While a ‘unite the right’ effort to merge the provincial Wildrose and Progressive Conservative parties to better contest the NDP in the next provincial election has been in the news for some time now, the situation may be described as somewhat static.
Unite the right became a rallying cry when former Conservative MP Jason Kenney stepped away from federal politics to run a successful campaign for leadership of the Progressive Conservatives with a platform of conservative unification in the province.
The current situation, said Wildrose leader Brian Jean at The Hive in Canmore on Main Street, Thursday (June 8), is that unification awaits approval by Wildrose members.
Under Wildrose party bylaws, said Jean, 75 per cent of its membership would have to support unification into the United Conservative Party, with a leader being chosen in October.
Leadership of a United party, at this time, is a race between Kenney and Jean.
In travelling around the province, said Jean, the biggest question people ask is “why are you doing this with the PCs?
“And I keep telling people it’s not just about the next election. I believe if the framework, the rock we’re building this party on, has a good foundation , then we’ll see a great house built and ultimately Albertans will be very happy with that.”
As to where a leadership race stands, Jean said, Wildrose has 40,000 or 50,000 members in the party “and I think that’s going to reach 100,000 people. People are going to be motivated to come out and vote for unity and vote for a leader.
“I’m hoping they’ll pick me; I’m going to give them as many reasons as I possibly can. I hope they vote for me, I’m a real Albertan who works with his hands doing whatever’s necessary to get the job done as a small businessman and ultimately, I think people will decide I can make the right choice in their best interests.”
Whether there is confusion as to having a trio of conservative parties on the books in Alberta – Wildrose, Progressive Conservatives, and now the United Conservative Party, Jean said there is. “There has and there will and we’re trying to be very clear in our messaging and that’s why I’m going around the province. We’re also coming out with a campaign plan to communicate to our members and let them know what’s going on and to hear from them and how they want us to respond to agenda items.
“We’ve got the (unification vote) meeting set for July 22 and the cutoff is July 8 for people to buy memberships. I do believe that ultimately we’ll go forward in one united party without people being confused and obviously our marketing plan going into the next election is going to have to be very aggressive.
At The Hive, Jean also did some electioneering in support of a conservative agenda, pointing out that the approximately 60 people who attended was far more than the three or four who turned out the last time he was in Canmore; suggesting unite the right support is growing.
Jean, who has lived in Fort McMurray since he was three, said he’s very passionate about the province, its people and its future.
“I’m very proud to be from Alberta and frankly I believe we do things better than anybody on the planet. We do the environment better, we do our human rights better, we treat people with more respect and frankly, we are great people.
“I also think Wildrose, the party, over the last 10 years is sort of an example of what Alberta and Albertans are. It has become the beating heart of the conservative movement and that to me is an indication of a movement. A movement not by the political elite or the corporations, but by people, by everyday Albertans.
“That’s why the Wildrose party has something to be proud of. What we’ve done over the past 10 years is truly admirable.”
Jean also took the opportunity to point out what he and the Wildrose perceive as shortcomings in NDP policies and actions. And it wasn’t long ago, he said, his party was counted out as a viable alternative in Alberta, although Wildrose won 22 seats in the last election; the most his party has won.
Jean envisions that 22 seats growing in the next election, believing Albertans will turn away from the NDP in favour of a united conservative offering.
“I believe that with this unity party, this is the first step of many steps towards what we ultimately wanted to see happen and that’s the principles of our party and the mechanism of our part, being government in Alberta
“Let me be clear, though, I believe this is the best for this party. That unity is the best for Albertans in the future. I do believe that and I hope you believe it too. The very future of our province is at stake here.”
Jean said four years of NDP has changed the province and eight years would destroy Alberta’s culture, which is why he would step aside as leader if necessary, despite saying he also believes Wildrose would win a next election.
The NDP must be fought, he said, because Alberta will be $90 billion in debt in just four years, making $3.5 billion in interest payments annually. Further, he said, Albertans will continue to be harmed by carbon taxes Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier Rachel Notley favour.
Jean said Albertans also deserve the best in health care and suggested that the present operation is too top heavy and that his party, if installed, would ensure that within Alberta Health Services, attrition would be taken advantage of in reducing the number of bureaucrats and managers running things.
“The NDP are beholden to their ideology. When I was in Ottawa (as MP), I looked across at the NDP and I thought they were joking. I didn’t realize there were people in Canada that had those thought processes.
“That they wanted to shut down our oilsands, even though we do it better than anybody else. That they want to keep our natural gas in the ground, and that we weren’t even going to be allowed to burn wood.
“It gets cold in Canada. And we have natural gas in abundance we should be taking advantage of. And we burn the cleanest coal in the world, with great technology that we should be exporting to the world.
“I didn’t think anything could be worse than the National Energy Program that Pierre Trudeau brought in back in the ‘80s. I thought never I would see it – that Shell, Chevron, British Petroleum, all of them have something in common – they’ve moved out and sold all their assets, or they’re trying to.
“They’re fleeing because of carbon taxes, caps on oilsands, interference in our regulatory process. All of these are clear signals they don’t want anything to do with this government.
“Our confederation is broken. We need to think about things differently and we need a premier that stands up and understands that our contract with the rest of the provinces and the federal government is called our constitution. And under section 92, we have rights over our natural resources and the right to take our product to market.
“Tax hikes, layoffs, caps on our oilsands, accelerated shutdown of coal; these additional red tape and regulations are strangling business and success. We’ve had five credit downgrades; all of these policies are hurting us and hurting our competitiveness in the international marketplace.
“We need to show that conservative ideas mean more jobs, more opportunities for individuals, a better future, better public services and yes, a brighter future for everybody.”
