The Candice Malcolm Show - 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?

00:00:04.660 We'll talk to an insider to find out. I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:00:12.520 Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning in. And over the Christmas holidays,

00:00:15.500 things slow down a little bit. So rather than talking about the news of the day,

00:00:18.540 we like to take a step back and sort of analyze what the state of affairs are

00:00:23.040 in the conservative movement in Canada and conservative parties and conservative governments

00:00:27.160 like the one in Alberta. And so to do that, we're going to look ahead to see what is in store for

00:00:32.520 the conservatives, specifically in Alberta, but also conservatives across the country. We're going

00:00:37.160 to look at that UCP convention that's coming up probably in April and we want to sort of break

00:00:42.440 it down and understand what the year is going to look like. And to do that, I am joined by

00:00:46.860 frequent guests here on True North and The Candice Malcolm Show, conservative strategist Vitor Marciano.

00:00:52.180 Vitor is a longtime conservative strategist. He was a senior advisor to former Wildrose leaders,

00:00:58.660 both of them, Danielle Smith and Brian Jean. He was also an Alberta National Counselor for the

00:01:03.500 Conservative Party of Canada. And Vitor is now an energy advocacy consultant based in Edmonton.

00:01:09.160 Vitor Marciano, thank you so much for joining The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:01:12.420 It's a pleasure to be here.

00:01:13.680 So in a recent interview we did, we talked a little bit about how Jason Kenney survived the

00:01:18.980 UCP convention, but that the big question will come next year in a leadership review. So let's

00:01:25.300 look ahead to 2022. Walk us through what does the year look like? What's going to happen to Jason

00:01:31.400 Kenney? I mean, it's still hard to predict. Depending on the final voting method and all of the details of

00:01:39.600 how the convention works, Jason Kenney may or may not survive it. If it's a, delegated is the wrong

00:01:45.580 word, but if it's a leadership vote at a convention where you've got to pay $300, $400 to attend

00:01:51.500 with some new rulings from Alberta's elections commissioner about what money PACs can put in,

00:01:59.040 Jason's got a shot at surviving it. If it's a one member, one vote thing, he's not going to get

00:02:05.160 enough results. But it looks like it's going to be a convention. So there's, I'd say it's 50-50

00:02:10.380 whether or not Jason survives it. And then that makes for sort of a crazy year in Alberta politics,

00:02:15.300 because we're going into the last, you know, we're right now we're 16 months away from an election.

00:02:22.980 So by the time that the decision is made on Jason Kenney, they'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, right now it's scheduled

00:02:34.240 for about April 9th, but that could change. There are discussions happening at the executive party

00:02:41.860 level. There was a motion made by more than 22 ridings to force one before March 15th, whether

00:02:49.260 or not the party will accept that, whether or not it'll end up getting in front of a judge, because

00:02:54.600 that's actually inside the party constitution, the mechanism that was used to try to force this vote,

00:02:59.360 that's all up in the air. But, you know, at the latest, by the second week of April,

00:03:05.800 we'll know whether or not we have Jason Kenney staying or Jason Kenney going.

00:03:09.220 And so, so walk us through the scenarios. So, so if the party, it looked like they rallied around

00:03:15.320 Jason in the last leadership convention, Jason Kenney, you know, what would, what would the party

00:03:20.720 look like if they rally around and what did they have to do to continue in office to maybe change

00:03:26.940 things to govern in a more responsible, more popular way to get ready for the, the, the big

00:03:32.240 sort of provincial election the following year? If Jason Kenney survives the leadership review,

00:03:38.220 I think the party's in trouble and at some risk of coming apart. I do think, I think the way he'll

00:03:46.020 survive it will cause all sorts of problems. And then, you know, his likelihood of winning an election

00:03:52.500 against Rachel Notley will look, it looks highly unlikely that they have problems in every region

00:03:59.460 of the province. They have problems with every voting segment. If Jason started to do a variety

00:04:04.940 of things dramatically differently, maybe he could turn that around, but, but change has not been Jason's

00:04:11.540 strong point. You know, an awful lot of Jason's experience, you know, if you watch Jason Kenney on

00:04:16.920 any given day, he looks an awful lot like the Jason Kenney you saw the month before and last year and the

00:04:21.700 year before that. It's just, there's no, there's been no evolution in his presentation, in his style,

00:04:26.860 in his format, in his ability to delegate jobs to other people in the government. It's still very

00:04:32.020 much government by Jason. It's not working right now. So if, if Jason survives, that's a problem.

00:04:38.440 If Jason doesn't survive, the party will go into hopefully a quickie leadership race, but maybe not.

00:04:44.880 And, and whoever's the new leader is going to have to work really hard to sort of show Albertans

00:04:49.240 change, a change in style, a change in approach that makes them march back to the UCP. Because

00:04:59.100 right now they've been with Rachel Notley at a majority government level of support for over two

00:05:05.180 years. And, you know, there's a real risk that that support level crystallizes. You know, we're all

00:05:12.840 more actively involved in politics. We think that voters are political. Voters aren't that political.

00:05:17.160 And, and you do get seat changes every now and then. And there's a risk that what's happened with

00:05:23.020 the UCP will pile on to the seat change that happened with voters when they rejected the PCs in

00:05:29.280 2015. Like that, that it may actually walk in that rejection, and that it becomes complicated.

00:05:35.120 Well, and it's interesting, just given the mayoral elections that happened earlier in 2021, as well,

00:05:40.820 you know, this idea that, that conservatives will always reign in, in Alberta. You know,

00:05:47.640 we saw two very progressive mayors being elected in both Edmonton, which might not be so surprising,

00:05:51.380 but Calgary as well. We've had over a decade of, of a left-wing progressive mayor and, and just

00:05:56.340 elected another one. So, so there obviously is an appetite for something that's not conservative

00:06:01.220 in Alberta, which might be a surprise to some.

00:06:03.360 People forget this, that even in the heyday of Ralph Klein, north of 35% of Albertans were voting

00:06:10.220 center-left. And, you know, the center-right party to win has to hold its base, motivate people,

00:06:19.120 be doing good and interesting things. It's got to be, it's got to be good government. And one of the

00:06:25.360 problems that's happening right now is that this government's got, it gets into tunnel vision,

00:06:29.800 and it pays attention to one or two things at a time. And there's thousands of little issues that

00:06:35.500 hundreds of little stakeholder groups would like the government to fix, and they can't get these

00:06:40.100 things on the government's agenda. So they start to get mad at the government. And lately, an awful lot

00:06:49.020 of those little things, a lot of, a lot of those little agenda items are coming out of rural Alberta.

00:06:53.180 So now, you know, roughly just under half of the seats in Alberta are not in Edmonton proper or

00:06:59.580 Calgary proper. Well, those used to be very secure for the Conservatives. They are not as secure anymore.

00:07:06.340 And this is a problem. This is a, this is a dramatic problem. And, you know, the Kennedy government has

00:07:13.820 been relatively ineffective. And it's, this is a, like, you know, if you don't want to blame them for

00:07:19.320 COVID, if you don't want to blame them for the economy, but you could say everything else they

00:07:23.080 got right, then they'd be in better shape. But what happens is, you know, there are subgroups

00:07:29.120 within farmers who think that stuff has been done wrong, and realtors who think stuff has been done

00:07:33.600 wrong, and charitable groups in rural Alberta who think stuff has been done wrong. There's all sorts

00:07:38.980 of these little compounding grievances that create an issue. Absolutely. Okay, well, so when I think of

00:07:47.080 the big issue, when I think of what Jason Kenney sort of got brought in, and the thing that when I

00:07:52.520 talked to friends in Alberta who weren't political at all, that just what they saw and what they thought

00:07:56.720 of Jason Kenney was somehow that the oil and gas sector in Alberta would be protected, would be

00:08:03.120 boosted, that they'd have a fighter that would fight back against Justin Trudeau and his sort of

00:08:07.280 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

00:08:17.960 implemented. I mean, he was at the COP26 conference in October, November 2021. And he he he pledged a

00:08:25.780 hard cap on oil and gas, his rhetoric is getting more and more vitriolic towards energy workers. And

00:08:32.360 then at the same time, we see a sort of lawlessness that happens with activists, blocking critical

00:08:38.620 infrastructure, stopping pipelines from being built or people from getting to their job sites. And it

00:08:43.860 doesn't seem like there's a lot done. Now, obviously, Jason Kenney can't stop Justin Trudeau's

00:08:48.060 rhetoric, he can't stop the lawlessness in British Columbia when it comes to allowing resource workers.

00:08:52.600 But I think what what people really wanted was was an advocate and someone to champion this issue. So

00:08:57.980 so what what can be done? I mean, I don't want to be unfair to Jason to say that he should be doing

00:09:01.740 things that are outside of his jurisdiction. But but what what can be done from an Albertan perspective,

00:09:06.760 even from a Canadian perspective, to push back against some of the stuff, Vitor and stand up

00:09:11.420 for the industry that's so vital to our economy, the core industry, really, of our society?

00:09:17.080 It's funny, because Jason Kenney, if you list those things off as what's the any and you're saying,

00:09:22.540 what can be done? Jason Kenney is doing a lot of the correct what's the problem is, the how's stink.

00:09:29.020 So we do we did need somebody out there defending the industry. Creating it as a sort of partisan war room

00:09:38.380 that doesn't do things particularly well, that wasn't useful. You know, the war room should have been

00:09:45.540 going out there looking for the thousand points of light of people who are prepared to defend the industry

00:09:50.700 and providing grants and and subsidies and funding studies and doing lots of the clever things the left

00:09:55.260 does. Instead, the war room decided that they would make themselves as important. It's not working.

00:10:01.600 There's some amazing stories that are happening in our energy industry, stories about energy

00:10:05.820 transformation, carbon recycling, carbon tech as a whole. This government's been not very good at

00:10:11.740 telling them. The number of times the government has an announcement to make about interesting

00:10:18.420 technological things in the oil and gas sector. And they show up and they hold the press conference.

00:10:24.280 And they make the press conference so overtly political and they don't have any negotiations

00:10:29.740 with the media that literally there's an oil and gas CEO standing there and they don't get any

00:10:35.200 questions. All of the questions are for the premier or for the minister. And this is a

00:10:40.200 inability of the government to negotiate the story. I mean, the politician should use their bully

00:10:47.380 pulpit to get the media in the room. They should do a 20 second, 30 second introduction on how magical

00:10:52.860 the technology is and then say, let me let you speak to the boss, the person who's invented this.

00:10:58.500 Let me talk up these wonderful stories that actually have the potential to define Alberta for the next

00:11:04.860 50 years. They haven't done those things well. And so everything ends up being viewed through a

00:11:11.440 political veil. And the political veil is Jason Kenney. And a lot of the stuff that's happening isn't

00:11:19.640 happening very well. And then the other part that Jason suffers from is he campaigned on and won because he

00:11:26.780 was going to fight Justin Trudeau. And there's an awful lot of people in Alberta who are feeling like, no, no,

00:11:32.480 you're fighting us more than you're fighting Trudeau. Because frankly, fighting Trudeau is difficult and

00:11:36.520 complicated. And there's got to be clever ways to do it. And you've got to do it in a way that's, you know, you've got to

00:11:41.660 disagree without being completely disagreeable, except for the times when you really should be

00:11:45.780 completely disagreeable. A lot of this stuff hasn't been done very, very well. And it's made it

00:11:51.400 complicated. It's complicated. The oil and gas sector are going to have a great year in 2022.

00:11:58.740 And it's not going to help. Because they're having a great year. But they're banking that money. They're

00:12:05.920 paying down debt. They're putting out dividends because they're not sure that there's going to be

00:12:10.180 a great year in 2023 or 2024 or 2025. And so they're not reinvesting in the industry. And it's

00:12:16.120 that capital reinvestment that really keeps people employed in the oil and gas sector. You know, it's

00:12:22.680 going to be a great year for CNRL and Suncor and Imperial Oil, probably worth holding their stock.

00:12:28.800 But it's not going to be a great year for energy workers, because there's not going to be as much

00:12:33.820 energy work as everybody expects, even though the industry is going to be going.

00:12:37.720 Interesting. I'll just change gears a little, Vitor. So one of the sort of good news stories,

00:12:43.720 I think, from Alberta in the last year was this equalization referendum. Because I think that

00:12:48.380 there was a pretty clear message that was sent to the federal government that Albertans aren't happy

00:12:52.780 with the fiscal formula. They're not happy with the way they're treated federally. And if anything,

00:12:57.420 maybe Alberta wants to be treated more like Quebec and be given more autonomy, more independence,

00:13:01.860 allow more control over their own business. Do you think that the equalization referendum

00:13:09.940 will have that impact? What do you think will happen in this next year with this vote?

00:13:15.360 It should. And I honestly believe that a lot of the smaller provinces are actually going to be keen

00:13:22.620 for constitutional discussions, because everybody's going to be hurting for money because of how COVID

00:13:27.540 changes health care spending. But Jason Kenney's kind of half dropped it already. He celebrated that

00:13:34.960 he got the vote, but he hasn't introduced the motion in the legislature that, you know, in Alberta,

00:13:41.320 we actually have a law that says you needed to have a vote before you can have a motion in the legislature

00:13:44.960 to introduce constitutional negotiations. The Supreme Court has said a motion in a legislature

00:13:51.480 introducing constitutional negotiations puts an obligation on the other provinces in the federal

00:13:55.440 government to negotiate. Well, Jason Kenney should act on that. He hasn't. But I do believe he will

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

00:14:08.900 are a good thing for Canada. I'm very much in the minority. Everybody I know who's like a former senior

00:14:15.100 staffer to a prime minister or a premier, they are all like, ah, constitutional negotiations.

00:14:19.800 They're afraid of these things. You don't know what could come of it. And my answer is,

00:14:24.680 unless you think Canada is perfect the way it is, whatever could come of it is probably a good

00:14:29.660 thing. You know, the last time we tried this was 30 years ago in 1992 with Charlottetown. Heck,

00:14:38.940 if you were to show Canadians have a debate today as to whether or not if Charlottetown had passed,

00:14:43.640 things would be better. A lot of people might think they would be. Every 30 years discussing

00:14:48.560 important constitutional matters is good for a country.

00:14:52.300 Well, and to conservatives who might not like the 1982 charter and might not feel like it really

00:14:58.100 cements some of the rights that we hold near and dear, you know, a constitutional discussion is the

00:15:04.740 only way to make progress on that. I tend to agree with you on that one. I want to talk a little bit

00:15:09.960 more about the federal scene and federal politics, because in our last discussion, we also talked about

00:15:14.660 how Aaron O'Toole might be in a bit of trouble. Now, it seems like the Conservative caucus has sort

00:15:19.160 of rallied around him and that, from my perspective, it's like, you know, they may not be happy with

00:15:23.960 the job he's done and the direction he's taken, but the devil you know is better than the devil you

00:15:27.880 don't know, and, you know, the uncertainty of who might run for leader of this party and what that

00:15:31.860 might look. But that in of itself is a problem, Peter. Why aren't there more talent? Why aren't there

00:15:36.040 more exciting people out there who want to have the chance to become prime minister? I mean, leading the

00:15:40.920 Conservative Party, aside from leading the Liberal Party, and that job is taken. It's the best

00:15:44.840 opportunity that you have to, you know, a couple years ago, we had a whole bunch of people running.

00:15:51.400 There were, I think, 17, 18 candidates, and there was excitement around, you know, Kevin O'Leary

00:15:56.260 joining the race and some high-profile cabinet ministers, whereas, you know, when it comes to

00:16:01.600 the race that Aaron O'Toole ran and won, it was sort of uninteresting, and now there isn't really

00:16:05.960 anyone sort of challenging him. So why is it that the Conservative Party leader job is

00:16:10.720 so unpopular that no one wants it? And what do you think about Aaron O'Toole and the job he's doing?

00:16:17.000 Okay, well, let me start with Aaron O'Toole. I think right now his caucus is giving him

00:16:20.860 a chance to prove himself. Like, I don't think they're supportive, but I don't think they're

00:16:25.500 ready to take him on just yet. They want to see whether or not he's learned from his mistakes,

00:16:31.460 and he can improve things. I mean, to be fair to Aaron, he did talk about how Stephen Harper,

00:16:36.320 after the 04 election, retooled, you know, still had a tough year in 05, late 05, 06 wins, because

00:16:43.700 they're learning, they're changing, they're doing things differently. So an awful lot of the CPC caucus

00:16:50.140 is looking to see if Team O'Toole does things differently. So far, it's not looking good. Like,

00:16:57.880 this is, an awful lot of this is back to, you know, it's back to the hows. It's the how you manage

00:17:04.020 caucus. It's the how you share the limelight. It's the what you put in the window. Actually,

00:17:08.560 it's not even the what you put in the window. It's the how you put stuff in the window,

00:17:11.800 how you communicate to Canadians, because you can take the exact same message and deliver it in a

00:17:16.240 way that's boring and doesn't move people, or deliver it in a way that creates some sense of

00:17:20.120 excitement and future optimism. He's got to get that act together. Right now, he's benefiting from

00:17:28.440 the fact that there's only one or two people who, in his caucus, who look like they might be better

00:17:33.740 at the job than he is. And they all have questions around them that slow people down, even though

00:17:40.360 people might be emotionally intrigued by them. Nobody's super excited about someone because they've

00:17:47.840 gone past the emotional intrigue to the intellectual certainty that they'd be a better leader.

00:17:52.980 I presume you're talking about Leslie Lewis, Pierre Polyevs. Leslie, Pierre, Michelle Rempel.

00:18:00.800 There's lots of wonderful people, but they all have little, little things that make people go,

00:18:05.200 what, got to check that out a little bit more. Need to understand why that happened. Things like that.

00:18:11.340 In terms of why the job is not particularly appealing. Well, it's because it's not really one

00:18:15.460 conservative party. It's like three or four. And they're, it's hard to hold them together. It's a

00:18:21.520 often a war to hold them together. So that part of the job isn't really appealing. Then the way we do

00:18:27.000 politics isn't really appealing for outsiders to come in. Then frankly, when outsiders come in,

00:18:32.820 they usually get their butts handed to them because politics is not the same as being an executive for

00:18:37.140 a corporation. So people who might have the intellectual horsepower or the organizational

00:18:44.020 horsepower or the business horsepower to do the job, man, that, that job's not that attractive.

00:18:49.340 We've, we've evolved in a strange direction that kind of makes you, you'd have to be kind of crazy

00:18:55.300 to want to lead a political party. And I say that as somebody who's helped people who like led political

00:19:00.460 parties, it's, it's, it's not a pleasant job. So I think Aaron can survive the year by doing a series

00:19:09.340 of small changes in process and, and probably reconsolidate that caucus, but he's, you know,

00:19:15.680 he will get one more kick at the can. And if he doesn't succeed, he is gone. If he changes things

00:19:22.880 dramatically, if he rethinks how we present stuff, if he rethinks how he shows off his caucus, if he

00:19:29.960 rethinks how he big picture vision, a big Canada vision of the conservative party, if he does some

00:19:41.020 innovative messaging things that change the nature of the conservative coalition in this country,

00:19:47.640 then, then he could have some good success, but it's, it's going to be, it's going to be an

00:19:52.080 interesting year to watch. I'd say, you know, like I said earlier about Jason Kenney, I think Aaron

00:19:59.140 O'Toole, it's 50-50 on whether he's still the leader at the end of 2022.

00:20:02.980 Oh, that's interesting. One of the things that I've been thinking a little bit about, Vitor,

00:20:06.080 is how the conservatives have already fractured. I mean, if you go back to the 2017 leadership race,

00:20:12.060 it was very, very close between Maxime Bernier and Andrew Scheer. I mean, Bernier was leading on

00:20:18.540 every ballot all the way up to the very last one. And yet here we, here we are a few years later,

00:20:22.920 and Bernier is like in a separate universe. And I sort of wonder, like, are libertarians still welcome

00:20:29.520 in the conservative party? I mean, you sort of saw O'Toole's heavy-handed pro-vaccine mandate,

00:20:34.140 pro-vaccine stuff during the campaign. It seemed like they just wanted the libertarians and the

00:20:38.840 civil liberties people to shut up and go away and kind of wrote them off in the same way that

00:20:43.080 Trudeau did. Do you think that presents a part, a problem for the party? And this is the last

00:20:46.920 question, because I know you have to get going. But I just, I just wonder, like, do you think that

00:20:50.560 the libertarians and Maxime Bernier wing would ever be welcomed back under any scenario to the

00:20:54.960 conservative fold? Yes, but it's probably going to have to involve Aaron O'Toole and a whole bunch of people

00:21:01.000 admitting that,

00:21:04.140 in our chase for security and safety, we might have given up more freedoms. And some of the things

00:21:10.620 we were told and we repeated might not have been accurate. COVID is making fools out of politicians who 0.95

00:21:19.340 think they have certainty. And one of the things that, that is missing is a smart politician would be 0.89

00:21:27.440 talking continuously about the uncertainty around COVID. And, and appealing to Canadians to be decent

00:21:33.940 and kind to each other. Because we have lots of different opinions based on the uncertainty and

00:21:39.020 we're reacting to different parts of the uncertainty. And in different ways. Hopefully COVID goes away

00:21:47.620 quickly, or doesn't go away at all, in which case more people will sort of say, Oh, yeah, we can't

00:21:54.220 continue to live like this forever. And that will, that will adjust the curve. But bringing libertarians

00:22:00.300 and civil liberties folks back into the conservative tent in the next little while, it's going to be

00:22:05.540 tough. Interesting. All right, Vitor, well, I really appreciate you coming on. I hope you and your family

00:22:10.160 have a wonderful Merry Christmas. And it's been great. We appreciate having you on True North and

00:22:14.860 on the Candace Malcolm show throughout the last year. And hope, hopefully we'll see you again a lot in the

00:22:18.900 new year. I'm looking forward to it. Happy New Year to you and everybody who's watching.

00:22:22.220 All right. Thank you so much, Vitor. Thank you so much for watching. I'm Candace Malcolm. And this

00:22:26.060 is the Candace Malcolm show.

The Candice Malcolm Show - December 28, 2021

Will the UCP survive in 2022？

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