C.W. Alexander is executive director of Alberta Renewal and a founding member of Alberta Now.Jason Kenney just told the United Conservative Party (UCP) to show independence-leaning members the door. That is not a defence of a founding document. It is confirmation that the fundamental grievances dividing the party have no plan behind them — neither from him nor from the government that inherited the problem.Kenney is the reason every UCP constituency president must now lead by example. In 2024, Danielle Smith made clear promises on autonomy, on ending the structural disadvantages that keep Alberta’s resource wealth and private capital under Ottawa’s thumb, and on putting Albertans first. Those promises are now the grievances being raised in boardrooms. Highwood and Calgary-Buffalo have already passed motions for a special general meeting and leadership review. Calgary-Mountain View rejected the formal path only after a divided meeting and while still sending grievances forward. The October 19 referendum has magnified the gap. Kenney’s answer is a purge. That reaction tells presidents the current approach has no intention of closing it.This is not new. Kenney convened the Fair Deal Panel because Albertans had already named the problems: equalization, the statutes that price private capital out of export infrastructure, and the steady transfer of decision-making away from the province. The panel heard them. What followed was not a program that answered those findings. It was a platform for Kenney’s own federalist priorities. Equalization continues. Bills C-48 and C-69 remain in force. Alberta’s share of Alberta’s resource wealth continues to be subordinated to conditions set in Ottawa. The membership removed him for treating those concerns as obstacles to be managed rather than problems to be solved. His comments this week show the same instinct is intact.A purge will not reunite the conservative electorate. It will shrink it. Some voters stayed home in Calgary-Shaw because they rejected further movement toward autonomy. Others stayed home because they saw no Alberta First alternative inside the governing party. Treating the second group as an infiltration to be removed does not produce a stronger federalist party. It produces a smaller one, less able to win the ridings required to govern and less able to deliver the practical results Albertans have been waiting for..Alberta Renewal is building the alternative that actually serves Albertans. The job of an Alberta government is to secure the province’s prosperity, protect Alberta’s share of its resource wealth, and keep decision-making accountable to the people who live here. That requires a platform capable of commanding a majority across the conservative spectrum, resource communities, suburban ridings, autonomy-minded members, and those who prefer to remain within Confederation. The platform is concrete: value captured within our Alberta border rather than pure volume exports under government capital; repeal of C-48 and C-69 as the non-negotiable precondition of any West Coast project that can attract private capital; return of Alberta’s share through a Citizen Resource Dividend; lean, technology-enabled government; and democratic mechanisms that give members a real choice. These measures do not require every conservative to share the same end-state on independence. They require that the party stop managing the base and start delivering results.Constituency presidents who lead by example will press for clear answers on the 2024 promises that have become grievances. They will not accept another round of delay while the referendum magnifies the division. Alberta Renewal supplies the platform those presidents can point to — policies that unite the coalition around a true Alberta First conservative voice serving Albertans instead of forcing a binary choice between “United Canada” and exit.Kenney’s path is smaller and more divided. It freezes the party in the 2017 formula that already failed the Fair Deal Panel and that the membership already rejected. Alberta Renewal’s path is a platform built to do the job an Alberta government is elected to do and a conservative voice assembled broadly enough to win the mandate to implement it. The grievances are real. The referendum has made them impossible to ignore. UCP presidents who lead by example will demand they be addressed. The platform that answers them without dividing the coalition is already being written.C.W. Alexander is executive director of Alberta Renewal and a founding member of Alberta Now.
