Last weekend’s UCP annual general meeting in Calgary looked more and more like a dress rehearsal for the downfall of Jason Kenney. Even after mobilizing party staffers to stack the meeting with his supporters and paying their registration fees through a dubious scheme involving political action committees (PACs), the party apparatchiks could not muster the necessary votes to prevent an earlier leadership review. While there was no open confrontation, the stage has been set for an eventual clash at the next general meeting where Kenney’s leadership will be reviewed.
The AGM was the first in two years since the pandemic hit Alberta and came amid Kenney’s plummeting popularity. Sitting at 22 per cent approval, Kenney is now the least popular premier in Canada. He started his premiership with a 61 per cent approval rating. The room was packed, and the dividing line was clearly marked: between those who sported “I stand with Jason Kenney” buttons and those without buttons, the sans-macarons.
A slow-motion internal dissent
Ahead of the AGM, 22 constituency associations passed a motion calling for a special general meeting (SGM). According to the party’s bylaws, an SGM is triggered when more than a quarter of constituency associations demand it, and 22 constituency associations—out of a total of 87—works out to be just over 25 per cent. This SGM would allow for an earlier leadership review than the one scheduled in April 2022. Moreover, the SGM would allow all party members to vote on the leadership review from home, while the scheduled April AGM would limit the voting rights to paid delegates who could attend the meeting in person. This SGM motion was clearly an attempt to circumvent Jason Kenney’s habit of bureaucratic maneuvering and stacking meetings with his supporters, something he is well known to excel at and which was on full display during last weekend’s AGM.
To squash this SGM motion, Jason Kenney’s apparatchiks moved a resolution that would raise the threshold to trigger a special general meeting from 25 per cent to 33 per cent of constituency associations. The rationale offered is that the current 25-per-cent threshold “sets the bar too low and opens the party up to troublemaking by a small minority of (constituency association) boards”, and that a minority shouldn’t be able to overthrow a leader.
The voting on this resolution marked the first real shot in the UCP’s internal struggle after an especially tense year filled with a string of resignations of high-profile political staffers and harsh criticism that has included open calls for Kenney to resign from some of his own MLAs. For Kenney, the victory would have shown to his detractors that all of this noise was only due to a handful of disgruntled party members, and that he would still be the best leader to lead the party to keep the NDP at bay in the next election. But when only 57 per cent of the delegates supported the resolution to increase the threshold, when what was needed was 75 per cent, it became clear that his position was not as secure as he would like to think. The tension that has been rather muted to this point has now risen to the surface, revealed by applause when Kenney’s resolution was defeated.
This defeat was even more glaring because the party apparatchiks had spent considerable resources stacking the meeting with Kenney’s supporters. A leaked email shows how a private company, at the behest of Kenney’s senior staffer, worked to bring in delegates to the AGM in return for some future favors from Kenney’s cabinet, should he survive this turmoil. The email from the company executive reads:
“One of Kenney’s senior staff reached out to me yesterday and asked if I could ‘round up’ a substantial number of existing and new members to attend the AGM and participate in the board voting … it looks like our premier is looking to shore up a few board positions to wash out a few of the dissenters.”
But here is the extra kicker that shines a spotlight on the true inner workings of bourgeois democracy and how big money gains access to the corridors of power:
“What I would like to do, is take this specific request from Kenney’s office to bring support, and leverage that into further, meaningful dialogues with his cabinet … [to] put us in a position to be recognized as strong supporters in the event Kenney carries on and brings his house in order.”
Pro-Kenney PACswere also brought in to cover the $349 convention fees specifically for Kenney loyalists, which further helped him stack the meeting. MLA Todd Loewen, who was kicked out of the UCP caucus because of his criticism of Kenney, and the NDP opposition have requested that Alberta’s chief electoral officer investigate this potential fundraising violation. But Kenney defended this practice as business as usual, and he is most likely not wrong in this. Since the banning of direct corporate donations to political parties, PACs have acted as vehicles to channel big money into their representative political parties and they are known for dubious practices. This is by design. Todd Loewen was only disturbed about this PAC’s money because it is now being used to the benefit of Kenney’s faction.
But despite all this effort to stack the meeting, Kenney lost the first battle. The precariousness of Kenney’s position in the party and his own understanding of it—after denying it for the past year—was exposed by the fact that he was found meeting and greeting delegates in the lobby on the opening day of the AGM, which was something that he had never done before.
Defiant apology
After the voting defeat on Friday, Kenney delivered an apologetic yet defiant speech the next day. “We have made mistakes in the process and, as premier, I must take responsibility for that. I know that many of you are angry with me,” said Kenney. But he remained steadfast in his handling of the pandemic. It was a non-apology apology. He proceeded to offer a shopping list of his government’s successes, saying that Alberta is on the rise under his watch. Yet the historically low approval rating tells a different story, and the very working people who voted him to power do not see successes but only failures and hardships.
A $4.3-billion investment from Amazon was touted as an accomplishment of his government, one which he assured us will bring prosperity to Alberta workers. But what is not mentioned is that this is a promise of investment planned over a span of 16 years [!!], and that the estimated 950 direct and indirect jobs will be created by 2037. If anyone knows anything about Jeff Bezos, he has become the richest man on earth—and in space—not due to his propensity to spread wealth to his workers, but due to his company’s vicious practice of squeezing workers for every drop of sweat and tears it can get and avoiding paying taxes. This investment will not solve the problem of unemployment in Alberta, which was sitting at 7.6 per cent last month, higher than the national average of 6.7 per cent.
Throughout his 38-minute speech, Kenney received a number of standing ovations, which bolstered his confidence and put a spring back in his step. “A lot more than 50 per cent of people in that room were on their feet affirming what I had to say to the party and the province,” he boasted unabashedly. Never mind that it was a stage-managed convention, loaded with friendly delegates; never mind that only one out of five Albertans thinks he is doing a good job. Kenney was clearly over the moon: “I feel more confident about my leadership than, frankly, I have in a very long time.” Such detachment from reality is characteristic of today’s ruling class.
The party apparatchiks too were celebrating at the end of the convention, as things did not blow up during the weekend. There were no walkouts, no embarrassing outbursts, and no gloves were taken off. That is a success in their books. But behind the scenes, away from the spotlight of the main event, in the hallways and around watering holes in hushed tones, opposition to Kenney is gathering. As the Calgary Sun’s columnist Rick Bell, once a Kenney enthusiast turned into his most bitter of critics, reported:
“Down here, individuals are guarded when they answer questions. They look around before speaking.
“‘This is off the record, isn’t it?’
“Are we going to be able to get rid of Kenney when his leadership comes up for review next year?”
“Can we get rid of him before then?”
Kenney entered Alberta politics for the express purpose of uniting the two main right-wing parties, the Progressive Conservatives and the Wildrose Party, in order to defeat Notley’s NDP. Kenney’s clout in conservative circles made this unity possible, at least temporarily. But a fundamental fault line still exists in the UCP between the old PC and Wildrose wings, and the battle over Kenney’s leadership could deepen this fissure and possibly split the party. Even Lorne Gunter, the right-wing columnist for Sun Media, is warning that punting Kenney could lead to a split.
Brian Jean, the former Wildrose Party leader who announced his retirement from politics shortly after losing the leadership race to Kenney, made an appearance at the AGM. Sensing that the ground beneath Kenney is crumbling, Jean is seeking a political comeback after being robbed of what he believed was his manifest destiny to be the UCP chief and the next premier of Alberta. His Wildrose party had 21 seats, compared to the dismal nine seats held by Kenney’s PCs, but when the two parties merged in 2017 to become the UCP, he was kicked to the curb. He has never forgiven Kenney for that. He now makes it clear to everyone that he wants to right this wrong, for example by writing an op-ed with this opening line: “If I were running the province right now…”
Another former Wildrose leader, Danielle Smith, joined him like a vulture circling a wounded animal, also vying for a comeback after a rather embarrassing end to her political career, prompted by her ill-timed defection to the PCs. It remains to be seen if either of these members of the old Wildrose vanguard could become the rallying point for the opposition to Kenney. In fact, they will be sorry sooner than later if they think they could do a better job than Kenney during the deepest crisis of capitalism. But for now, the spectre of another NDP government was enough to give an appearance of a united party during last weekend’s AGM.
“The vast majority of Albertans [read: the capitalist class] … their number one concern is ‘we don’t want another NDP majority,’ and they’re terrified of it… We want a unified conservative side so we don’t have another Rachel Notley disaster,” said Gordon Tulk, a delegate from Red Deer. The disastrous split of the conservative camp into two parties which allowed the historical victory of the NDP weighs heavily in the collective memory of the Alberta ruling class. “When conservatives are united we win, when we’re divided, we lose, it’s that simple,” Jason Kenney reminded them all at the closing press conference.
Yet, the very same Red Deer delegate admitted that he is basically finished with Kenney, that he thought the premier has broken the party’s trust. “Once people don’t trust your promises in a crisis like this, trust evaporates,” said Tulk. “I don’t know how he pulls it back, honestly.”
The company executive mentioned above, who helped round up pro-Kenney delegates to the AGM, displayed exactly the same sentiment: “While I am not necessarily the biggest Kenney fan at this point, I am a believer that our conservative government needs to show a consolidated and determined front or we risk a sharp turn on the next election that wouldn’t be great for Albertans.” Such an attitude, a cautious hold-your-nose support for Kenney, makes up the significant camp that stands between the loyalists and the dissidents. The upcoming leadership review, which will be held in April or earlier, will not be a walk in the park for Kenney.
The crisis plaguing the party
The crisis that is pulling the UCP and the government apart at the seams runs deeper than the pandemic-induced challenges. Overshadowing the AGM was a series of missteps that have brought the UCP government further and further away from their “jobs, economy, pipelines” campaign promise, and closer and closer each day to its downfall.
Kenney’s government squandered $1.3 billion in pipeline investment. That amount of money could have been used to help many working-class families who are impacted by the pandemic. Instead, it was poured down the drain that went directly into the pockets of the oil barons.
His energy “war room” stunt quickly fizzled into a public embarrassment. Starting with a $30-million annual budget, its operating budget has been cut to the bone as it became clear to Jason Kenney that this outfit does nothing for his popularity, other than being the butt of numerous jokes. In the end, this “war room” will be remembered only for its campaign against a children’s cartoon.
A public inquiry that was supposed to uncover a vast conspiracy of economic sabotage against the Alberta oil industry turned up with a big zero. The inquiry was launched with much fanfare by the government following the UCP’s victory. But when its report was finally released in October, more than two years and $3.5 million later, Kenney was nowhere to be seen. The report admitted that “no individual or organization, in my view, has done anything illegal. Indeed, they have exercised their rights of free speech… While anti-Alberta energy campaigns may have played a role in the cancellation of some oil and gas developments, I am not in a position to find that these campaigns alone caused project delays or cancellations.” What is interesting to note is that even this report had to take a jab against the energy war room, saying that “it may well be that the reputation of this entity has been damaged beyond repair”, which is another way of saying that it should be put out of its misery.
Desperate to reignite the energy industry, Kenney unilaterally rescinded a decades-old ban on open-pit coal mining in the Rockies. This plan backfired almost immediately. Leading the opposition to this plan was not the much-maligned foreign-funded environmentalists, but Southern ranching families and the UCP’s own rural base. Kenney was forced to retreat, but the damage has been done to his reputation. He is increasingly seen as an out-of-touch politician, who mistakenly believed that every rural Albertan would simply do his bidding, allowing an oil rig or a coal mine in their backyard.
In the middle of an unprecedented public health emergency, the Kenney government has attacked health-care workers in all areas of the sector. In short, Jason Kenney has managed to find ways to anger everyone in sight. “There’s no base right now for this government to hold on to because they have just been agitated in all the different little ways,” says one UCP government source. And the pandemic simply brings together all those “different little ways.” The root of all this is the crisis of capitalism. There doesn’t seem to be anything that Kenney could do right, for the crisis of capitalism simply does not allow for any room for a correct choice to be made.
The UCP is still hoping for the return of the oil boom that they believe will save their fortune. The UCP is optimistic again with the recent jump in oil prices to a three-year high. As one long-time UCP strategist said in the convention: “$80 oil can cover a lot of mistakes.” But as we have explained elsewhere, high-paying oil jobs are not returning even with the return of high oil prices. As we wrote in a previous article, “The most farsighted elements of the ruling class do not expect stability or any long-lasting boom. Jackie Forrest of ARC Energy Research Institute said: ‘Despite the fact that the industry is doing really well, they’re being very cautious with their money and not directing that to new projects or [capital expenditure] and things that would generate a bunch of jobs in the province that way.’”
The crisis of capitalism is weakening the pernicious hold of the “Alberta Advantage” on the consciousness of the Alberta working class, and this finds its expression in the persistent crisis inside the party of the ruling class. A survey at the beginning of the year shows that just over half of Albertans, at 51 per cent, now feel that the province’s “best days are behind it.”
The same survey also showed that only 42 per cent of Albertans support the idea of providing subsidies to oil and gas companies, destroying the old myth that Alberta working class are too reactionary and irreversibly tied to the oil barons. Even amongst UCP voters, only 54 per cent are for these subsidies.
The truth of the matter, the reason for the continuing support of rural Alberta workers for the conservative parties and the oil barons, is largely due to the force of habit. For most rural Albertans, as long as they can remember, they have always voted conservative. So have their parents, and their uncles and aunties, grandparents, great-grandparents. For a long time under conservative rule the economy was doing well, which reinforced this tradition. As Marx once said: “The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.” But this tradition is rapidly melting into thin air, as workers are learning through their own concrete experience that their interests do not align with those of the oil barons. Events, events, and events are shaping and reshaping their class consciousness. Through 1,001 “different little ways”, Alberta workers are leaving the bourgeois party and finding their way to their own class interests.
The old Alberta is simply dying, and a new one is struggling to be born. The convulsion of this birth is most felt in the old party of the ruling class at the moment. The UCP government is teetering on collapse. With just a small push, the Alberta working class could not only force Kenney to resign but also bring the government down. The Alberta working class has yet to show its might, but when it does, there will be a reckoning.
