Front Burner - Jason Kenney resigns as UCP leader

Episode Date: May 19, 2022

He won a majority of his party’s support in the United Conservative Party leadership review, but it wasn’t enough for Jason Kenney to remain leader of the party he co-founded. Kenney stepped down last night after the results were announced, despite winning 51.4 percent of the vote, saying "it clearly is not adequate support to continue on as leader." Today, CBC Calgary Opinion producer and analyst Jason Markusoff walks us through Kenney’s spectacular fall from power and what this shocking result means for his party and the province of Alberta.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. While 51% of the vote passes the constitutional threshold of a majority, it clearly is not adequate support to continue on as leader. And that is why tonight I have informed the President of the party of my intention to step down as leader of the United Conservative Party. So last night was a historic night in Albertan politics.

Jason Kenney, founding leader of Alberta's United Conservative Party, elected as premier in a landslide just a few years ago, resigned from his position. This after barely half the party voted for him in a leadership review. It's one of the most dramatic collapses in recent political history. Today, Jason Markosoff is back to help us digest this news. He actually works with us at the CBC now. He's going to walk us through the significance of this moment and what it means for the UCP and the province of Alberta. Oh, hey, Jason. Oh, hey, coworker. Thank you very much for coming on. Wow, wow wow wow uh i gotta admit i didn't think that this was how tonight was gonna gonna play out i don't know if you were watching power and politics when the announcement came through but our colleague ashy capellos who's on this show all the time

like they accidentally cut to her reaction and she like basically had to lift her jaw up off the floor. What's your reaction? That was the, I mean, here in the CBC Calgary newsroom, and that was basically the reaction. Well, it's kind of a cascade of reactions. We're all waiting for what's the number? What's he going to do if it's 50% plus one? Is he really going to stay on?

If it's 55, what's he going to do? 51.4% was a shocker of a number, in some ways, even more surprising than a sub 50% result, because it wasn't clear what he would do in this case. If he would stick around, if he would try to forge this coalition, despite the fact that a near majority of his own party, let alone the rest of Albertans, didn't want him around anymore. The sensible thing to do from tradition and history would have been to, with such a low result, to resign. We weren't sure if Kennedy was going to do that because the amount of abuse he withstood up till now within his own party, open dissent, people calling for his head, attempted coups in his own caucus. Most leaders leave before it gets to this point. What did we hear from Kenny as he made this announcement?

What did you hear from him? What message did you hear? There was this interesting roller coaster even then. Once we got the number 51.4%, yes, 48.6%, no. I can advise that there were 34,298 votes cast. There were 17,638 yes votes and 16,660 no votes. These numbers represent 51.4% yes and 48.6% no. And then he said, I'd like to thank everybody for giving me a number that allows me to stay on. Friends, tonight the members of our party completed a democratic exercise in accountability. The result is not what I hoped for, or frankly what I expected.

But I've been clear from day one that I will respect the decision of the members in this leadership review. Oh, I guess he's staying on, he's going to try to fight this. And then a few minutes later... I'm sorry, but but friends i truly believe that we need to move forward united we need to put the past behind us and our members a large number of our members have asked for an opportunity to clear the air through a leadership election and i gasps all around uh both in that audience uh on power and politics from the Anchor and among pretty much everybody who's watching this stuff in Canada and Alberta, where he says that, you know, we need to unite this party. And I've informed the president of the party that I will resign as leader, which means

he's resigning as premier. And he had to say, we need to put the past behind us. Friends, it's clear that the past two years were deeply divisive for our province, our party, and our caucus. But it is my fervent hope that in the months to come, we all move on past the division of COVID. It's remarkable that he's now part of Alberta's past. He is yesterday's man for Alberta Conservatives. This is a pretty spectacular collapse. And I wonder if we could just go down memory lane a little bit more here and you could paint a picture of the Jason Kenney who became premier of Alberta just a few short years ago. I remember we were doing all these podcasts back then about how he was like the most powerful conservative in the country, the kingmaker. His ascent within this party, within Alberta politics is remarkable.

His ascent within this party, within Alberta politics, is remarkable. He returned from Ottawa where, you know, he's been, he was Calgary MP for several years, but he lived in Ottawa. He was of Ottawa. He was an Ottawa creature for much of his political career. He came back after the NDP won in 2015. in 2015. To immediately negotiate a framework agreement between the Progressive Conservative Party and the Wild Rose Party immediately following the March 18th PC leadership. And decided to unite the two parties that were on the right that had both lost to the Rachel Notley's NDP in 2015. And had they had their votes all merged and fused together, they would have won. He took these often opposing sides and turned them into one party, the United Conservative Party, from the old PCs and the

Wild Rose Party. And he won in a very hard-fought battle to become leader of that party in 2017. Tonight is just the beginning. Tomorrow we get to work. Then 2019, he won a very comfortable majority with more than half of the vote among Albertans. To them, we send this message. Help is on the way and hope is on the horizon. And it seemed like he was unstoppable, this steamroller, this mastermind of conservative politics, who was going to reshape Alberta and the Alberta economy and the government in his own image and to his liking. Right. And of course, like it didn't, it really didn't turn out that way. And we've talked a fair bit about people's dissatisfaction with him, especially over the last few years throughout big waves of the pandemic.

He seemed to really tick off everyone possible. Those who felt he didn't go far enough with public health measures, definitely those who were opposed to lockdowns and mandates. But what else do you think led to this moment? It's important to dwell on what it was about this COVID performance that ticked off the Conservatives. It wasn't just that he imposed

lockdowns and mandates. It was that he did so after saying he wouldn't, after saying personal freedom is more important. We will not facilitate or accept vaccine passports and that in fact we regard i believe that they would in principle contravene the health information act and also possibly the freedom of information and protection of privacy act we also amended he fundraised for his united conservatives off the idea that he was not going to impose vaccine mandates then like for many premiers reality nipped him in the butt. So when he said rules off last summer, best summer ever. Backyard barbecues, dream weddings, family reunions, concerts, festivals, birthday parties,

dinner gatherings, and yes, the Calgary stampede will be back on. In short, it means that finally getting back to normal. And I think it means the best Alberta summer ever. He had to backtrack hard on that. And I think it's not only the fact he did that, but the broken trust, this gap between what he said he would do and what he did. And this was a party that got very excited about what Jason Kenney said he would do and wasn't so excited about what he did, not only on COVID policy, but also on his approach to Ottawa. That was kind of, I would say, the second biggest beef if you asked some of the grassroots conservative types and some of the people vying to now succeed him. While most Albertans might say that he was relentlessly saber-rattling on federal politics, always trying

to pick a fight with Justin Trudeau. Those in his party wish he'd gone farther, wished he had actually changed the game on equalization like he said he would with his referendum last fall, or had gone ahead and taken Alberta out of the RCMP, built its own police force and done the same with his pension plan, even though the majority of Albertans don't like those ideas, but conservatives do. And I guess talking about even the vast majority of Albertans, even the people who voted for him, but weren't necessarily his base, right? He seemed to stumble from scandal to scandal. There was that boozing during

lockdown scandal. The pictures were captured last night showing eight people sitting in close proximity and moving in and out of the so-called Sky Palace without masks. We have to set a higher example, a higher threshold of conduct. And so I want sincerely to apologize to my colleagues and to Albertans. And party members traveling when no one else is allowed to my colleagues and to Albertans. And party members traveling when no one else is allowed to. I have to take responsibility that I wasn't absolutely clear that there should be no international travel. I felt like he wasn't just losing a segment of the party. The province was widely unhappy with him.

His popularity tanked there as well. This is it. He's ticked off for various reasons. He's ticked off people in the center, certainly on the left. That was no surprise. He was never going to be the hero of Alberta's progressives,

but also people on the center and people on the right. He had no natural constituency at the end of the day. I mean, except for, I guess, you know, there are, in fairness to him, there are still 17,000 people in his own party that still wanted him as leader.

The thing is that in a party where there are 34,000 people voting for a leader, typically a party leader needs well more than, say, 25,000 of those 34,000 people. Like, normally 80% or plus is healthy. 70% is trouble. 60% is normally the kill period.

51.4% is nicks. Very bad. And even Jason Kenney rent that room. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here.

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That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. Jason, can I ask you something I'm always curious about? Like you hear a lot of people talk about Jason Kenney's smarts. It was something that a lot of people talked about when he was a federal cabinet minister and when he won the premiership. Were you surprised to see him make what looked like big mistakes over the last couple of years?

Make moves that just really, as we talked about, ticked everybody off from every conceivable angle. If you traveled back in time to 2019 and told me that Jason Kenney would be drummed out of his own party because he wasn't conservative enough and he had made several stumbles that most politicians wouldn't, my jaw would have dropped even wider than Bashi Kapelos did today. I think a lot of people who have observed him in Ottawa are surprised by how he's comported himself as Premier of Alberta. And I think this comes down to a few things. And one of them is the difference between effectively running a campaign and effectively

running a cabinet portfolio, both of which he was widely respected for doing in his federal tenure, and running a whole province, making all the decisions. And he is known for being a micromanager that likes to be his own communications director, his own policy director, his own speech writer or rewriter,

and basically having thumbs in every single file everywhere. That's a lot to do when you're premier. When you run what's basically a $60 billion a year corporation with various moving parts and a whole bunch of very difficult decisions to make every single day. It's hard to keep on top of all those. The way in which Kenny liked to do. The way in which Kenny liked to do. The other thing I think that's been revealed and people have told me as I've done research on this what happened to Jason Kenny thing is that he was under the tutelage of a very capable leader. A very battle-tested and capable leader under Stephen Harper. And Stephen Harper trusted him like he trusted a few of his other ministers.

But on his own, did he have those chops? The other thing I would say is that Jason Kenney may have thought, had a fixed vision of what Alberta is and what Alberta grassroots members are that did not correspond with reality. For instance, in the name of budget cutting the Kenny government a couple of years ago promised to cut the inventory of provincial parks in Alberta and public spaces. Well, turns out a lot of, uh, a lot of Albertans, including conservatives, including people who live at the edge of the foothills, uh, near Calgary really value those parks.

And somebody who would have been here for their whole life or for a very long time would have known that that sort of thing, uh, showed Jason Kenny, uh, maybe misjudging the Alberta mood. Um, he thought that people would stick with him through thick and thin on COVID regulations. The wild rose grassroots are much more, uh, restless, uh, I would say, than Jason Kenney may have assumed they were. And had he had some more Alberta-based advisors, maybe he would have learned about that. Or maybe if he had done a better job of listening. A lot of people within his camp worry about his ability to listen to people and not trust his instinct or a few of his select advisors. That sort of thing tends to lead to situations like these. In March, the CBC got this audio of Kenny speaking to his party's caucus staff,

and in it he quotes Preston Manning, he says. Preston Manning used to say that a bright light attracts a few bugs well there's more than a few bugs attracted to us this party right now he also said the lunatics are trying to take over the asylum and I'm not gonna let them I will not let that happen so So now that he's resigned, does that mean that in Kenny's view, at least, the lunatics have won? Basically, possibly. You know, he was asking a very unusual thing of United Conservatives, he was asking one segment of his party membership to save Alberta from another segment of his party membership. The party membership that was really unhappy with him

on issues like COVID and Ottawa stuff heard that, no doubt. And in the former incarnation of this leadership review, they were willing to spend $100 and travel to Red Deer in the center of Alberta to cast a vote against him in person in huge numbers. So I'm not surprised that those people were even more emboldened to get out and stick something in the mail for this revamped version of mail-in ballot leadership review. So we talked about how his vote was basically split down the center, 49-51. So moving on to the party now, who could possibly unite these two sides, the pro-Kenny and the anti-Kenny camps? Oh my goodness. That is the big question. And in November, there was the United Conservative Party convention. Big in-person thing at a casino on the First Nations just outside of Calgary.

And I'd go around asking people who didn't like Kenny, okay, so if not Kenny, then whom? A few names would come about, including people that probably won't want to do this, like Ronna Ambrose, who's often at the top of people's wish list for leadership, both federally and provincially. I'd be surprised if she suddenly became interested. A few people talked about Danielle Smith, the former Wild Rose leader, who at that point had just started poking her head above the transom for this

job. Very few people talked about the person who's most talked about and who's most open about his ambitions to replace Jason Kenney, and that is Brian Jean, the fellow who ran against him for leadership and former Wild Rose leader who ran against him for leadership in 2017. But his name will be much on people's lips right now, either among Conservative members or not United Conservative members.

He's definitely putting his name out there. He's definitely been at the forefront of the move to oust Jason Kenney. Leadership in the UCP needs to change. With your help on April 9th, we'll do just that. But there's also going to be a number of cabinet ministers who've been keeping their powder dry lest Kenney win and they get in trouble for denouncing him publicly. But this has proven to be a very tough party to unite.

And the other challenge facing this party is, do we want to be more conservative, more firmly conservative, fulfill the wishes of the Wild Rose wing and the conservative PC wing of the party? Or do we want to get into election shape? Because next May, there's the next Alberta general election. And the New Democrats under Rachel Notley have been blissfully united this whole time. And for most of the last year or so, they've been leading in the polls. Is this good news for Rachel Notley and the NDP tonight? Do you hear that Jason Kenney is stepping down? I don't know.

I wonder how many new Democrats would have liked him to stay in because of the trust issues people have, the public has with him, because of the dissent he stows within his own party. You know, they would be probably giddy if there was a truly doctrinaire, hard right, right wing, non-urban conservative who's running. Because as long as they win Calgary and Edmonton, they have this. And the New Democrats have a stranglehold on Edmonton seats, but Calgary is up for grabs. So if there's a very small town-based, rural-based leader fulfilling all the wishes and dreams of hardline conservatives and wild rosers out there, that could leave a lot of ground in the center of the province for the NDP to reap. Okay. And just one more question

before we go. This party that now finds itself in such disarray, it's just five years into its existence. And I guess big picture, what does that say to you, that we're seeing these fractures in this still relatively young party? It tells me that this is going to be an incredible preoccupation of whoever becomes the successor. The person who wins is not only going to have to get his party into election shape, is not only going to have to run this very complex, dynamic province, but also spend so much of their time figuring out how to keep the urbans and the small towns and the rurals and the pro-convoys and anti-convoys, the pro-vaccine mandates and anti-vaccine mandates, the climate skeptics, the pro-lifers,

this whole wide-ranging conservative movement that has eaten its young again and again and again. That's going to be a hell of a challenge. I'll give you an interesting statistic here. Since 2004, there have been seven Alberta premiers. Only one of them has served a full term, that is, from one election to the next. No way! And that is Rachel Notley of the NDP. Wow. Thank you for this, Jason.

Thank you. This was a lot of fun. All right. That's all for today. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you tomorrow. Thank you.