Jason Kenney’s Victory Signals Return to Alberta vs. Canada Politics

So far, so good for Jason Kenney's dream of a Conservative restoration in Alberta. As of this weekend, he has scored an impressive political hattrick: he secured the leadership of the PC party, merged it with its dissident Wildrose cousin to form the United Conservative Party of Alberta, and was just elected the UCP's first leader by more than 60 percent of voting delegates. Alberta conservatives have officially made him their champion in the 2019 showdown with Rachel Notley and the NDP.

They're not wasting any time, either. In less than a day after our hero's coronation, Calgary-Lougheed MLA Dave Rodney had already stepped down in order to fast-track Kenney's firebreathing in the legislature.

It's not clear yet what this means for the Alberta NDP government. Conventional wisdom suggests the party will get steamrolled by a united right, but conventional wisdom has been MIA since Danielle Smith tried to fold the Wildrose into Jim Prentice's PCs back in 2014. Albertans are a famously cantankerous bunch, and the NDP has taken the lion's share of the blame for the economic downturn they inherited two years ago.

But a lot can change in 18 months. The NDP's greatest strength in the last election—besides not being the 44-year old Tory government—was that they could lay claim to the plurality of Albertans who considered themselves at least a little bit progressive on things like LGBT rights and the environment. Social conservatism has been a liability in the province's politics since at least 2012 (when a Wildrose candidate snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by condemning homosexuals "to burn in a lake of fire"), and to a large extent that's what secured Kenney his UCP leadership. He's racked up a few hits in his short time back in Alberta, most famously his plan to out gay children to their parents. The provincial economy will be the terrain upon which 2019 is fought, but the fight will be for Alberta's soul.

Those of us outside Canada's Texas have more at stake in the Kenney vs. Notley match-up than we might otherwise assume. Much deeper and further-reaching than their conflict over social values are two fundamentally different approaches to federalism. Rachel Notley's administration has tied its fortune to a belief in reasonably friendly diplomacy. They've taken a conciliatory approach with the oil and gas industry over the NDP's carbon regulations, and they are the only provincial government in Western Canada that at least seems to have a rapport with Justin Trudeau. So far, being chummy with a Trudeau Liberal government has yet to pan out for Notley, and it is unlikely to start now that the Energy East pipeline is dead and Quebec is pissing on its grave.

Kenney is a sharp contrast. He's smart enough to avoid literally using the phrase "Make Alberta Great Again," but that is what he's promising. In his victory speech at the UCP convention, he immediately invoked "King" Ralph Klein to thunderous applause. And as Jason Markusoff suggested in Maclean's last month, this is more than just a hat-tip to the ancient Tory dynasty—it's Kenney drawing a firewall around Alberta. Klein went to war with the feds about anything and everything he considered a slight to his province, like same-sex marriage or limits to private healthcare. Kenney is signalling to everybody that he is here for Alberta first and the rest of Canada second. There will be no more going cap in hand to federal environmental regulatory panels; there will be no more playing nice about the dirty black gold in Fort McMurray; there will be no more equalization for those shiftless Eastern bastards.

Given that all cultural and political schisms in this country break down more or less cleanly along regional lines, it's not hard to imagine a UCP Alberta and Premier Jason Kenney straining at the fabric of Canadian unity, every province for itself in a retro-1990s funhouse hall of mirrors.

Alberta politics has always been a little bit mad, and more than a little bit maddening. And for at least the next year and a half, Jason Kenney will be rolling Alberta back from mad to angry.

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