Summer has arrived. You can smell it in the air

With it comes a chance to disconnect from the hustle and bustle, and take some time to recharge. It’s also time for campfires and deep thoughts. And for the politically inclined, it’s a chance to take a long hard look at the issues facing our families, our communities, our economy, and the province we love.

With that in mind, I’ve put together a list of five things to think about this summer. 

#1 Alberta’s direction

Is Alberta headed in the right direction? 

To politicians and the most ardent partisans this is a loaded question. The reason is clear, governments rise and fall based on how voters answer it. For them, this question is directly linked to their influence, their livelihoods, and their self-worth. As such, the question becomes indistinguishable from “is the government doing a good job?” 

However, the question isn’t for politicians to answer, nor is it about government priorities. The question is for Albertans to answer, and it is about the real life outcomes of government policies.

So, the question is to you: Is your family better off than it was five years ago? Is your community prospering? Is your Main Street vibrant? Can your kids find work in the community where they were raised? Will the next generation be better off than previous generations? 

Each and every one of us has a political bias of some sort, which can make it difficult to come to an honest answer, free from knee-jerk praise or blame. It’s a question I hope people will spend the summer thinking about. 

If the answer is no, change is required.

#2 Nenshi ain’t nothin’

I recently came across a social media post by a pro-government partisan arguing that Naheed Nenshi’s victory in the NDP leadership race was a good thing for the UCP. 

Apparently, government insiders are salivating at the thought of the next election. I can’t decide if this was a weak attempt at spin, or if this was an individual suffering from a severe case of Dome Disease. The truth is that Nenshi arrives on the scene with many advantages. 

He has strong grassroots connections in many neighbourhoods of swing city Calgary. That has helped him to accomplish something that only a handful of politicians in Alberta’s history have done: successfully unite Alberta’s chronically fractured left. The fact is, at this time Nenshi is much more popular within the NDP than Premier Smith is within the UCP. 

Secondly, Nenshi is politically savvy. He appears to be embracing an opportunity to recast the NDP’s stodgy old union fat cat image. He wants to formally separate his party from the federal NDP, a wise move that removes the threat of a tried-and-true conservative attack. Meanwhile, Premier Smith and the UCP appear unwilling to address the NDP’s best opportunity. The fact is these are difficult economic times. Yes Alberta’s GDP has grown, but it has not kept pace with population growth and inflation. Our unemployment rate remains higher than the national average, in stark contrast to a decade ago. Working families are falling further and further behind. Socialist parties thrive in times like these, and Nenshi will be quick to cast the Conservatives as a corrupt old party of bankers and lobbyists, working to make the wealthy richer. 

Finally, as things stand now the UCP is very much a government stuck in the doldrums of a second term, with no unifying long-term plan. After six years in power the party can no longer credibly blame the NDP for the challenges it faces, and has a growing list of broken promises under its belt. Resentment is real and it accumulates quickly. Time is on Nenshi’s side.

My advice is that the UCP needs to change course, and make changes designed to help the little guy get ahead. This includes eliminating the small business tax, cutting income tax rates, and scrapping corporate welfare programs that give global mega companies an unfair advantage over homegrown Alberta businesses. 

Pretending the economy is great is a recipe for a Nenshi victory. Instead the UCP needs to embrace the debate and draw a distinction between a small government conservative plan and a big government NDP plan.

#3 Where’s the Fair Deal?

With the arrival of yet another Canada Day, it seems a good time to take stock of Alberta’s place in Confederation. 

As a former MLA and member of the government’s Fair Deal Panel, I had hoped that we would be making better progress on this front. The fact is the government of Alberta hasn’t actually done much to win a Fair Deal or push back against federal overreach.

The government talks about an Alberta pension plan, but it has become quite apparent they have no intention to proceed. They talk about provincial policing, but aren’t putting any money or resources into it. Despite Albertans voting overwhelmingly against the federal equalization program, Alberta refuses to move ahead with collecting its own income taxes. In fact, the only tangible action taken by the government was passage of the Alberta Sovereignty Act. But you have to ask, if this legislation is such a game-changer, why has it never been invoked, and why are Ottawa’s attacks only increasing? 

Politicians like to politick, and for too long ours have been happy to play gotcha games rather than take real action to make real progress. With ever-rising carbon taxes choking off prosperity, and a defacto production cap on Alberta oil incoming, this is no time for waffling.

#4 Grassroots ignored

In November, the UCP will host its annual convention, complete with a policy debate, the election of board members, and a leadership review for the Premier. 

Already, activists on all sides are out selling memberships and trying to stack the vote in one form or another. That’s politics.

Naturally, much of the media focus will be on the leadership review. Given former Premier Jason Kenney’s rather ham-fisted attempts to rig conventions, it will be interesting to see if his former supporters adopt a similar strategy.

For my part, the most interesting (read nerdy) portion of the conventions is the policy debate. 

Members are routinely told that the UCP is a grassroots, member-driven party and that the government is listening. The reality is slightly murkier. Often, policy proposals the government doesn’t want to discuss are prevented from reaching the convention. When they do, various tactics are used to prevent divisive debates from reaching the floor. Getting a policy approved that doesn’t enjoy government’s outright support is a major achievement. So, when the government ignores or rags the puck on such policies, the optics are less than optimal.

Members adopted 27 major policy changes at last year’s convention. Of them, six indirectly involved the protecting individual rights and the government’s handling of pandemics. Since then, the government has made zero legislative changes to reflect these policies. In fact, the only change made to date has been for the government to make the illegal actions taken by Premier Kenney legal in the case of a future pandemic. This is unacceptable.

On parental rights and related gender ideology issues, UCP members passed four policies. To date the government has announced some potential regulatory changes that have not been enacted, and no legal changes. Most notably, the call for “a comprehensive Bill of Parental Rights” has been ignored.

Some other policies that were outright ignored were the elimination of DEI offices in post secondary institutions, improving access to fertilizer for farmers, and dividing the Ministry of Justice into two departments of Attorney General and Solicitor General.

Ignoring the wishes of members was common practice under the Kenney administration, and led to fractures in the party’s base. If this trend continues one would expect to see similar results.

#5 Governments defeat themselves

There is an old adage in Parliamentary democracies: Governments defeat themselves. This certainly was true of Alberta’s 44-year PC Dynasty, which collapsed under the weight of its own corruption, with the unbridled self-interest of Toryland party insiders exposed for the entire world to see.

It was this spectacular collapse, along with NDP mismanagement, that made the creation of the UCP possible seven years ago.

In retrospect, the true purpose of the UCP’s creation was to banish the taint of PC corruption and make electoral victory possible. From that perspective, it worked. Since then, the UCP government has won two general elections under two leaders. In both cases, voters were promised servant leadership that would listen to the people, and put Albertans’ concerns ahead of lobbyists and corporate interests. 

But are we getting what we were promised?

The Wildrose-PC merger was approved by the membership of both parties, based on a unity agreement that included 14 founding principles. Of these principles, several are notably absent from the party’s website today, including a commitment to “grassroots democracy, including measures to empower Albertans to hold governments accountable during and between elections.”

In the past year, the government’s recall and citizen initiative system have proven unworkable in the real world, with thresholds designed to protect the status quo rather than guarantee accountability to voters. It gives the government a smoke screen of legitimacy without truly offering real change.

In a world with real democratic accountability, would this government have handed a crony appointment to disgraced former Premier Alison Redford? In case you missed it, the former Queen of the Toryland Sky Palace now finds herself overseeing Invest Alberta, the one stop shop for UCP-approved corporate welfare.

In a world with real democratic accountability, would the government appoint a former candidate as Alberta’s ethics commissioner? Would it continue to award sole-source contracts to former staffers, party insiders, and even the current Premier’s former campaign manager?

The UCP may have been created to banish the stench of past corruption, but seven years later that funky smell is coming back.