C.W. Alexander is executive director of Alberta Renewal and a founding member of Alberta Now.Premier Danielle Smith’s October 21 message was unambiguous. The United Conservative Party (UCP) is not an independence party. Anyone who wants to turn it into one should leave. She framed the referendum result as a clear mandate for a strong Alberta inside a united Canada and warned that continued internal division would hand the 2027 election to the NDP.That framing gets the party backwards. The UCP is its members and its constituency associations. They nominate candidates, set policy directions, and elect the leader. The premier’s job is to advance what the members support, not to redefine the party from the centre and then invite people who disagree to exit. Jason Kenney tried a version of the same top-down control. It did not end well for him or for the party he led.The real division inside the UCP is not the referendum. It is the record since 2022, and especially since 2024. One of the largest cabinets in Alberta history. The largest provincial budgets on record, with total debt still above $100 billion. Communications concentrated under the premier’s office. A public-capital, volume-first strategy under the Smith — Carney framework that includes preferential royalty treatment to fill a government-supported West Coast line and continued Pathways exposure. Alberta’s owner’s share, the money Albertans are owed for the resource they own, is being traded for federal conditions and interprovincial concessions.This is not limited-government conservatism. It is interventionist public capital that socializes the risk of major infrastructure while the economic value and the political leverage leave the province. It is Equalization 2.0 under another name. Alberta continues to fund the federation and the national climate agenda while Ottawa and other provinces hold the gates.There was no legal or practical barrier after 2024 to beginning real autonomy work. Quebec has used the same tools for decades: control of resources, revenue, pensions, policing, and environmental regulation. Instead, the government chose volume, public capital, and alignment with the federal approach. That was a policy choice, not a constraint..So, the invitation should run the other way. If UCP members want a united conservative voice that puts Alberta first, prioritizes value before the border, retains Albertans’ share in Alberta, supports private capital on commercial terms, and treats full provincial autonomy as the starting position, then the record since 2024 is the problem. A premier who has expanded government, concentrated power, and traded Alberta’s leverage for Ottawa-conditioned public capital is not delivering that agenda.She is delivering the opposite.The members built the party. They can still decide what it stands for. Danielle Smith’s policies — the largest cabinet, the largest budgets, the public-capital volume strategy, and the refusal to pursue real autonomy — do not match what the members have repeatedly said they want. Those policies belong in a different party, along with Danielle Smith and Jason Kenney.Alberta Renewal is the alternative that keeps the resource wealth in Alberta, builds on existing infrastructure, and uses every lever available — Line 5 energy security for Central Canada, goods corridors for British Columbia to cross, and fiscal capacity — to force Ottawa and British Columbia to stand down. That is ordinary provincial self-government. It is also the only reliable way to stop the drift toward Crown midstream and licensed upstream (a nationalized Alberta resource industry) that the current volume strategy produces. The record is public. The choice belongs to the UCP members.C.W. Alexander is executive director of Alberta Renewal and a founding member of Alberta Now.
