The problem of failing to address climate change is amplified in Alberta where Premier Jason Kenney, left, and the United Conservative Party are taking a narrow tent approach to governing, as opposed to the big tent approach being taken by national Conservative leader Erin O’Toole (right).
The majority of delegates to the federal Conservative’s online policy convention left no doubt where they stand on climate change: it’s not real so there is no need to do anything about it.
Those delegates just couldn’t resist isolating themselves, and their party, into a clutch of fanatics that seem to live for the sound of their own voices. They may enjoy the cosiness but it sure makes it easy for other people to see them as delusional and therefore easy to discount.
And if recent polls are anything to go by, they are even being discounted in Alberta. This may seem surprising given that delegates from the Western provinces seemed to hold sway at the Conservative convention.
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But back home, Premier Jason Kenney — one of the stars of the current incarnation of the federal Conservatives — is bleeding supporters. And he is losing them not to more rigid right-wing parties but to Rachel Notley and the NDP.
Three polls in the last two weeks, including two by Leger and Angus Reid, show the NDP leading Kenney’s United Conservative Party by significant margins.
The third poll, a joint project of the University of Alberta and University of Saskatchewan shows support for the Alberta NDP at 39.1 per cent province-wide with the UCP trailing at 29.8 per cent.
“For the first time since the party’s founding, UCP support has swung significantly or directly to the NDP,” U of A political science professors Jared Wesley and Feodor Snagovsky wrote in their detailed analysis of the results.
Of course, there are lots of reasons for this. The swing to the NDP doesn’t simply hinge on attitudes about climate change. It hinges on Kenney’s attempts to narrow the UCP’s focus instead of creating a big tent party, something his Progressive Conservative predecessors were very good at.
This became more than apparent as the pandemic wore on. In December, despite rising cases and deaths, Kenney kept playing to a minority of Albertans who believed imposing restrictions for the good of public health was an infringement of their freedoms.
When it was revealed that cabinet ministers and MLAs had flown the coop to warmer climes at the end of December as hospitals overflowed with COVID patients, it also became clear that Kenney’s team wasn’t taking the pandemic seriously. Or it simply believed the rules were for everyone but them.
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That was a turning point from which the UCP may never recover.
But there are many other examples of Kenney’s increasingly narrow focus: school curriculums that highlight Christian themes; the promotion of coal mining at the expense of key rivers in the iconic and much beloved Rocky Mountains; the singular focus on reviving the oil and gas industry when it’s clear its best days are over.
Only last week, Kenney was publicly ranting about a Netflix animated film — “Bigfoot Family” — that he says besmirches the oil and gas industry and therefore pollutes children’s minds. The pettiness just keeps unreeling.
All of this has left Albertans with the impression that the UCP doesn’t know what it is doing, that it’s not in touch with reality, that it prefers listening to the sound of its own cackling than coming up with innovative ideas and policies that would put Alberta on a sound footing for the future.
This was clearly evident in the Angus Reid poll in which respondents gave the UCP a failing grade on all 13 issues listed, including environment and climate change.
Like the delegates to the Conservative convention, Kenney and company seem to think they can ignore the reality of climate change and the global push for decarbonization and carry on as if it is 1996 and an oilsands boom is just around the corner.
But even in Alberta that isn’t as easy a sell as it used to be. Because the UCP — the Alberta brand of conservatism — has failed to create a big enough tent, the kind of tent that Erin O’Toole spoke about at the convention, and is instead offering something more like a chicken coop for the small minded.
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It may feel cosy for those inside but sooner or later it will dawn on them that they are in danger of becoming irrelevant.
GS
Gillian Steward is a Calgary-based writer and freelance
contributing columnist for the Star. Follow her on Twitter:
@GillianSteward.