote April 9, April 9 is the technical launch date of a mail in vote, where people will get ballots mailed to them and they’ll mail them back, and then an accounting firm will count the ballots and then we’ll get a result not until May 18.
The other thing that’s changed in this is that it’s not just people who are willing to spend $100 and head to Red Deer who are voting now, it’s anybody in the party. So instead of 15,000 people, it’s about 30,000 or more people who already hold memberships in the party and the new sign ups who are all voting. So Jason Kenney has effectively doubled the potential voter pool for him to get supporters in.
Jordan
And I imagine the most vocal among his opponents are totally fine with him changing the rules of the leadership review and have no problems with this whatsoever and will abide by the decision no matter what it is, right?
Jason Markusoff
That’s a nice thing to think. And Jason Kenney would love to think that, too. But I think his idealism does not extend to that way of thinking. Even before this happened and there were whispers of this, people who are in the openly anti Kenney camps were crying foul, saying he’s going to rig the rules to suit him. And this allegation of him rigging the rules to suit him and using tricks to get advantage in a leadership contest is not without merit. There remains an ongoing RCMP investigation into how he campaigned and won the 2017 United Conservative leadership race to get this job as leader of his party. There is an ongoing RCMP investigation, one for which he was just interviewed a few months ago by The Mounties into how his campaign allegedly used voter ID, potentially fraudulently, to get people’s digital IDs to vote on this digital leadership contest. Not only was there that RCMP investigation into voter identification fraud, there was also a good body of evidence suggesting that Jason Kenney put up a whole extra candidate or supported this whole extra candidate, Jeff Callaway, in that leadership campaign who existed pretty much exclusively to kneecap his chief rival in that contest, Brian Jean. And guess what? Brian Jean is still around politics. He left for a while, but he’s back. He actually has just won a by-election as a United Conservative member back in Fort McMurray, where he used to be up in the northeast of Alberta. And he is pretty much a one-issue candidate. And his one issue is getting rid of Jason Kenney and replacing him.
Jordan
This is some impressive palace intrigue, I have to say, even by the standards of Alberta Conservatives. But the other thing that I want to ask you about, which I also found fascinating, is that Kenney recently spoke pretty candidly about the hardcore base of his party, a base of which I would have assumed months ago that he was part of. For those who didn’t hear about this, can you sort of outline what he said and the stance that he’s taking?
Jason Markusoff
Yeah. So in late March, the same week that they announced this mail-in ballot process, Jason Kenney spoke to staff members in the legislature, in his government caucus, and somebody was recording. So we found out what he said. And among the many things he said was that this party has a lot of kooky people in it who think really rogue things and quote, “lunatics are trying to take over the asylum.” He is basically saying that there’s a bunch of people who have gotten to the party or who are members of the party who are nuts and want to take the party to a new radical direction. And if they get rid of him, that happens. This was not meant for general audience, this message. He certainly tried to walk back the lunatics comment since. But the overall theme of it, that there’s a bunch of unhinged radicals who joined the party to try to take him out and want to find somebody more radical, that is his new line. That is basically his last best argument it seems, to keep him in power. There are all these antivaxxers, the hardcore convoy crowd, the Antimaskers, the lunatics basically are wanting to oust him, and he’s the only thing keeping Alberta in check. And as a rational governing force.
He’s asking one segment of his party, the more moderate members, the more reasonable members of his party, to save Alberta from another segment of his party, the quote unquote lunatics. There will be some people out there who might not have been keen to vote for him, like him or not, who may be animated by this and may cast a ballot to save him anyway, because better the devil you know than the devil you don’t. But I am sure that a lot of those hard edged people, the people who might think he’s calling them lunatics, calling them a basket of deplorables, I can imagine that they will be even more hell bent on getting rid of him than they were before.
Jordan
If you’d been making odds a couple of years ago, how unlikely would you have made the Jason Kenney blasts far right Conservatives pick? I mean, it seems incredibly against type.
Jason Markusoff
Absolutely. Jason Kenney’s background is unique in Canadian politics. Sometimes you have fiscal Conservatives, sometimes you have social Conservatives, Jason Kenney’s background is in both. He was always one of the more conservative members of Stephen Harper’s cabinet. He was unabashedly conservative and right wing and pro oil, anti green policy, anti Ottawa, anti Trudeau, anti progressive curriculum. Anti moderation for a long time, in politics, in his running for the leadership of the United Conservatives and as Premier, he’s been that to a pretty good extent. Now that he’s having to run away from that is that is tricky. But he’s also doing that and he’s trying to play some of those same notes and play some of the best of for those crowds. You know, he’ll send tweets out bashing the Toronto elites who run the Toronto Globe and Mail for a story he didn’t like. He’ll put up some ill considered Will Smith meme where reality slaps Chris Rock labeled ‘green energy policies.’ So he’s still catering to the people who to a lot of Canadians might be seen as lunatics or hardline Conservatives. But he’s trying to set the bar at him as a sane conservative and people who don’t like him as lunatic conservative.
Jordan
I don’t know if you have an answer to this, but what do the people that you talk to or any numbers that we’ve seen say about his chances of retaining his job? I know that when it was going to be an in person vote, as you mentioned, it looked really unlikely. Do we know anything now about the likely outcome?
Jason Markusoff
It’s really hard to gauge. I mean, I wouldn’t have totally ruled out him eking out a win in Red Deer. He’s still a very good organizer. He’s working really hard at this. A lot of his senior staff from the Premier’s office have taken leave to run… it’s sort of like a general election where it’s just a relative shell of a Premier’s office running the show, running the province, and a whole bunch of them are working full time on saving his bacon. He’s still a canny organizer. He has the membership list of all these UCP members. So he’s having phone banks, he’s basically volun-told all political staff in his Minister’s offices and his caucus staff to work phone banks a few weekends ago. He is still fighting for this. And between his hard efforts and what people allege might be dirty tricks that he pulls, he could still win this.
But victory is a very relative thing. Jason Kenney has talked about that all he needs is 50% plus one vote to remain as leader, which is technically true, but realistically not. Because if he has only half of his party membership supporting him, that’s going to just fracture the party. People are going to leave en masse. He’ll lose caucus members. You can’t go forward leading half of your membership into battle and the other half wanting your head. Conventionally, the threshold you need is well over 70% of your party supporting you to function as leader. In 2006, when Ralph Klein faced a leadership review and got 55%, he knew he was done. He left a few weeks later, or he announced he was going to resign a few weeks later. So if Jason Kenney gets a strong, solid 70%, which is possible, maybe unlikely, but possible, he could stay in power. If he gets in the 50s, he probably has to leave. And if he stays, it’s going to be with a very fractured party. In fact, even if he does get a strong result, there are still those people in the party who are so cynical, so skeptical about his politicking ways that they won’t trust about the vote, and so they’ll want to leave. It’s hard to see a scenario where Jason Kenney comes out of this with a strong, United Conservative Party.
Jordan
Well, the last thing I want to ask you about is the election scheduled for next spring. But first, just because we’ve kind of been dancing around this question and it seems obvious now, Jason Kenney brought the Conservative Party in Alberta together. It was split for a long time. What are the chances that it can sustain itself through this? Like, won’t we just see a new version of a Wild Rose Party?
Jason Markusoff
Quite possibly. It’s really going to depend on who the next leader is, what kind of leader the next person is. And this is one of the grand questions of Alberta politics: If not Jason Kenney, then whom? I mentioned, Brian Jean. He said he’s going to run for leader. The previous Wild Rose Party leader, Danielle Smith, has stepped forward as wanting to run if Jason Kenney is out as well. I don’t know if either of those people are going to be this big galvanizing, unifying force. I don’t know if either of them can actually win. And I don’t know if there are any cabinet ministers who are quietly preparing bids in case Jason Kenney loses, who are going to be able to unite these very divided factions either. It’s going to be very tricky. The only thing that’s going to keep this party together is what kept it together in this time and that’s fear of the NDP government.
Jordan
Where do we stand in terms of the fear of an NDP government? I mean, obviously they must be salivating at the prospect of the UCP breaking up. But beyond that and beyond whether it’s Kenney or Brian Jean or somebody else, what do we know right now about the chances of the UCP staying in power? Are they as unpopular as Kenny has become?
Jason Markusoff
They have been. Things seem to have shifted in the last few months. For the better part of a year, throughout pretty much all of 2021 and into 2022, the NDP were heading the polls. It was seeming like a certain victory for Rachel Notley for quite a while. Things have shifted in the last few months. Jason Kenney has come even or even slightly ahead depending on which poll you’re looking at. And that’s largely because Alberta’s budget is balanced. Oil prices are close to $100 and that’s done wonders for Alberta’s fiscal situation. Also that irritant of vaccine mandates, mask rules, public health protections, the ones that were really riling his conservative base, those are gone. COVID is given the run of the province now. And that’s really turning those people who were really hell bent on being furious with Jason Kenney into people who are more willing to tolerate Jason Kenney or at least his party. So it’s no longer a seemingly sure thing that Rachel Notley is going to win this next election. A lot will depend on how strong and how sturdy the United Conservative party is. I don’t think it’s Jason Kenney’s or UCPs to lose right now, but they certainly retain a fighting chance, especially with Alberta in a much stronger financial situation.
Jordan
And I guess we’ll find out what the UCP will look like going into that election in about six weeks from now or so, Jason?
Jason Markusoff
Yup.
Jordan
Okay. Well, we might check back in with you then. In the meantime, stay safe out there. Thanks for joining us.
Jason Markusoff
All right. Cheers.
Jordan
Jason Markusoff, staff writer at Maclean’s. That was The Big Story. For more you can head to thebigstorypodcast.ca, you can talk to us anytime on Twitter at @TheBigStoryFPN, and of course, email us at thebigstorypodcast@rci.rogers.com [click here!]. You can find this podcast in any podcast player you prefer. You can ask your smart speaker to “play the Big Story podcast.”
Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.
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