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RED DEER, ALTA. – Alongside poppies on many lapels at the United Conservative Party’s annual general meeting on Friday were buttons proclaiming support for party leader and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.
These were less outlandish than some of the attire (a hoodie reading “F–k Trudeau with a cactus,” for example), although the vast majority of the 6,000 or so attendees appeared as if they could just as easily be heading to church, the mall or hockey practice.
“I hear that this is the largest political convention in Canada, ever,” said Health Minister Adriana LaGrange, to cheers from the crowd, during the meeting’s opening ceremonies.
While the room was suffused with the usual political bonhomie, looming overhead is the prospect of a vote on Smith’s continued leadership. Smith, who became leader of the party in 2022 after replacing former leader Jason Kenney (who suffered a poor leadership review), is facing some opposition from disgruntled members. Not many think she’ll lose.
“You can’t please everyone, but we can’t just ditch someone,” said Brenda Ans, an attendee from Red Deer, who’s at her second-ever convention. “We can’t keep doing that.”
Ans, a former nurse who said she lost her job because she refused to get a COVID vaccine, wore a pro-Smith button on her lapel.
Even if Smith does win, her critics hope it will be a reality check, a reminder to keep focused on their priorities, particularly around strengthening individual rights, and to move more quickly on them.
When Smith arrived to the stage prior to a question period on Friday afternoon, she got a standing ovation, while the crowd clapped along to Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s Takin’ Care of Business, before being joined by the rest of the UCP caucus. Mickey Amery, the justice minister, held his phone up, panning the crowd for a video, before getting a huge cheer for saying the provincial government was standing up for the free-speech rights of working professionals, referring to a recent announcement to limit the power of professional regulatory bodies to police opinions.
The crowd clapped and cheered and whooped as the ministers rattled off their policy greatest hits.
The first hours of the convention trod on familiar ground: Janell Malkin sang the older, “in all thy sons command” version of O Canada, to an enthusiastic response from the crowd; ministers inveighed against the “woke left”; and Vince Byfield, son of the late conservative iconoclast Ted Byfield, led the crowd in a Christian prayer, while noting that he would fight for everyone’s right to worship, regardless of their religion.
In the months leading up to the convention, Smith has been working hard to placate often ornery segments of her party. Smith is doing as good a job as possible of leading the party, some said.
“It’s a hard f–king party to run,” quipped a senior government staffer.
It was a little more than two years ago that Kenney resigned in the face of rebellion, largely over his government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, despite having hauled the party together by main force from the Progressive Conservatives and the Wildrose party.
This party, a sometimes-uneasy alliance of different conservative traditions, is both strengthened and hobbled by the reality of having such a big tent.
Gus Barron, who said he’s been involved with conservative politics for 50 or so years, said “the party is always divided.”
“We have a habit of eating our own,” he said.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the party has signed up thousands of new members, some of whom bring priorities to the party that aren’t necessarily shared quite so enthusiastically by longer-term movement conservatives.
Leif Andersen, of Grande Prairie, Alta., is at his first-ever political convention. It was COVID-19, he said, that convinced him to get involved with the party. “I have to feel like I’m part of the process,” Anderson said.
He’ll be supporting Smith this weekend.
“She’s freedom-oriented,” Anderson said. “She’s Alberta first, Canada second.”
Over the past week, the Alberta government has rolled out some of its red-meat policy proposals, including amendments to the Alberta Bill of Rights and restrictions on medical transitioning for some transgender minors.
The party is expected to hold a special debate on Saturday about the Bill of Rights. Some segments of the party are looking to push the government towards amendments that better reflect an earlier draft that, those supporters believe, would allow for the right to bear arms and strip Alberta’s version of the notwithstanding clause from the proposed amendments.
The question period, which put ministers in the hot seat with party members, suggested a litany of concerns amongst party members. (All ministers were sporting their own pro-Smith buttons.) John Williams, who ran for the UCP board in 2023, asked what should be done to ensure the NDP can never win again. Jason Nixon, the social services minister, said “it breaks your heart,” to have seen the NDP defeat two conservative parties in 2015 (the PCs and Wildrose) and form government.
Yet Naheed Nenshi’s New Democrats, the official Opposition in Alberta, got little attention, compared to the perceived depredations of the federal Liberals on the carbon tax, affordability and immigration, among more specific Alberta concerns.
Sarah Bates, a family doctor from Calgary, asked about the status of compensation agreements with doctors. Daryl Proulx, of Peace River, asked for “meaningful cuts to government spending” to head off a possible deficit, and potential future tax increase.”
“I’ve got kids and I’m worried about that,” Proulx said.
National Post
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