Danielle Smith gave UCP policies they wanted. Members gave support she craved. Now what?
Cheers emanated from the counting room as UCP officials tallied the votes for Danielle Smith’s leadership review.
The most optimistic in Smith’s camp had expected the proportion of her support would be somewhere in the 80s.
Getting 91.5 per cent meant that, of the 4,633 party members voting at the weekend’s UCP convention in Red Deer, Alta., fewer than 400 said no — despite a seemingly well-resourced campaign of messages and flyers demanding United Conservatives send a stern message to their leader.
A jubilant Smith declared the United Conservative Party “is more united than it has ever been.” History shows the truth in that, given how much better Smith fared than the 54 per cent support that gave her the party crown in 2022, or what her predecessor Jason Kenney got (51 per cent) in a review, or what the last three Tory premiers to face leadership reviews received: Alison Redford (77), Ed Stelmach (77) and Ralph Klein (55).
This is her party’s tacit green light for Smith to become the first Alberta leader to carry the blue banner into two straight elections in more than two decades.
Base player
This was a hard-won victory for the premier, with much heavy campaigning in recent months — first a province-wide summer tour of members-only town halls to show she listens, and then a series of government bills last week to show she acts on those members’ wishes.
The Bill of Rights changes and new transgender health and sex-ed policies were inspired by UCPers at past party conventions.
On Saturday at the convention, while members voted in her leadership review, Smith held a first-ever “accountability session” to prove just how many of the dozens of past years’ UCP policy resolutions she’d turned into action. Answer: nearly all.
Require parental consent for students changing pronouns at school? “Done!” Smith declared to her party faithful. Crackdowns on vote-counting machines, professional regulators, and solar panels on farmland? Check, check, check.
One of the Smith government’s Bill of Rights reforms would add “freedom of expression” to the existing and similar-sounding freedoms of speech and press. Well, that was Policy Resolution 2 at last year’s UCP annual meeting, the premier reminded this year’s crowd.
All that adherence to the base’s desires will only raise supporters’ expectations that Smith and her cabinet keep up the trend with this year’s party policy declarations. The UCP endorsed 35 more policy resolutions in Red Deer, most of them with the same overwhelmingly large “Yes” vote as Smith herself enjoyed.
“These are the new mandate letters,” remarked one government official who’s not authorized to speak on party matters. (A premier gives mandate letters to new cabinet ministers, with the expectation they’ll carry out all requests.)
The reforms the UCP base demanded in their resolutions include going further on transgender policies: to end public funding of transitioning health services and non-binary options on ID cards, as well as a ban on trans women in women’s bathrooms or shelters.
“Your [sic] damn right we did!” said Bruce McAllister, a senior aide to the premier, on social media. The premier has previously conveyed resistance to regulating who uses which change rooms.
Another resolution would see Alberta abandon all pursuit of net-zero emissions targets and reject the long-held scientific consensus on greenhouse gases by deeming carbon dioxide a vital nutrient for life rather than a pollutant.
“It lays an axe at the root of the climate change debate,” UCP member Christopher Bell said during the policy debate.
When a young central Alberta UCPer argued that “too much CO2 is a detriment to the planet and a detriment to people,” some in the crowd groaned and jeered.
Smith used to express climate skepticism years ago, but following party wishes here would mark a major shift in the UCP government’s environmental policy of pursuing emissions reductions, albeit not with the pace or methods the Trudeau Liberals want.
On her toes
Will the premier feel the same obligation to the UCP base now that she doesn’t have a members’ leadership review hanging over her head until after the 2027 vote?
After winning the party’s leadership in 2022 on a campaign that focused on the Sovereignty Act and unvaccinated Albertans’ rights, she appeared to pivot toward more broadly appealing affordability issues before the 2023 provincial election.
She’ll once again face a balancing act between what the party wants and what the general public wants, but the party will keep her on her toes, said Vince Byfield, a Smith ally whose term on the UCP provincial board expired last week.
“She knows the history of this party,” he said in an interview. “When you ignore the will of the grassroots members, it doesn’t end well. It has never ended well.”
He was formerly a regional captain for Take Back Alberta, the grassroots activist group whose founder David Parker had pushed against Smith’s leadership this weekend.
Byfield acknowledged that the UCP convention-goers leaned far more rural than the province at large, and gave some credence to NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi’s position that Smith’s been governing for her own partisan faction rather than for most of the populace.
“Nenshi has a point: The issue of rights [for the unvaccinated] is one that is near and dear to the hearts of many grassroots members, but not necessarily to the vast majority of Albertans who got vaccinated. It’s a non-issue for them,” Byfield said.
Further to the rights
Smith’s party placed one of its issues on the provincial government’s policy front-burner.
It endorsed a much stronger, more expansive Bill of Rights overhaul than the revisions that Smith tabled last week — including new freedoms “from excessive taxation” and enshrining the right to use violent force to defend one’s property, as well as removing language that limits rights in justifiable situations.
“The Alberta Bill 24 is nothing but a limp-wristed, whitewashed panacea to make us go away,” said Ian Parkinson, a member of the Black Hat group that promoted a stronger rights document. “Tough shit. We’re here.”
Some party members argued the proposals were poorly drafted and stray into federal criminal jurisdiction, but the Black Hats received massive support from convention-goers.
“It’s a message to caucus,” Black Hat leader Mitch Sylvestre told the crowd. “This vote will give government direction and the strong support they need to move forward.”
Justice Minister Mickey Amery had been lobbied by the Black Hats on those stronger reforms before the legislation came out, as well as last week after the bill fell short of those wishes.
In a brief interview on Saturday, Amery said the UCP caucus will meet to discuss potential amendments to Bill 24 and “we’ll assess those next week.”
Leadership, reviewed
Under Danielle Smith, United Conservatives members have grown accustomed to their policy dreams becoming legislated reality, and they don’t appear likely to stop expecting more of the same.
That could be why the anti-Smith campaigners’ claims that she wasn’t doing enough for the conservative base didn’t ring true, not with more than nine-tenths of the thousands who flocked to Red Deer.
If she starts betraying their wishes now, party members might start echoing more of those complaints and give Smith political headaches, even if they won’t get another chance to weigh in on her leadership again.
The next review of Smith’s leadership is the 2027 general election, when a broader group of Albertans might not like how far the premier and her UCP have gone.
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