New UCP leader still very much a blank slate

By Medicine Hat News Opinon on November 4, 2017.

It wasn’t even close.

Jason Kenney won the United Conservative Party leadership handily on the first ballot with 61 per cent of the vote, nearly 30 per cent more than his closest rival, former Wildrose leader Brian Jean.

Jean is arguably Alberta’s most popular politician, consistently ranking ahead of Kenney and Premier Rachel Notley in numerous opinion polls.

Jean also had more crossover appeal than the new leader. Despite having been the leader of the Wildrose, home to a candidate who a few years ago promised homosexuals an eternity in a “lake of fire,” Jean appears to possess less social conservative baggage than Kenney.

When Kenney, who began his career as a militant anti-abortion activist, said that students’ parents should be notified if they join a gay-straight alliance, Jean joined Notley in observing that this would effectively lead to outing gay students to their parents.

Some of Jean’s more populist appeals, like holding a provincial referendum on the contentious issue of photo radar speeding tickets, were clearly crafted to appeal to those outside the party bubble. Unfortunately for him, those weren’t the people he had to appeal to to win the party leadership.

Jean was bested by Kenney’s establishment heft.

Kenney, who held several portfolios in former prime minister Stephen Harper’s three Conservative governments, had a reputation as a brilliant, albeit highly cynical, political strategist.

His ethnic outrage efforts, particularly in Ontario’s growing suburbs, are credited largely with securing Harper’s majority government in 2011.

He was widely considered a top candidate to replace Harper, so his decision to instead seek the PC leadership and merge Alberta’s two conservative factions should not be taken lightly.

He is a highly partisan figure, which could serve as a valuable asset for Notley and Alberta Party Leader Greg Clark, who will also seek to siphon off moderate conservative support from the new party.

It was Kenney as citizenship and immigration minister who originally promoted the Harper government’s ill-fated niqab ban, which is now the subject of much controversy due to its implementation in Quebec.

He also voted in 2012 to reopen the abortion debate, one of 10 Conservative MPs to do, with a motion that asked to study when life begins. He did so against the advice of his own prime minister.

Kenney wasted no time in using his new bully pulpit to bash the NDP government, casting them as extreme ideologues who are trying to recreate the province in their image.

The exact same could be said of Kenney, who was to the right of his right-wing party on many issues on the federal scene.

Notley is also to the right, although of a left-wing party. Her pro-pipeline position puts her at odds with the federal and B.C. New Democrats.

If one of them is a hardline ideologue, it’s clearly Kenney, who may find himself having difficulty repealing many of Notley’s policies, whether it’s the carbon tax, which is now a federal requirement, or farm safety legislation that extends basic labour rights to farmers.

The UCP leader is somewhat of a blank slate at this point, as he refused to announce specific policy platforms until he won the race. His past baggage wasn’t much help to his opponents, both within and without the party, if it couldn’t be tied to specific policy pronouncements.

This helped him became UCP leader, but time will tell if it assists him in becoming premier of Alberta.