Ted MortonTed Morton .The UCP’s victory in Monday’s election marks a turning point in Alberta politics. For the first time, we have a provincial conservative government that recognizes Alberta’s chronic vulnerability to harmful federal Liberal policies, and embraces reforms that would better protect Albertans’ interests. That culminates a 30-year struggle to persuade Alberta’s provincial conservative party to support the reforms that Albertans have been campaigning for at the federal level..Starting with the 1993 Federal election, the Reform Party (and its successor versions, Canadian Alliance (CA-2001) and then Conservative Party of Canada (CPC-2004)) dominated Alberta politics federally. Its message to Albertans: The West wants in! That the constitutional status quo is stacked against Western provinces in favour of Ontario and Quebec — and the Liberal Party governments theoe two central Canadian provinces routinely elected..But for these three decades, the Alberta PCs turned a blind eye to the growing number of Albertans who wanted meaningful reforms to our relationship with Ottawa and the rest of Canada. The PCs not only ignored the Reform Party and its supporters, but were actively hostile..I remember the “welcome” I received when I was first elected as the PC MLA for Foothills-Rocky View in 2004. As a column in the Edmonton Journal reported, “Veteran Tory MLAs are eagerly awaiting Morton’s arrival at the legislature after the election, simply so they can cut him down. There haven’t been this many knives in a welcoming committee since Julius Caesar dropped by the Senate.”.The last thing the PC establishment wanted was a new guy (Ted Morton) from another party (Reform) with a new set of issues (Alberta Agenda) to upset the apple cart. So, they strongly supported the PC establishment candidates: Jim Dinning in 2006 and Gary Mar in 2012. Both went on to lose..But they lost to candidates — Stelmach and Redford — who continued to ignore the growing support for the Wildrose Party and the threat it posed to the PC’s electoral coalition. That turned out to be a big mistake..Alberta is the birthplace of the Reform Party. Its influential founder — Preston Manning — was the son of popular former Alberta Premier Ernest Manning, who had governed Alberta for 25 years (1943-1968.) From its start, Alberta was both the financial and intellectual foundation of the Reform/CA/CPC parties.. Jason KenneyJason Kenney. .Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Albertans routinely gave Reform/CA/CPC more than 60% of our votes and 90% of our MPs. Thousands of Albertans of my generation spent decades of “blood, sweat and tears” to build Reform from an upstart Western fringe party to a national party. Many of our children — including one of mine — went to Ottawa to work with the Reform/CA/CPC parties. And we finally helped elect Ontario-born Albertan Stephen Harper as the Prime Minister of Canada from 2006 to 2015..Yet despite this success at the federal level, back in Alberta the PC establishment never embraced — much less accommodated — either the policies or the people that built the Reform movement in Alberta. The PC Party refused to advance any reforms — such as those proposed in the Harper, Morton et.al “Firewall Letter” — that would address Alberta’s constitutional vulnerability to Ottawa and the predatory policies of the Federal Liberal Party..The Liberals’ policy attacks on Alberta’s energy sector are inevitable. It’s how they win elections. As Keith Davey, Pierre Trudeau’s campaign manager summarized in 1980, “Screw the West. We’ll take the rest.” It worked for the Liberals then and continues to work today..Predictably, disillusioned Alberta Reformers decided to form their own party —the Wildrose. And once they did, the more the PCs ignored the Western alienation issue, the more Albertans were attracted to the Wildrose Party. It was not until 2016, when the PC Party was destroyed by vote-splitting with the Wildrose, that Jason Kenney — a first-wave Reformer in the 1990s and never a PC party member — could stride in from Ottawa and take over the party in less than one year..In 2016, almost all of Kenney’s campaign team consisted of friends and operatives imported from his Reform/CPC years in Ottawa. The rest were a handful of old Alberta Reformers, including me. There were virtually no senior PC operatives or former PC cabinet ministers. When Kenney subsequently ran to win the leadership first of the PC party and then the UCP, most former PC MLAs and cabinet ministers backed his opponents. After Kenney won, all but two incumbent PC MLAs left..In political science terminology, this is what is called a “hostile take-over”: where an existing party is taken over by a new leader — an outsider — with new issues and new supporters. Hostile takeovers become possible when an established party loses control over its candidate nomination process and fundraising for leadership candidates..This is basically how the Wildrose Party destroyed the PC Party, starting in the 2012 and 2015 provincial elections, and culminating in Jason Kenney’s subsequent takeover of the Alberta PC party in 2017..This may sound familiar. It is basically what I tried to do in the 2006 leadership, and why the PC establishment worked so hard to defeat me. In 2017, Kenney succeeded where I had failed..He succeeded in part because he had a well-organized, well financed campaign. He was also a powerful public speaker. But Kenney also succeeded because there was no one left to defend the PC party or its brand. Reduced to nine seats in the Legislature and without a leader, there was nothing left to defend. That was the price the PCs paid for ignoring the new issues of Western alienation and the growing number of Albertans who supported the Reform/CA/CPC calls for reform..Albertans’ demand for a new deal — a fair deal — with Ottawa took on new life and new energy with Kenney’s 2019 victory and new UCP majority government. With the PCs-Wildrose parties now united, Kenney crushed the NDP in the 2019 Alberta election, winning 63 seats and 55% of votes..Kenney kept his campaign promises to hold a referendum to abolish equalization. In October 2020, 62% of voters supported the demand to abolish the Federal Equalization Program. Kenney also struck the “Fair Deal Panel” to determine Albertans’ support for the reforms proposed in the 2001 Firewall Letter. In May 2020, the Fair Deal Panel released its report endorsing:.• Cancelling Alberta’s contract with the RCMP and creating our own Alberta Police Force, as have Ontario and Quebec..• Collecting our own personal income taxes, as Quebec and now Saskatchewan already do.. Scott Moe Red Tie Budget DaySaskatchewan Premier Scott Moe. .• Withdrawing from the Canada Pension Plan and creating an Alberta Pension Plan, something Quebec already does..In 2022, Kenney was subsequently pushed out as PC leader for his handling — or mishandling — of the COVID lockdowns. But in the contest to choose a new leader, Danielle Smith came out of political exile to contest the UPC leadership with the promise to enact an “Alberta Sovereignty Act” to protect Albertans from hostile federal policies. This strategy worked. And the new Smith government’s first piece of legislation, Bill 1, was the Alberta Sovereignty Act..This week, Smith and the UCP consolidated their power with a new majority government. In her election night victory speech, Smith promised to defend Albertans against harmful federal policies, and explicitly challenged the Trudeau Liberal government to back off on their pending climate change policies — policies that would clearly hurt Alberta’s oil, gas and electricity sectors..The next day in a radio interview Smith was even more explicit. Referencing Ottawa’s proposed net zero policy for provincial electricity grids and a hard new cap on oilsands emissions, Smith warned: “There’s a big fight coming up.”.In one sense, this is history repeating itself. In the 1920s, Premier Brownlee and his UFA government had to fight with Ottawa to gain provincial control of Alberta’s natural resources. In the 1980s, Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed went to political war with Ottawa over Pierre Trudeau’s National Energy Program and won the addition of section 92A to the constitution — explicitly affirming exclusive provincial jurisdiction over the development of natural resources..But in another sense, it is unprecedented. Premier Smith and her newly elected UCP majority government have the next four years to fight the battle with the Justin Trudeau Liberals. And they're armed not just with the Sovereignty Act, but the Alberta Agenda/Firewall recommendations of the Fair Deal Panel. The same reforms that were on the periphery of Alberta provincial politics 20 years ago are now front and centre..The mainstream media seem to find this all alarming. And they should. Not only will Smith have the solid backing of her caucus, but also some allies in the rest of Canada. Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe is clearly a soulmate. His government already enacted the Saskatchewan First Act and plans to start collecting personal income taxes. The Quebec government — always a staunch defender of provincial rights — recently supported Alberta’s constitutional challenges to both Bill C-69 and the federal carbon tax..And then there is the man who now leads the Conservative Party of Canada and plans to replace Trudeau as Canada’s next prime minister — Pierre Poilievre. Poilievre broke with precedent and publicly endorsed Smith and the UCP prior to election day..This was not a surprise to many of us. Both Smith and Poilievre began their political careers in the heady Reform Party politics of Alberta during the 1990s. They have both been part of the long march. They both understand the West wants in, not out. But that we want a new deal — a fair deal — from the rest of Canada. The next chapter begins now. And it will be written by the next generation of Alberta leaders..Ted Morton is an executive fellow at the School of Public Policy and professor emeritus at the University of Calgary. He was the MLA from Foothills-Rocky View from 2004-2012, and served as Alberta’s minister of Sustainable Resources Development, minister of Finance and minister of Energy. As as a Reform Party candidate, he was elected as a Senator-in-Waiting in Alberta’s 1998 Senate election.
