EDMONTON — Premier Jason Kenney will go on to fight another day in Alberta politics — but some experts say it likely won’t be long before he’s pushed out of his own party.
As the province’s health-care system buckles from pressure heaped on by a raging fourth wave of COVID-19, Kenney’s United Conservative Party is divided between those who think the government hasn’t done enough to stop it and those who have opposed public health restrictions and vaccine passports.
Left standing at the centre of it all is Kenney — his political future now in question as some in the party he founded in 2017 have begun to eye, and outright demand, his ouster.
The lead-up to a caucus meeting that took place Wednesday in Calgary was mired in speculation that some MLAs could bring forward a vote of confidence on Kenney’s leadership — but that vote didn’t end up happening.
Backbench UCP MLA Searle Turton told The Canadian Press the meeting dealt with a cascade of issues.
“There was discussion about the party, about unity, about how we got here, about COVID. Caucus is a robust place to do discussion in a confidential setting,” Turton said. “There were no votes by caucus. There was lots of robust discussion about the pandemic.”
A source with knowledge of the meeting told the Star a motion of non-confidence in leadership was on the table but was withdrawn. It had been contingent on the vote being done by secret ballot, but that option was rejected at the meeting, the source said. The source spoke on condition of anonymity.
Meanwhile, Kenney spoke to the president of the United Conservative Party on Wednesday and asked that the 2022 UCP annual general meeting take place in the spring and that the leadership review — already scheduled for that year — happen there, according to an emailed statement from UCP spokesperson Dave Prisco.
Insiders say there’s anger on all sides of the party’s caucus. Some are roiled that the premier didn’t bring in public health measures quickly enough in August when COVID-19 cases were rising. Others are angry that after promising the province would be open for good as of Canada Day, and vowing never to bring in vaccine passports, that the premier reversed course on both issues this month.
In an interview with Calgary Herald columnist Don Braid, UCP MLA and former cabinet minister Leela Aheer slammed Kenney for removing Tyler Shandro from the Ministry of Health portfolio.
“This is a failure of leadership from the premier,” she reportedly said. “The only thing that should have happened today is that the premier says he had failed and is stepping down.”
Lori Williams, a policy studies professor at Mount Royal University, said Kenney has made too many mistakes over the past few months — shrinking the chances of salvaging of his political future.
“It is not working and it’s tanking support for the UCP,” she said. “I mean, he’s cynically using promises not to have vaccine passports to fundraise, and then he turns around and calls (vaccine passports) by a different name and expects nobody to notice. It’s a bit bizarre.
“He’s trying desperately to make backroom deals and settle it down and put out fires and so forth, but it’s not working,” added Williams, “eventually even he’s going to have to realize that.”
On Tuesday, the vice-president of policy for the UCP, Joel Mullan, called on Kenney to resign in a column published in the Western Standard.
“Having listened to our party’s membership over the last several months, I believe the will of the membership is clear: it is time for Jason Kenney to go,” Mullan wrote.
Not long after the piece was published, Kenney moved Shandro out of the ministry of health portfolio and into the labour and immigration minister’s position. The step was seen by some observers as a political one meant to stave off criticism from within his own caucus.
Lisa Young, a political scientist at the University of Calgary, said that if Kenney had faced a vote of non-confidence this week and been ousted as premier that whoever was to replace him would face “exactly the same set of circumstances that Premier Kenney faces right now.”
Basically, “a divided caucus and a terrible public health crisis,” she said.
“The likelihood that somebody would come out of that looking good are not great.”
If caucus waits until a leadership review, then they “leave the premier to be the face of the failure of the health-care system over the next month, then they vote non-confidence in him as a party leader,” Young added.
“If they were to go into the next election with Jason Kenney as the leader, it would be nothing but a retrospective examination of what happened during the COVID crisis,” she said.
“Having a new leader will give them a chance to put forward a new image to suggest that they’re a new, improved party.”
During a news conference late Tuesday, Kenney also urged his own party to wait until the province clears the COVID-19 crisis before turning to deal with internal politics.
“My responsibility as premier is to listen to public health advice, look at the reality, not wish it away, not allow politics to pressure us from taking the necessary steps to save lives,” he said.
“I’ve always known, from day one, that has created some internal division — it’s no secret — within my party.”
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