In 2017, Jason Kenney was a hero-in-waiting. .Decades of infighting had ruptured a decrepit Progressive Conservative party into competing factions. The upstart Wildrose had just been on the precipice of forming government until Danielle Smith waltzed herself and ten of her closest pals into the arms of the PCs. It was a devastating move not just for the Wildrose, but for the conservative movement in Alberta. It would have serious consequences for the province..Then along came our man Jason. Tapping into what could only be described as collective anguish at how radically fortunes in Alberta had changed under Rachel Notley’s government, he flew in from Ottawa and started sweeping the cobwebs out of a decades-old political party that now found itself in an identity crisis..'Uniting the right' in Alberta had been a topic of conversation before but never this seriously. In other words if the parties had flirted before, they were going on a date now that Kenney was in town. .Kenney, an experienced campaigner with a flair for the rhetorical, presented the merging of the Wildrose with the PCs almost as a fait accompli. To him and to the thousands of Albertans he met on the campaign trail, this was the only option if Albertans wanted to kick the “job-killing NDP” to the curb..It worked. Kenney was elected leader of the Progressive Conservative party. Just eight months later, he was leader of a newly minted United Conservative Party. There were a few naysayers along the way but the popular sentiment that bore the UCP was more than just a ripple in the water. It was a tsunami..In May 2019 that party won the largest electoral mandate in the province’s history, claiming 63 of a possible 87 seats in the Alberta Legislature..The Notley-Trudeau alliance was broken. The provincial carbon tax would soon be scrapped. A Fair Deal Panel was authorized to put pen to paper on how Alberta could get more out of Confederation. Happy days were here again..Then COVID came and we all know how that went. Too many promises made and subsequently broken. Too many absolutes used when nothing was certain. We could spend all week talking about might-have-beens but it’s likely Kenney’s government would have seen at least another term in office—even two, had a global pandemic not interrupted things..At the end of the day, it would seem that an unpredictable and stubborn virus is what ultimately shattered Albertans’ confidence in their leader and made Jason Kenney’s tenure — untenable. .But while some will deride the state of this current United Conservative Party, I’d like to remind readers that Jason Kenney is the reason Alberta has one at all. And after nearly four years in government, his term as premier has left the province with fewer restrictive regulations, lower taxes, a rebounding economy and a surplus on the books for the first time in seven years..As Kenney now prepares to leave the stage, few are likely to pause and remember how and why he bounded onto it in the first place. Many will be preoccupied with pinning their hopes on one of the seven UCP leadership hopefuls..No. he was not a perfect Premier. (Is there such a thing?) But, I trust that many Albertans will agree with me when I say that he left this province in better shape than he found it. I’d also like to suggest that sometime in the not-too-distant future, many will look back kindly on the man who united the right and brought prosperity back to Alberta.
In 2017, Jason Kenney was a hero-in-waiting. .Decades of infighting had ruptured a decrepit Progressive Conservative party into competing factions. The upstart Wildrose had just been on the precipice of forming government until Danielle Smith waltzed herself and ten of her closest pals into the arms of the PCs. It was a devastating move not just for the Wildrose, but for the conservative movement in Alberta. It would have serious consequences for the province..Then along came our man Jason. Tapping into what could only be described as collective anguish at how radically fortunes in Alberta had changed under Rachel Notley’s government, he flew in from Ottawa and started sweeping the cobwebs out of a decades-old political party that now found itself in an identity crisis..'Uniting the right' in Alberta had been a topic of conversation before but never this seriously. In other words if the parties had flirted before, they were going on a date now that Kenney was in town. .Kenney, an experienced campaigner with a flair for the rhetorical, presented the merging of the Wildrose with the PCs almost as a fait accompli. To him and to the thousands of Albertans he met on the campaign trail, this was the only option if Albertans wanted to kick the “job-killing NDP” to the curb..It worked. Kenney was elected leader of the Progressive Conservative party. Just eight months later, he was leader of a newly minted United Conservative Party. There were a few naysayers along the way but the popular sentiment that bore the UCP was more than just a ripple in the water. It was a tsunami..In May 2019 that party won the largest electoral mandate in the province’s history, claiming 63 of a possible 87 seats in the Alberta Legislature..The Notley-Trudeau alliance was broken. The provincial carbon tax would soon be scrapped. A Fair Deal Panel was authorized to put pen to paper on how Alberta could get more out of Confederation. Happy days were here again..Then COVID came and we all know how that went. Too many promises made and subsequently broken. Too many absolutes used when nothing was certain. We could spend all week talking about might-have-beens but it’s likely Kenney’s government would have seen at least another term in office—even two, had a global pandemic not interrupted things..At the end of the day, it would seem that an unpredictable and stubborn virus is what ultimately shattered Albertans’ confidence in their leader and made Jason Kenney’s tenure — untenable. .But while some will deride the state of this current United Conservative Party, I’d like to remind readers that Jason Kenney is the reason Alberta has one at all. And after nearly four years in government, his term as premier has left the province with fewer restrictive regulations, lower taxes, a rebounding economy and a surplus on the books for the first time in seven years..As Kenney now prepares to leave the stage, few are likely to pause and remember how and why he bounded onto it in the first place. Many will be preoccupied with pinning their hopes on one of the seven UCP leadership hopefuls..No. he was not a perfect Premier. (Is there such a thing?) But, I trust that many Albertans will agree with me when I say that he left this province in better shape than he found it. I’d also like to suggest that sometime in the not-too-distant future, many will look back kindly on the man who united the right and brought prosperity back to Alberta.