MLA Report: Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it

By Drew Barnes on June 10, 2022.

The spring sitting of Alberta’s Legislative Assembly came to an abrupt end last month in the wake of the UCP leadership review. When the legislature is recalled on Oct. 31, it will be under a new premier.

This is great news for all Albertans. With Premier Kenney’s forthcoming departure, we have been given the opportunity for a fresh start. The older I get, the more I realize how incredibly rare such opportunities can be.

I want to thank all those UCP members, including the constituency association presidents, who worked so hard to make this turning point possible. We should always give credit where credit is due. They won a battle some said they never could – not for personal gain but to put our province first.

The result of the leadership review vote, which saw nearly half the conservative base reject a sitting premier, was definitive. It should not have come as a surprise. I can’t speak for others, but I personally warned the government repeatedly of the dangers of ignoring the grassroots.

Unfortunately, it seems the outgoing premier still has no understanding of where he went wrong. Even since announcing his resignation, he continues to blame party members he has publicly referred to as “lunatics” for the crime of daring to question him. He steadfastly refuses to accept any blame for his failed leadership on a variety of issues, demonstrating just how disconnected his government has become from Albertans.

There is an old saying, “those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.”

With that in mind, here are some key lessons conservatives should take from the failed leadership of Jason Kenney:

• Albertans, conservatives in particular, want a government that listens. In a representative democracy like ours, MLAs are elected to put the thoughts and concerns of local families and communities first. I can personally attest that this proved impossible under Kenney, who routinely ignored and attacked any MLA who spoke out. Even in the weeks leading up to the leadership review he announced plans to crack down harder on MLAs who refused to abide by the government’s orthodoxy. Any pretense of servant leadership was abandoned.

• Most Albertans, including conservatives, want a government that will fight Ottawa for a Fair Deal. In last fall’s referendum, Albertans voted 62 per cent in favour of removing equalization from the constitution. That is a much larger majority than the 55 per cent who voted UCP in the 2019 election. Yet, Kenney never delivered more than periodic angry letters to Ottawa, designed to play politics with the Fair Deal issue.

• Most Albertans support economic management that allows the average person to get ahead. This means government should respect free markets and encourage competition, rather than use taxpayer resources to pick winners and losers. It means creating an even playing field for all while reducing the tax burden on families, rather than handing out Ontario-style corporate welfare and creating special rules for foreign-owned mega corporations.

The UCP is currently poised to lose the next election, and it has nothing to do with Kenney’s imagined “lunatics.” It has everything to do with a government refusing to listen to the people.

Whether it’s the fallout from that pandemic, rising inflation, rising interest rates, or ever-increasing taxes, far too many Albertans are fighting just to keep their heads above water. Even when the economy grows, it’s too hard for regular folks to get ahead. Kenney and his cronies were happy to pretend everything is fine, but Albertans know better.

Conservatives need to come to grips with the lessons that Kenney refused to learn, and they need to do it quickly.

After all, those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.

Drew Barnes is MLA for Cypress-Medicine Hat

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