Friday 17 March 2017

Unite The Righteous

As we enter the final day of the race for the leadership of the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party, I want to take one final kick at the can to clarify what we are actually voting for.  Jason Kenney has turned this race into a referendum on the question, “Should the Progressive Conservative Party unite with the Wildrose Party to create one free enterprise, conservative party?”  Many have called this a demolition of the conservative party or a deal with the devil.  Some have said this moves the party to the extreme right.  The rhetoric on all sides has escalated.  The truth of the matter as I see it is that this is a union between urban and rural conservatives.  It is not about left and right.  This merger is about healing a profound cultural gap that exists everywhere.  Only conservatives in this province  have an answer to this dilemma.  That is what we are voting on.


Today the Progressive Conservative brand in Alberta remains battered and bruised.  May 5, 2015 was the darkest of days in the life of the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta.  On that night I expressed that now is the time to take seriously the notion of uniting the right in Alberta.  Since then I have heard nothing to change my mind.  The party was reduced to a mere nine of the 87 seats in the legislature and less than 28% of the popular vote.  There are many perfectly good reasons for this thorough provincial pants-kicking.


From October 2011 to March 2014 our province endured the premiership of Alison Redford.  Albertans quickly tired of the premier’s use of her position for personal gain, and she fell out of favour with caucus and cabinet alike for her failure to honour them with responsibility or acknowledge their accomplishments.   Redford deliberately moved the party to the left, forsaking our conservative identity.  She moved us towards becoming a more urban party spurning all of rural Alberta, which is now predominantly represented by the Wildrose Party.   She was followed by Jim Prentice, the man who was supposed to be the next Peter Lougheed.  He was correctly called a political opportunist.  Rural Albertans and urban Albertans alike punished the party by voting NDP and Wildrose.  


It is time for the PCs and the Wildrose Party to realize that neither is assured of a majority on its own.  In 2004, under the leadership of Ralph Klein, the PC party garnered just under 48% of the popular vote and won a whopping 74 of the 83 seats.  When combined with the 8.7% for the Alberta Alliance Party, the vote on the right of the political spectrum totalled 55.5% of the popular vote.  In the 2012 election under Alison Redford, the total popular vote on the right was just a little less at 52%, but it was divided almost equally between two fiscally conservative parties.  Nevertheless, we came away with 63 of 87 seats.  That was our lucky day!  But we did lose something;  we lost the confidence of rural Alberta in 17 ridings where Wildrose candidates were elected.


A look at the political map today will tell you that it is more accurate to describe our two favourite parties, not as progressive and traditional, but rather as urban and rural.  Wildrose is a rural party.  The Progressive Conservatives have become an urban party.  If the votes for the Progressive Conservatives and the Wildrose Party are combined, the 2015 Election would have resulted in 60 of 87 seats for the combined party.  NDP would have won 25 seats; almost all of them in Edmonton.  Prior to the election we tried to make the Wildrose Party go away with some clever machinations.  That didn’t work.  They are not going away.   


We must unite if we have any desire at all to gain the rural vote in Alberta.  Make no mistake;  if our party seeks to retain its present urban identity and fails to work to unite the right, it will be a strong signal that the party has thrown the rural vote under the bus.  That bus will have Brian Jean’s picture on it (but preferably not directly over the rear wheels).  The first question we must ask ourselves is, “Will we continue to be an city-dominated party?”  


The second question is, “What sort of leader do we need to unite these two parties who have not always been very polite to one another?” Our strategy in 2014 was to seek the next Peter Lougheed.  The messy results speak for themselves.  The clean-cut sophistication, designed to appeal to the urban voter was intended to distinguish us from the farmers and cowboys who gave the Wildrose its wildness. Perhaps it should be clear to us by now that the leader we can agree on will more likely be a Ralph-like straight-shooting guy or girl in a cowboy hat that the country folk and city folk both will like.  We need to present an “Alberta First” strategy which includes all of Alberta.  All of Alberta includes citizens of the big cities and the residents of our rural communities together with  surrounding countryside.  We need to present an ‘Alberta First’ strategy in which Alberta is defined by Albertans, rather than by all of the politically correct NDP, predominantly urban forces, devoid of common sense, that would impose themselves upon rural Albertans.


Conventional wisdom might tell you that governing all of Alberta will require a party which spans a wide band on the right and centre of the political spectrum.  My contention is that more correctly, it will require a party which defies the political spectrum altogether.  Under Ralph Klein, the party was home to people who might have belonged to a variety of right and left leaning parties in other provinces.  Meaningful and fierce discussions occurred within caucus and cabinet meetings.  Members were expected to represent constituents with passion.  The caucus must again become a team with many diverse parts.  It must be a place where iron sharpens iron.  It must be a place where all are respected and where the leader is someone who can handle being disagreed with.  Disagreement should never again be considered to be a bad thing.  The cabinet must be a place where ministers are not scripted by the premier, but rather ministers have real responsibility, make real decisions, and are publicly acknowledged for the accomplishments of their ministries.  Voters expect elected representatives to have a voice.  Our two parties will only be united by a leader who sincerely desires for all members of his or her party to have an authentic voice.  


The first thing we must do is get the membership of the Progressive Conservative Party solidly behind the merger.  We must convince our membership that we have little access to the rural vote and are unlikely to win on urban votes alone.  We must want to be a party where rural and urban people recognize the necessity of being mutually supportive; we must be the party that rekindles the friendship between urban and rural Alberta!


Then we must meet with Wildrose officials.  They need to hear that we believe  that our strengths are complementary and that a united party will be more attractive to urban voters than the Wildrose brand.  They need to know that we aspire to be populist, that we do not aspire to confine ourselves to a defined narrow range on the political spectrum, that we do desire to once again become a team that is both urban and rural, and that we do plan to return to a program where local representation is preeminent over the party line.   They should know that we support the idea of disagreement and active discussion within the caucus and that sharing a government caucus is to be preferred over sharing the opposition side of the legislature.


We must not be too proud to own our failures and our weaknesses.  We should confidently own our strengths.  We should let Wildrose know that we agree with the priorities that they promote.  
  • Standing Up For Low Taxes, Balanced Budgets, and a Savings Plan
  • Standing Up For Patient-Centred Health Care and Seniors Care
  • Standing Up For World-Class Education
  • Standing Up For Democracy and Accountability in Alberta
  • Standing Up For Rural Alberta


We must not be too proud to declare, publicly if necessary, that we have a mutual need.  We need to prevent the election of another NDP government.  And we also must not be too proud to assert that have a mutual weakness.  Neither of us on our own has a brand which is well positioned to guarantee a win in the next provincial general election.  Our needs are best served if together we own a new brand.


We must ask the Wildrose to agree with us to shape a new brand that is less interested in left and right than in wrong and right; that cares less about the name of the party than about good government for our great province.  We need a party right now, that agrees that it is right to work hard, pay our debts, take care of our people, and put Alberta first.  If we desire to prevent this New Democratic Party from becoming a political dynasty we must act quickly, and and we are best off acting together.

My friends, the name of the party, and the name of the leader of the party, are not as important as names of the members.  We all forgot that for a few years.  Let us not waste a perfectly good mistake by making it again.  Let us be one party, united for the purpose of restoring Alberta to the prominence to which it is entitled!