Juno News - Will the UCP survive in 2022？

00:00:00.000 What will 2022 look like for Jason Kenney and the United Conservative Party of Alberta?

00:00:04.620 We'll talk to an insider to find out. I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:00:12.500 Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning in. And over the Christmas holidays,

00:00:15.460 things slow down a little bit. So rather than talking about the news of the day,

00:00:18.500 we like to take a step back and sort of analyze what the state of affairs are

00:00:23.000 in the conservative movement in Canada and conservative parties and conservative governments

00:00:27.120 like the one in Alberta. And so to do that, we're going to look ahead to see what is in store for

00:00:32.500 the conservatives, specifically in Alberta, but also conservatives across the country. We're going

00:00:37.120 to look at that UCP convention that's coming up probably in April and we want to sort of break

00:00:42.400 it down and understand what the year is going to look like. And to do that, I am joined by

00:00:46.820 frequent guests here on True North and The Candice Malcolm Show, conservative strategist Vitor Marciano.

00:00:52.140 Vitor is a longtime conservative strategist. He was a senior advisor to former Wildrose leaders,

00:00:58.620 both of them, Danielle Smith and Brian Jean. He was also an Alberta National Counselor for the

00:01:03.460 Conservative Party of Canada. And Vitor is now an energy advocacy consultant based in Edmonton.

00:01:09.120 Vitor Marciano, thank you so much for joining The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:01:12.300 It's a pleasure to be here.

00:01:13.640 So in a recent interview we did, we talked a little bit about how Jason Kenney survived the UCP

00:01:19.600 convention, but that the big question will come next year in a leadership review. So let's look

00:01:25.400 ahead to 2022. Walk us through what does the year look like? What's going to happen to Jason Kenney?

00:01:32.800 Ah, I mean, it's still hard to predict. Depending on the final voting method and all of the details

00:01:39.440 of how the convention works, Jason Kenney may or may not survive it. If it's a, delegated is the wrong

00:01:45.560 word, but if it's a leadership vote at a convention where you've got to pay 300, 400 dollars to attend

00:01:51.460 with some new rulings from Alberta's elections commissioner about what money PACs can put in,

00:01:59.000 Jason's got a shot at surviving it. If it's a one member, one vote thing, he's not going to get

00:02:05.120 enough results. But it looks like it's going to be a convention. So there's, I'd say it's 50-50 whether

00:02:10.560 or not Jason survives it. And then that makes for sort of a crazy year in Alberta politics, because

00:02:15.940 we're going into the last, you know, we're right now we're 16 months away from an election. So

00:02:23.140 by the time that the decision is made on Jason Kenney, there'll be 13 months away from an election.

00:02:29.380 So when, when is the, when is the convention scheduled? First of all,

00:02:32.400 right now it's scheduled for about April 9th, but that could change. There are discussions happening

00:02:40.120 at the executive party level. There was a motion made by more than 22 writings to force one before

00:02:47.340 March 15th, whether or not the party will accept that, whether or not it'll end up getting in front

00:02:53.680 of a judge, because that's actually inside the party constitution, the mechanism that was used to

00:02:58.320 try to force this vote. That's all up in the air. But, you know, at the latest, by the second week

00:03:04.840 of April, we'll know whether or not we have Jason Kenney staying or Jason Kenney going.

00:03:09.200 And so, so walk us through the scenarios. So, so if the party, it looked like they rallied around

00:03:15.260 Jason in the last leadership convention, Jason Kenney, you know, what would, what would the party

00:03:20.680 look like if they rally around and what did they have to do to continue in office to maybe change

00:03:26.900 things to govern in a more responsible, more popular way to get ready for the, the, the big

00:03:32.200 sort of provincial election the following year? If Jason Kenney survives the leadership review,

00:03:38.180 I think the party's in trouble and at some risk of coming apart. I do think, I think the way he'll

00:03:45.980 survive it will cause all sorts of problems. And then, you know, his likelihood of winning an election

00:03:52.460 against Rachel Notley will look, it looks highly unlikely that they have problems in every region

00:03:59.420 of the province. They have problems with every voting segment. If Jason started to do a variety

00:04:04.900 of things dramatically differently, maybe he could turn that around. But, but change has not been Jason's

00:04:11.500 strong point. You know, an awful lot of Jason's experience, you know, if you watch Jason Kenney on

00:04:16.880 any given day, he looks an awful lot like the Jason Kenney you saw the month before and last year and the

00:04:21.660 year before that. It's just, there's no, there's been no evolution in his presentation, in his style,

00:04:26.820 in his format, in his ability to delegate jobs to other people in the government. It's still very

00:04:31.980 much government by Jason. It's not working right now. So if, if Jason survives, that's a problem.

00:04:38.400 If Jason doesn't survive, the party will go into hopefully a quickie leadership race, but maybe not.

00:04:44.840 And, and whoever's the new leader is going to have to work really hard to sort of show Albertans

00:04:49.200 change, a change in style, a change in approach that makes them march back to the UCP. Because

00:04:59.060 right now they've been with Rachel Notley at a majority government level of support for over two

00:05:05.140 years. And, you know, there's a real risk that that support level crystallizes. You know, we're all

00:05:12.800 more actively involved in politics. We think that voters are political. Voters aren't that political.

00:05:17.120 And, and you do get seat changes every now and then. And there's a risk that what's happened with

00:05:22.980 the UCP will pile on to the seat change that happened with voters when they rejected the PCs

00:05:28.980 in 2015. Like that, that it may actually walk in that rejection, and that it becomes complicated.

00:05:35.080 Well, and it's interesting, just given the mayoral elections that happened earlier in 2021, as well,

00:05:40.780 you know, this idea that, that conservatives will always reign in, in Alberta. You know,

00:05:47.600 we saw two very progressive mayors being elected in both Edmonton, which might not be so surprising,

00:05:51.340 but Calgary as well. We've had over a decade of, of a left-wing progressive mayor and, and just

00:05:56.300 elected another one. So, so there obviously is an appetite for something that's not conservative

00:06:01.180 in Alberta, which might be a surprise to some.

00:06:03.320 People forget this, that even in the heyday of Ralph Klein, north of 35% of Albertans were voting

00:06:10.180 center-left. And, you know, the center-right party to win has to hold its base, motivate people,

00:06:19.080 be doing good and interesting things. It's gotta be, it's gotta be good government. And one of the

00:06:25.320 problems that's happening right now is that this government's got, it gets into tunnel vision,

00:06:29.760 and it pays attention to one or two things at a time. And there's thousands of little issues that

00:06:36.240 hundreds of little stakeholder groups would like the government to fix, and they can't get these

00:06:40.000 things on the government's agenda. So they start to get mad at the government. And lately, an awful lot

00:06:48.880 of those little things, a lot of, a lot of those little agenda items are coming out of rural Alberta.

00:06:53.840 So now, you know, roughly just under half of the seats in Alberta are not in Edmonton proper or

00:06:59.440 Calgary proper. Well, those used to be very secure for the Conservatives. They are not as secure

00:07:05.360 anymore. And this is a problem. This is a dramatic problem. And, you know, the Canadian government's

00:07:13.680 been relatively ineffective. And it's, this is a, like, you know, if you don't want to blame them

00:07:19.040 for COVID, if you don't want to blame them for the economy, but you could say everything else they got

00:07:23.200 right, then they'd be in better shape. But what happens is, you know, there are subgroups within

00:07:29.200 farmers who think that stuff has been done wrong, and realtors who think stuff has been done wrong,

00:07:34.080 and charitable groups in rural Alberta who think stuff has been done wrong. There's all sorts of

00:07:38.960 these little compounding grievances that create an issue. Absolutely. Okay, well, so when I think of the

00:07:47.040 big issue, when I think of what Jason Kenney sort of got brought in, and the thing that, when I talk to

00:07:52.640 friends in Alberta who weren't political at all, that just what, what they saw, and what they thought

00:07:56.560 of Jason Kenney, was that somehow, that the oil and gas sector in Alberta would be protected, would be

00:08:02.960 boosted, that they'd have a fighter that would fight back against Justin Trudeau, and his sort of

00:08:07.120 heavy-handed policies, you know, change the rhetoric from, from Rachel Notley. But we look at the state of,

00:08:13.280 of energy in, in the province of Alberta. You look at some of the things that Justin Trudeau has

00:08:17.840 implemented. I mean, he was at the COP26 conference in, in October, November 2021, and he, he, he pledged a

00:08:25.600 hard cap on oil and gas. His rhetoric is getting more and more vitriolic towards energy workers. And then

00:08:32.320 at the same time, we see a sort of lawlessness that happens with activists blocking critical

00:08:38.560 infrastructure, stopping pipelines from being built, or, or people from getting to their job

00:08:43.120 sites. And it doesn't seem like there's a lot done now. Obviously, Jason Kenney can't stop Justin

00:08:47.600 Trudeau's rhetoric. He can't stop the lawlessness in British Columbia when it comes to allowing

00:08:51.920 resource workers. But I think what, what people really wanted was, was an advocate, and someone

00:08:56.640 to champion this issue. So, so what, what can be done? I mean, I don't want to be unfair to Jason to

00:09:00.880 say that he should be doing things that are outside of his jurisdiction, but, but what, what can be done,

00:09:05.440 uh, from an Albertan perspective, or even from a Canadian perspective, um, to push back against some of the stuff,

00:09:10.000 Vitor and, and stand up for, uh, the, the, the industry that's so vital to our economy, the core

00:09:14.880 industry really of our society. It's funny because Jason Kenney, if you list those things off as what's

00:09:21.920 and you're saying what can be done, Jason Kenney is doing a lot of the correct what's. The problem is

00:09:27.520 the how's stink. So we do, we did need somebody out there defending the industry,

00:09:34.400 creating it as a sort of partisan war room that doesn't do things particularly well that that

00:09:42.640 wasn't useful. He, you know, the war room should have been going out there and looking for the

00:09:47.760 thousand points of light of people who are prepared to defend the industry and providing grants and,

00:09:52.000 and subsidies and funding studies and doing lots of the clever things the left does. Instead,

00:09:56.080 the war room decided that they would make themselves as important, you know, important. It's not working.

00:10:00.240 Um, there's some amazing stories that are happening in our energy industry, stories about energy

00:10:05.760 transformation, carbon recycling, carbon tech as a whole. This government's been not very good at

00:10:11.600 telling them. Um, the number of times the government has an announcement to make about interesting

00:10:18.400 technological things in the oil and gas sector and they show up and they hold the press conference

00:10:25.280 and they make the press conference so overtly political and they don't have any negotiations with

00:10:29.840 the media that literally there's an oil and gas CEO standing there and they don't get any questions.

00:10:35.920 All of the questions are for the premier or for the minister. And this is a inability of the government

00:10:42.400 to negotiate the story. I mean, the politician should use their bully pulpit to get the media in the room. 1.00

00:10:49.280 They should do a 20 second, 30 second introduction on how magical the technology is. And then say,

00:10:54.000 let me let you speak to the, the boss, the person who's invented this. Let me talk up these, these

00:11:00.160 wonderful stories that actually have the potential to define Alberta for the next 50 years. They

00:11:06.320 haven't done those things well. And so everything ends up being viewed through a political veil and,

00:11:12.560 and, and the political veil is Jason Kenney. And a lot of the stuff that's happening isn't happening

00:11:19.840 very well. And then the other part that, that Jason suffers from is he campaigned on and won

00:11:26.240 because he was going to fight Justin Trudeau. And there's an awful lot of people in Alberta who are

00:11:31.520 feeling like, no, no, you're fighting us more than you're fighting Trudeau. Because frankly,

00:11:35.040 fighting Trudeau is difficult and complicated and there's got to be clever ways to do it. And

00:11:38.880 you've got to do it in a way that's, you know, you've got to disagree without being completely

00:11:42.880 disagreeable, except for the times when you really should be completely disagreeable. A lot of this stuff

00:11:47.600 hasn't been done very, very well. And it's made it complicated. It's complicated. The oil and gas

00:11:54.720 sector are going to have a great year in 2022. And it's not going to help because they're having a

00:12:01.440 great year, but they're banking that money. They're paying down debt. They're putting out dividends

00:12:07.920 because they're not sure that there's going to be a great year in 2023 or 2024 or 2025. And so they're not

00:12:14.480 reinvesting in the industry. And it's that capital reinvestment that really keeps people employed

00:12:19.840 in the oil and gas sector. You know, it's going to be a great year for CNRL and Suncor and Imperial Oil,

00:12:26.400 probably worth holding their stock. But it's not going to be a great year for energy workers,

00:12:31.920 because there's not going to be as much energy work as everybody expects, even though the industry is

00:12:37.120 going to be going. Interesting. Let's just change gears a little, Vitor. So one of the sort of good

00:12:43.040 news stories, I think, from Alberta in the last year was this equalization referendum, because I

00:12:47.920 think that there was a pretty clear message that was sent to the federal government that Albertans

00:12:52.160 aren't happy with the fiscal formula. They're not happy with the way they're treated federally. And if

00:12:56.720 anything, maybe Alberta wants to be treated more like Quebec and be given more autonomy, more independence,

00:13:01.840 allow more control over their own business. Do you think that the equalization referendum

00:13:10.400 will have that impact? What do you think will happen in this next year with this vote?

00:13:15.280 It should. And I honestly believe that a lot of the smaller provinces are actually going to be keen

00:13:22.480 for constitutional discussions, because everybody's going to be hurting for money because of how COVID

00:13:27.440 changes healthcare spending. But Jason Kenney's kind of half dropped it already. He celebrated that

00:13:34.800 he got the vote, but he hasn't introduced the motion in the legislature that, you know, in Alberta,

00:13:41.120 we actually have a law that says you needed to have a vote before you can have a motion in the legislature

00:13:45.120 to introduce constitutional negotiations. The Supreme Court has said a motion in a legislature

00:13:51.440 introducing constitutional negotiations puts an obligation on the other provinces in the federal

00:13:55.360 government to negotiate. Well, Jason Kenney should act on that. He hasn't. But I do believe he will at

00:14:03.360 some point. And I do believe that that will get the ball started. I think constitutional negotiations

00:14:09.040 are a good thing for Canada. I'm very much in the minority. Everybody I know who's like a former senior

00:14:15.040 staffer to a prime minister or a premier, they are all like, ah, constitutional negotiations. They're afraid

00:14:20.240 of these things. You don't know what could come of it. And my answer is, unless you think Canada is

00:14:26.000 perfect the way it is, whatever could come of it is probably a good thing. You know, the last time we

00:14:31.040 tried this was 30 years ago in 1992 with Charlottetown. Heck, if you were to show Canadians have a debate

00:14:41.120 today as to whether or not if Charlottetown had passed, things would be better. A lot of people might

00:14:45.280 think they would be. Every 30 years discussing important constitutional matters is good for a

00:14:51.120 country. Well, and to conservatives who might not like the 1982 charter and might not feel like it

00:14:57.680 really cements some of the rights that we hold near and dear, you know, a constitutional discussion is

00:15:04.480 the only way to make progress on that. I tend to agree with you on that one. I want to talk a little

00:15:09.680 bit more about the federal scene and federal politics because in our last discussion we also

00:15:14.000 talked about how Erin O'Toole might be in a bit of trouble. Now, it seems like the conservative 0.95

00:15:18.240 caucus has sort of rallied around him and that, from my perspective, it's like, you know, they may

00:15:23.040 not be happy with the job he's done and the direction he's taken, but the devil you know is

00:15:27.200 better than the devil you don't know and, you know, the uncertainty of who might run for leader of

00:15:30.960 this party and what that might look. But that in of itself is a problem. Why aren't there more talent?

00:15:35.520 Why aren't there more exciting people out there who want to have the chance to become prime

00:15:39.680 minister? I mean, leading the conservative party, aside from leading the liberal party,

00:15:43.360 and that job is taken. It's the best opportunity that you have to, you know, a couple of years ago

00:15:48.000 we had a whole bunch of people running. There were, I think, 17, 18 candidates and there was

00:15:54.080 excitement around, you know, Kevin O'Leary joining the race and some high-profile cabinet ministers.

00:15:59.760 Whereas, you know, when it comes to the race that Erin O'Toole ran and won, it was sort of

00:16:04.320 uninteresting. And now there isn't really anyone sort of challenging him. So why is it that the

00:16:08.640 conservative party leader job is so unpopular that no one wants it? And what do you think about

00:16:15.120 Erin O'Toole and the job he's doing? Okay, well, let me start with Erin O'Toole. I think right now

00:16:19.520 his caucus is giving him a chance to prove himself. Like, I don't think they're supportive, but I don't

00:16:24.880 think they're ready to take him on just yet. They want to see whether or not he's learned from his

00:16:30.880 mistakes and he can improve things. I mean, to be fair to Erin, he did talk about how Stephen Harper,

00:16:37.040 after the 04 election, retooled, you know, still had a tough year in 05, late 05-06 wins because

00:16:43.760 they're learning, they're changing, they're doing things differently. So an awful lot of the CPC

00:16:49.760 caucus is looking to see if Team O'Toole does things differently. So far, it's not looking good.

00:16:57.120 Like, an awful lot of this is back to, you know, it's back to the hows. It's the how you manage

00:17:03.920 caucus. It's the how you share the limelight. It's the what you put in the window. Actually,

00:17:08.400 it's not even the what you put in the window. It's the how you put stuff in the window,

00:17:11.680 how you communicate to Canadians, because you can take the exact same message and deliver it in a

00:17:16.160 way that's boring and doesn't move people or deliver it in a way that creates some sense of

00:17:20.080 excitement and future optimism. He's got to get that act together. Right now, he's benefiting from

00:17:28.400 the fact that there's only one or two people who in his caucus who look like they might be better at

00:17:33.840 the job than he is. And they all have questions around them that slow people down, even though

00:17:40.320 people might be emotionally intrigued by them. Nobody's super excited about someone because they

00:17:47.920 they've gone past the emotional intrigue to the intellectual certainty that they'd be a better

00:17:52.640 leader. I presume you're talking about Leslyn Lewis, Pierre Polyevs, is that sort of what you mean?

00:17:57.280 Leslyn, Pierre, Michelle Rempel. There's lots of wonderful people, but they all have little

00:18:03.360 little things that make people go, what? Got to check that out a little bit more. You need to

00:18:07.600 understand why that happened. Things like that. In terms of why the job is not particularly appealing,

00:18:13.760 well, it's because it's not really one conservative party. It's like three or four, and it's hard to

00:18:19.920 hold them together. It's often a war to hold them together. So that part of the job isn't really

00:18:25.120 appealing. Then the way we do politics isn't really appealing for outsiders to come in. 0.98

00:18:31.120 Then frankly, when outsiders come in, they usually get their butts handed to them because politics is

00:18:35.280 not the same as being an executive for a corporation. So people who might have the

00:18:40.240 intellectual horsepower or the organizational horsepower or the business horsepower to do

00:18:46.640 the job, man, that job's not that attractive. We've evolved in a strange direction that kind of

00:18:53.360 makes you have to be kind of crazy to want to lead a political party. And I say that as somebody who's

00:18:58.800 helped people who led political parties, it's not a pleasant job. So I think Aaron can survive the year

00:19:07.120 by doing a series of small changes in process and probably reconsolidate that caucus. But he will

00:19:15.920 get one more kick at the can. And if he doesn't succeed, he is gone. If he changes things dramatically,

00:19:23.760 if he rethinks how he presents stuff, if he rethinks how he shows off his caucus, if he rethinks how he

00:19:34.000 big picture vision, a big Canada vision of the Conservative Party, if he does some innovative

00:19:42.000 messaging things that change the nature of the Conservative coalition in this country,

00:19:46.720 then he could have some good success. But it's going to be an interesting year to watch.

00:19:55.280 I'd say, you know, like I said earlier about Jason Kenney, I think Aaron O'Toole,

00:19:59.360 it's 50-50 on whether he's still the leader at the end of 2022.

00:20:02.960 Oh, that's interesting. One of the things that I've been thinking a little bit about,

00:20:05.680 Vitor, is how the Conservatives have already fractured. I mean, if you go back to

00:20:10.000 the 2017 leadership race, it was very, very close between Maxime Bernier and Andrew Scheer. I mean,

00:20:16.800 Bernier was leading on every ballot all the way up to the very last one. And yet, here we are a few

00:20:22.320 years later, and Bernier is like in a separate universe. And I sort of wonder, like, are libertarians

00:20:28.880 still welcome in the Conservative Party? I mean, you sort of saw O'Toole's heavy-handed pro-vaccine

00:20:33.680 mandate, pro-vaccine stuff during the campaign. It seemed like they just wanted the libertarians and the

00:20:38.800 civil liberties people to shut up and go away, and kind of wrote them off in the same way that

00:20:43.040 Trudeau did. Do you think that presents a problem for the party? And this is the last question,

00:20:47.040 because I know you have to get going. But I just wonder, like, do you think that the

00:20:50.640 libertarians and Maxime Bernier wing would ever be welcomed back under any scenario to the Conservative

00:20:55.280 fold? Yes, but it's probably going to have to involve Aaron O'Toole and a whole bunch of people

00:21:00.800 admitting that in our chase for security and safety, we might have given up more freedoms.

00:21:09.440 And some of the things we were told and we repeated might not have been accurate. COVID is making fools 0.98

00:21:17.440 out of politicians who think they have certainty. And one of the things that is missing is a smart 0.97

00:21:26.400 politician would be talking continuously about the uncertainty around COVID and appealing to

00:21:32.560 Canadians to be decent and kind to each other because we have lots of different opinions based

00:21:37.920 on the uncertainty and we're reacting to different parts of the uncertainty and in different ways.

00:21:45.360 Hopefully COVID goes away quickly or doesn't go away at all, in which case more people will sort of

00:21:52.800 say, oh, yeah, we can't continue to live like this forever. And that will that will adjust the curve.

00:21:58.240 But bringing libertarians and civil liberties folks back into the conservative tent in the next

00:22:04.400 little while is going to be tough. Interesting. All right, Vitor, well, I really appreciate you

00:22:08.960 coming on. I hope you and your family have a wonderful Merry Christmas. And it's been great.

00:22:12.560 We appreciate having you on True North and on the Candace Malcolm Show throughout the last year.

00:22:16.160 And hopefully we'll see you again a lot in the new year. I'm looking forward to it.

00:22:20.320 Happy New Year to you and everybody who's watching. All right. Thank you so much, Vitor. Thank you so

00:22:24.480 much for watching. I'm Candace Malcolm and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

Juno News - December 28, 2021

Will the UCP survive in 2022？

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript