Lori Turnbull is an associate professor of political science at Dalhousie University.
The creation of the United Conservative Party in Alberta is a strategic move to prevent Rachel Notley's New Democrats from forming a second government. It is also a natural and healthy development in the evolution of the conservative movement in Alberta. The newly formed party, and whoever ends up leading it, might end up referring to Stephen Harper's playbook in order to manage tensions and divisions effectively and to maximize the new party's chances for electoral victory.
First, a word about strategy: In order to stand a chance at forming a government, political parties in Canada must work with the conditions imposed by our first-past-the-post system. This system rewards the person who comes first in each riding, so political parties want their candidates to come first as many times as possible. Vote splitting among parties with similar ideological vantage points is highly inefficient, as it increases the likelihood that neither party's candidate will win a plurality of votes. To the extent that the Progressive Conservatives were splitting the right-wing vote with the Wildrose Party in Alberta, it made sense to pool their collective support in order to try to defeat the NDP.
The federal Conservative Party came into existence largely as a result of drawing the same conclusion: as long as the Progressive Conservative Party was splitting the right-of-centre vote with the Reform Party or the Canadian Alliance, the Liberals would rule forever. All of this makes mergers sound much easier than they actually are. The reality is that party mergers are fraught with existential crises, conflicts between strong personalities, fear of the unknown, and guilt associated with abandoning the party that members have supported for years.
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Mergers are also a healthy and natural part of a political party's life path. Democratic politics is about aggregating interests and there are many ways of doing this. In Canada, at both the federal and provincial levels, it has been our tradition to aggregate diverse and sometimes conflicting interests within large, brokerage-style political parties. Think of them as huge tents, with enough room to house many diverse perspectives.
The electoral system supports and incentivizes the big-tent approach for the reason discussed above: It is inefficient to compete for votes with other parties that have similar – though not identical – values and ideologies. However, when a tent becomes too crowded, it is inevitable that some groups will pack up and leave in pursuit of a vehicle of representation that is more responsive to their particular values, preferences and interests. So, over the course of time, a pattern of coming together and breaking apart is a healthy way to make sure that political parties are responsive to the needs of their supporters at the same time as they are competitive in elections.
The trick with merged parties, especially in the early days, is to develop and maintain consistent messaging that resonates with the members of both of the former entities and that attracts the support of voters.
Former prime minister Stephen Harper, the first leader of the Conservative Party, was very successful at this. Paradoxically though, the thing that made him successful as the leader of a merged party was also the thing that made him unpopular in many quarters.
He learned early on that message control was essential, especially when you've got a new party whose members do not see eye to eye on everything and when the 24/7 news cycle and the omnipresent Twitterverse are looking for cracks in the foundation of the new union. His office implemented a centralized approvals process for MPs wishing to hold events or make announcements. This was denounced by critics of the government as an affront to democracy and a heavy-handed attempt to control and micro-manage our elected representatives, but it was also a way for the government to make sure that everyone stayed on message.
The UCP might find itself in a situation similar to that of Mr. Harper's Conservatives. It is possible that Ms. Notley's NDP will be a one-shot deal that voters were never going to reward with a second mandate. If the NDP's vote collapses, the UCP could win a majority government in Alberta. If, however, the NDP stays strong, the UCP could find itself as the official opposition or in a minority government situation like the one that the Harper government negotiated for two consecutive mandates.
If the UCP is anything other than a majority government in the next election, its leader might find new compassion for Stephen Harper.