The Frankenparty stitched together by Jason Kenney spawns a separatist monster in its ranks

The Frankenparty stitched together in 2017 by Jason Kenney from the Wildrose Party and the Progressive Conservatives has spawned a monster. 

Former Alberta premier and UCP leader Jason Kenney, who stitched together the Frankenparty now known as the UCP in 2017 from the Wildrose Party and the Progressive Conservatives (Photo: David J. Climenhaga).

Hard-line Alberta separatists who were tolerated by Mr. Kenney and have for months been coddled by Premier Danielle Smith as a weapon against Justin Trudeau as of last night control half or nearly half the United Conservative Party’s governing board – one vote was too close to call and was being recounted. 

It’s been pretty clear to anyone paying attention that separatist trouble has been brewing in the UCP for a long time. But since the start of the party’s annual general meeting in Edmonton Friday night, it’s been obvious to almost everybody – despite the premier’s effort to keep the topic off the agenda.

That was when AGM delegates booed Danielle Smith, for heaven’s sake, for cutting a pipeline deal with Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney. And it wasn’t just a few grumbles from the crowd, if you go by the clip that’s been circulating on social media, but sustained, prolonged, and loud jeering. Ms. Smith’s weird nervous laughter when the boos finally subsided was cringeworthy. 

Yesterday during her speech to the AGM, Ms. Smith got both catcalls and standing ovations, but about the best that can mean from the party’s perspective is that its activists are roughly divided between committed hard-core separatists and other varieties of conservatives that may include covert separatists, the separation curious, vaccine conspiracy theorists, cryptocurrency bugs, and full-MAGA Trumpophiles who would still like to hang onto a Canadian passport just in case. 

At one point in the speech, Ms. Smith said: “My friends, let’s not throw in the towel and give up on our country just as the battle has turned in our favour and victory is in sight!” Loud boos immediately erupted. She exclaimed: “It is!” Mixed cheers and boos followed half-heartedly. 

Prime Minister Mark Carney, who signed a pipeline deal with Premier Smith in Calgary on Thursday (Photo: Alberta Government/Flickr).

So while they may love the “grand bargain” struck by Ms. Smith and Mr. Carney at the Calgary Chamber of Commerce, that doesn’t mean they’re gonna love it at the Free Alberta Clubhouse in Gopher Butte.

And as the official favourite book of the UCP unequivocally states, “if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.” Or, to put that another way: Something’s gotta give.

Mr. Kenney built the alliance with those people to engineer his double reverse hostile takeover of the Wildrose and Progressive Conservative parties, purging “Red Tories” as a first order of business. Ms. Smith has nurtured it ever since she took over as leader.  

You’ve read about Take Back Alberta, the UCP faction that pushed out Mr. Kenney in May 2022 when he proved not to be extreme enough for their taste and replaced him with Ms. Smith. Well, the Alberta Prosperity Project crowd that wants a Petrorepublic of Alberta is made up of essentially the same MAGA cadres, except that APP’s Jeffrey Rath is the new David Parker. 

But now that Ms. Smith has reached an entente cordiale with the federal Liberals to do what the oil industry wants – which, her COVID-skeptical views notwithstanding, has been her primary objective since her days as Wildrose leader – the monster she and Mr. Kenney created has become dangerous to her, just as it was to Mr. Kenney. 

Jeffrey Rath, a prominent figure in the Alberta separatist movement (Photo: David J. Climenhaga).

And just when she’d hit upon a formula that might well work to overcome the popular anger that is bedevilling the UCP for corruption scandals, attempted pension hijacking, galloping health care privatization, vaccine rationing, and contempt for human rights with the use of the Notwithstanding clause to prove it, the separatists have reared their heads again. 

Well, you know what they say: “If you’re gonna lie down with dogs, you’re gonna get up with fleas.”

“That activist base is well-organized and unafraid of toppling a party leader, as former Premier Jason Kenney discovered in 2022,” observed political commentator Dave Cournoyer on his Substack Friday. “That is the big reason why they get more attention paid to them by Premier Danielle Smith than any other premier has paid to a party’s membership in recent memory.”

“The UCP governs with its enthusiastic activist base of supporters in mind and it has been clearly reflected in recent government policies restricting access to vaccinations, banning electronic voting tabulators, banning books in school libraries, banning transgender health services and blocking transgender athletes from competing in sports,” he explained. 

Postmedia political columnist Don Braid appeared to be almost beside himself last night over where this was all going to end up. “Smith put her heart and possibly her future into the pro-Canada plan,” he fretted. “If it fails, God only knows what happens next in Alberta.”

Possibly the destruction of the country, one imagines he is thinking, or, even worse, the election of the NDP!

Mr. Braid called the premier’s unwillingness to confront the party’s separatists in her AGM speech wise. Well, that’s one interpretation.

It means the UCP will continue to flirt with separatism, and separatists who have already proved they can remove the leader whenever they wish, will continue to use the UCP to achieve their goal. 

If Ms. Smith won’t purge them, voters are going to have to – probably in the face of the most aggressive foreign interference in a democratic vote since the Brexit referendum on  June 23, 2016.