Premier Danielle Smith speaks at the United Conservative Party AGM in Edmonton on Saturday. The event was a fractious affair marked by divisions.Amber Bracken/The Globe and Mail
Kathy Kerr is a veteran freelance journalist based in Edmonton.
Premier Danielle Smith faces an uphill battle with her own party, which appears to be increasingly untethered from Alberta’s current reality.
The United Conservative Party annual general meeting was a fractious affair, marked by divisions over separatism and policy resolutions mired in the 1950s. Albertans would be wise to pay attention to those resolutions – they have a habit of becoming government policy.
When Ms. Smith counselled taking the win provided by the energy development memorandum of understanding with Ottawa, a good portion of the more than 4,000 attendees was still riled up to fight the independence fight, and they let her know with loud booing that her pro-Canada pivot wasn’t washing.
Ms. Smith must sell a new direction for her government to UCP members and, more importantly, to the average Albertan. Judging from the events of the weekend AGM, there’s less and less overlap in the membership of those two groups.
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Ms. Smith’s party has adopted some radical positions just as progressive opposition groups seem to be gaining traction with average Albertans. The federalist Forever Canadian petition, which garnered more than 430,000 signatures earlier this year, was a wake-up call about unhappiness with the UCP’s flirtation with separatism.
And recall petitions aiming to unseat 14 government MLAs signal a mobilization of opposition to the use of the notwithstanding clause in a teachers’ strike.
But at the party level, Ms. Smith faces an entirely different set of priorities.
She leaned into the right wing of her party in her Saturday keynote speech and was rewarded with ovations for banning graphic images in school library books and restricting surgery and puberty blockers for transgender children.
Her big shiny item was a motion coming to the legislature under the Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act, which would restrict enforcement of federal gun restrictions. She also vowed to protect from prosecution people who defend themselves from home invasions and break-ins.
In addition to gun rights and stand-your-ground policies, the easily passed party resolutions signal where this government could be going in the year ahead.
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The government has a track record of taking party resolutions as guidance for legislation. Banning vote-counting machines, requiring teachers to tell parents about children wanting to change their pronouns and the Jordan Peterson law preventing professional bodies from censoring members’ free speech are counted among past resolutions which made it to the legislature.
Some of this year’s policy recommendations would be hard to swallow for progressive Albertans if adopted by government. The membership voted to allow coal-fired power plants, just a year after the last one closed in Alberta. Carbon-emission reduction targets should be junked and fluoridation of municipal water should be outlawed, UCP members decided.
The resolution that only government flags be flown on provincial and municipal government buildings arguably targets Pride flags, and passed easily.
Oddly, some of the items voted on this year contradict government plans already in the works.
A proposal to reverse the province’s plan to move to no-fault auto insurance by 2027 passed easily. It could be interesting to see if the government puts the brakes on a process that is already under way.
Ms. Smith hinted to reporters in a news conference that some of these resolutions aren’t destined to fly.
“You have a responsibility to the broader electorate, and that’s what we always have to do, is look at what our core membership says, and then listen to the broader stakeholder community and see what we can move forward and implement. You always want to make sure you’re implementing a policy agenda that has the majority support of Albertans.”
But this party’s agenda is diverging more and more from what the majority of Albertans are likely to support.
Going head-to-head with separatist advocate Jeffrey Rath in a bear-pit session Friday evening, the party leader summed up a key structural truth about the UCP, which was born from a union of the Wildrose and Progressive Conservative parties.
“This party is the merger of two parties with different cultural traditions,” she said. She proposed the way to solve the separatism dispute could boil down to a referendum.
“I have said if enough citizens want to put this question on a ballot through a citizen’s initiative, then we will do that.”
Ultimately a province-wide vote might be the only way for Ms. Smith to move her own party away from all-out separatism to her “independence within a united Canada.”
What’s clear is that Ms. Smith’s party is dealing with a set of fixations among her base that diverge wildly from those concerning regular Albertans. With progressives in the province finally fired up, it could spell trouble for Ms. Smith ahead.
This article was originally published with an estimate from organizers that the Forever Canadian petition had garnered more than 450,000 signatures. It has been updated now that Elections Alberta has verified more than 430,000 signatures.