Alberta Premier Danielle Smith to face restive base at UCP annual meeting

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When Alberta’s UCP members gather in Red Deer, Alta., Friday and Saturday for their annual meeting, they’ll not just be debating policy proposals or stoking the belly fire necessary to sustain a political party.

They’ll also be voting on the leadership of their Premier Danielle Smith. Conceivably, the premier could be fired by her party despite leading it to a majority victory just 17 month ago. Some UCP members think she will be.

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“I think what she’s doing now is literally trying to save her own hide, and I think it’s too little, too late,” said Nadine Wellwood, the chairman of the 1905 Committee, a conservative activist group, who was an unsuccessful UCP candidate in the 2023 election. “Danielle has really fallen short of the mandate that she was so committed to as she ran for the leadership campaign herself.”

Normally in Canada, party leaders don’t undergo leadership reviews after they’ve won a majority government in an election.

“For members and for activists, when you win a majority mandate, you want your leadership focused as much as possible on doing things with that majority mandate,” said Brad Tennant, a long-time Alberta conservative activist, in an interview.

The reason for the review is that the party’s bylaws mandate a leadership review every three years, and Smith didn’t have one in 2022 (she won the leadership that summer) or 2023 (an election year) and so 2024 has to be the year.

In the past 20 years of Alberta politics, all but three premiers have been forced out of office by their party, rather than by voters.

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Former premiers Alison Redford, Ed Stelmach, Jason Kenney and Ralph Klein all left their jobs, despite winning elections, as a result of disgruntlement in their party.

As a result of the looming leadership review, Smith has been working assiduously to shore up support among her party members, holding town halls around the province over the course of the summer and, at least according to critics, crafting the early days of the fall legislative session in such a way as to offer up policies that ought to be popular with more restive elements within the party.

The broader you build the tent, the more likely that there’s going to be some group of folks that that are unhappy

After Smith’s comments that Alberta could be headed towards a deficit because of slumping oil prices, Wellwood also argued on X that “had Danielle Smith been a true conservative, she would have reduced the size of government, reduced the budget, & this would not be a problem.”

When Smith won the leadership in 2022, it was because of considerable discontent with Kenney’s leadership, particularly his government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to more general concerns that he had been insufficiently deferential towards the demands of the party’s grassroots.

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Anger over pandemic lockdowns and vaccine passports and mandates brought in thousands of angry new members to the UCP. Many of those people are still active within the party, and have channeled some of their energy into new enthusiasm for social and cultural policies.

“It’s a massive attendance, and the broader you build the tent, the more likely that there’s going to be some group of folks that that are unhappy,” said Tennant.

Leighton Grey, a Cold Lake, Alta., lawyer who’s active in the more reactionary segment of the party’s base, wrote on X that Smith’s UCP government “behaves increasingly like Liberals.”

“They are for high taxes, government controlled health care, government MVA (motor vehicle accident) insurance, big welfare spending, net zero climate change policy, mass immigration, multiculturalism, & DEI. The rest is window dressing,” Grey wrote.

On Monday, the very first bill of the fall legislative session from Smith’s government proposed updates to the Alberta Bill of Rights, which included the right never to be coerced or compelled into taking a vaccine — precisely the sort of policy demanded by the more activist elements in the party.

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But it seems like for many it wasn’t good enough, at least partly because it contains a provincial version of the notwithstanding clause contained in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which allows for the government to violate rights, regardless of a court decision saying so.

David Parker, the head of Take Back Alberta, which bills itself as a “grassroots movement built to advance freedom and transfer power from the ruling elite to the people of our province,” called the new Bill of Rights “a joke.”

“This is pandering to a portion of the party to try to secure her leadership so her lobbyist friends keep making money,” Parker wrote.

But there’s also a segment of the UCP frustrated by the prospect of a headline-grabbing leadership review that’s sucking up political capital and energy at a time when the premier could be focused on her mandate from Albertans. Those members would prefer to see her tackling bread-and-butter issues like affordability and health care with more precision, rather than trying to survive a leadership vote.

The United Conservative Party has, at times, had more than 100,000 party members. Some 5,600 people are expected in Red Deer over the weekend for the AGM, filling hotels to capacity.

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While that’s a large number of conventioneers, it’s unclear how many are longtime conservatives party stalwarts and how many will be from the agitated wave of more recent arrivals to provincial party involvement.

The difference will likely determine Smith’s future.

“I think she’s going to rock it,” said UCP House leader Joseph Schow said last week when asked about Smith’s chances.

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