Brian Jean’s by-election victory sets stage for clash among Alberta’s United Conservatives

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Just when the province’s fortunes are looking up, any political recovery Jason Kenney was looking forward to this year has been dealt a blow by the momentum that comes from rival Brian Jean’s clear-cut by-election win this week.

Mr. Jean – former UCP legislature member and a federal Conservative member of Parliament – is now the MLA-elect for Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche, winning 64 per cent of 5,837 votes cast in Tuesday’s by-election, according to the unofficial results. This is a by-election that’s about far more than just sending a protest message to the governing party. It’s a part of an internal party battle to unseat Mr. Kenney.

Alberta is now witnessing the strange spectacle of Mr. Jean travelling to Edmonton under the United Conservative Party banner, with his primary purpose being to challenge the UCP Leader – the Alberta Premier – to head the party. It’s a sign we’re heading into a period of political instability, and perhaps absurdity, in Alberta.

Mr. Kenney faces a leadership review on April 9. But a good portion of the vote is likely to be decided in the days ahead. Saturday is the day by which you must be a UCP member in order to be allowed to participate in the Red Deer leadership review.

There’s a huge push by both pro- and anti-Kenney forces to sign up members before the weekend. Earlier this week, loyalists to the Premier sent strongly worded e-mails to political staffers (through private e-mail accounts) to take Friday off work to help get members signed up.

The actual number of UCP members who show up in Red Deer to vote in the leadership review will be key. Mr. Jean said he believes “it’s going to be a record turnout.” The party wasn’t releasing official numbers on Wednesday, but it’s been estimated to be nearly 8,000 people. That’s much higher than the 1,200 or so Progressive Conservative party members who turned out to vote for in-person leadership reviews for Ed Stelmach and Alison Redford in 2009 and 2013, respectively.

If there is indeed a high turnout, it is doubtful that bodes well for Mr. Kenney. People are going to be less likely to spend the time and energy needed to go to Red Deer to support the Premier facing low, low approval numbers than being passionate about going there to vote against him.

But if he is still the Jason Kenney we know – and he wants to stay in politics and repair his tattered legacy – he will be trying to figure out a way to keep his job.

Within this internal party battle in play, there is such a wide variety of scenarios that are possible: that Mr. Kenney steps down, that he stays firmly in place to try to rebuild to the 2023 election, or that there’s a split amongst UCP members, with a more populist or rural wing challenging the now-governing party. There is also the possibility of a quicker-than-expected election, or that Mr. Kenney picks an option that seems outlandish, and asks party members for a second chance at being premier by joining the next UCP leadership race.

In the here and now, Mr. Jean said he is campaigning to replace a leader he said has lost the trust of both party members and Albertans, and whose continued leadership will lead to an NDP victory in 2023. It needs to be done, Mr. Jean said, “in order for the party to survive.”

Mr. Kenney, however, has questioned Mr. Jean’s “reliability” as someone who hasn’t completed his most recent terms as either an MP or MLA. He is framing the leadership review as a contest between mainstream Alberta conservatives and “folks involved in these [COVID-19] protests, who perhaps have never belonged to a party before,” that will “show up at that special general meeting to use it as a platform for their anger about COVID measures.”

He is leaning hard on key and uncontroversial messages to voters likely to vote for the UCP: the likelihood of the better economic times ahead, his government’s cutting of the provincial gas tax to fight inflation and the role Canada could play in displacing oil and natural gas supplies to stop the funding of “Putin’s war machine.”

The Alberta Premier, in seeming perpetuity, is also still explaining to a still skeptical base the reasoning behind his government’s pandemic-era health restrictions and his September, 2021, concern that Alberta hospitals would be overwhelmed.

“This government has not been perfect. We’ve made mistakes. We made mistakes through COVID,” Mr. Kenney said at the closing of a speech Wednesday to the Rural Municipalities of Alberta spring conference.

But he added, speaking also of his own leadership hopes, “we emerge out of that difficult time with bright days that lie ahead. Let’s seize that future.”

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