What does the niqab have to do with Santa? Keep reading - all will be revealed.

I’ve written a lot of controversial columns in my day. But few have stirred up as much hatred, and as much hate mail, as my Tuesday column on the abrupt decision of Canada’s immigration minister, Jason Kenney, to ban Muslim women who wear the niqab, or the burka, from taking the oath of citizenship, unless their remove their veils while saying the oath.

I won’t repeat all my arguments here – you can read the original column by clicking here.

The mail? Well, it flooded in – especially after we closed down our comment section, because we were getting so many hateful racist comments.  The vast majority of writers disagreed with me.

Some of those writers, certainly, presented solid, logical, principled arguments in favour of compelling women to take off the veil, briefly, for the recitation of the oath. They argued that in a court of law, it is not unreasonable to except a person taking a legal oath to do so in full public view. They also argued that Canada, as a liberal democracy, which supports equality rights, should send a clear signal to all newcomers that misogyny is not a tolerated Canadian value.

As one of those readers wrote, “You argue for the rights of all women and all Muslims. However the burka would remove many career opportunities, and educational opportunities (due to lack of exam invigilation), and empowerment to new Canadians. We cannot allow a foothold for second class treatment even under the guise of cultural tolerance.”

That’s a fair argument – and my response is that if we want women to integrate, denying them citizenship, and marginalizing them further, is a damned poor strategy. It still makes no sense to me that we will now allow the men in such families to become legal citizens, but not their wives, daughters, and sisters. To punish any victims of family oppression a second time over accomplishes nothing.

But sadly, much of my mail was viciously racist – full of people fulminating, not just as against Muslims, but against immigrants and religious minorities in general. Much of the anger focused on Sikhs – and indeed, some writers seemed to think that Sikhs and Muslims were really of the same faith.

“Its (sic) time that our outdated Charter was updated so that we may retain at least a crumb of Canadian culture. We have given turbans to Mounties, allowed children to leave class to pray (to the god of their choice) who just happens to preach death to all non-Muslims. We have children carrying knives in the name of the Sikh religion.”
He certainly wasn’t the only writer to conflate the issue of the niqab with the issue of Sikh turbans.

“There in nothing that disgusts me more than to see a Canadian Police officer wearing a Turban,” wrote another. “If I had known that the unlimited facilitation of  religious demands from immigrants was what I was putting my life on the line for in 1941 when they handed me the rifle, I’d have told them to stick the rifle up their butt. We would be better off Goosestepping!!”

“WHY SHOULD THESE PEOPLE BE ALLOWED TO IMPOSE THEIR WILL UPON THE REST OF CANADIANS UNDER THE GUISE OF RELIGION,” wrote another reader, who was fond of capitalization, but not of apostrophes. “ITS (sic) BAD ENOUGH THEY HAVE DESECRATED THE UNIFORM OF THE RCMP AND CAN SHOW UP IN A LEGION HALL WEARING A TURBAN WHEN EVEN A WAR VETERAN IS NOT ALLOWED TO WEAR A HAT.”

Thanks, I’m sure, to Kenney’s decision to make this announcement just before Christmas, several other writers drew their own connections between the issue of the niqab and what they believe to be an assault on Christmas itself.

“When was the last time you found a Merry Christmas card in the store?” wrote one aggrieved reader. “I’m still looking. This year, my work had a ‘Holiday Party’, what a farce -  call it what it is and don’t be afraid – its (sic) a Christmas party. We are in Canada and it is what it is. I think most Canadians are kind and welcoming – just don’t change Canadian laws or traditions, EVER.”

Said another writer, “Not only should they have to take the oath with their face uncovered the rules should also change so that our schools can go back to having Christmas concerts and saying the Lord’s Prayer. Our ancestors must be turning in their graves to see how Canada is changing from some of the basic things that built this country.”

Alas, for all our lip-service to multiculturalism and tolerance. The flood of angry mail keeps coming and coming — suggesting to me that many many Canadians are angry and afraid, worried that the country they grew up in is disappearing. For them, this isn’t about the niqab itself, or about equal rights for women. It’s a straightforward xenophobic backlash against immigration and cultural change of any kind – despite the fact that this country has always been shaped and changed by the various waves of immigrants who’ve made Canada home.

The other thing permeating my mail has been a nasty and ironic misogyny. Jason Kenney and some of his supporters say that they’re demanding that women remove their burkas and niqabs in order to become citizens, to send a message about women’s equality. But some of the people writing to me clearly didn’t get that memo.

“You silly shallow female-liberal-person you,” wrote one extremely angry reader, who warned of Muslim conspiracy to take over Canada.

But I confess, my “favourite” piece of hate mail was one that suggested that I was so fat and ugly myself, the country would be better off if I were hidden from view.

“You wearing a niqab would be a big improvement in your appearance,” he wrote. “Judging from the fullness of your face a burka would likely make you more appealing as well.”

Oh snap.

The fat lady joke….the last refuge of a man with no ideas.

But the comment is more revealing, I’m sure, than its author realized. At base, this isn’t a crusade to liberate women from the tyranny of the niqab. It’s about men telling women what they can and cannot wear, how they can and cannot appear in public. It’s about men punishing women who rebel against our cultural norms of what a woman should look  – whether she’s wearing a veil, or whether she has the temerity to weigh more than 100 pounds.

But then, our culture is obsessed with the regulation of physical appearance – with condemning those whose physical form somehow offends our sense of propriety.

And so – to cheer myself up, and to restore a proper sense of reason and proportion to the festive season — I am pleased, today, to present this delightful (if I do say so myself) column from December of 2009. I hope you’ll find it peculiarly fitting, and a reminder of what this country, and this holiday, are supposed to be about:

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Santa is a symbol of love, abundance, plenty, and acceptance

Puritanism, said H.L. Menken, is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

No wonder, then, that religious and cultural puritans have, for centuries, been out to get Santa Claus. Or Father Christmas. Or Saint Nicholas. Or Sinterklaas. Or any of his avatars.

There’s something about St. Nick’s unabashed hedonism, his boundless generosity, his all-embracing love for innocent children, that sets puritanical teeth on edge.

Santa is such a deliciously pagan figure, descended from a paternal line of pre-Christian fertility gods, an icon of bounty and celebration and seasonal renewal. No wonder ideological zealots of all political and doctrinal descriptions have long sought to wipe him out — or at the very least, tame him. He is anarchy incarnate, a larger-than-life figure who brings children joy and love in defiance of priggish rules and social conventions.

This year, there’s a whole new breed of Pharisee out to squelch Kris Kringle.

Dr. Nathan Grills, a professor of public health at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, has just published a paper in the British Medical Journal, suggesting Santa Claus is a bad influence on children’s health — noting cultures that believe in the jolly old elf have higher rates of childhood obesity.

Santa’s “rotund sedentary image” wrote Grills, has had the effect of making “obesity synonymous with cheerfulness and joviality.”

Grills, who appears to have retained a touching degree of belief in the corporeal reality of Santa Claus for a grown man with a doctoral degree, says Santa encourages speeding and disregard for road rules, noting that “despite the risks of high speed air travel, he is never depicted wearing a seatbelt or helmet.”

Why is Grills so mad at Santa? Unresolved issues about coal-lumps? Or perhaps he’s trying to be funny?

No, says the good doctor. His concern is real.

“Santa only needs to affect health by 0.1 per cent to damage millions of lives,” Grills told one Australian newspaper.

Luckily, I think the children of the world have a slightly better grip on reality than Dr. Grills. They know that Santa doesn’t wear a helmet or a seatbelt because he’s magic — and so is his method of transportation. Since today’s kids know they aren’t likely to be flying around the world in open-top, reindeer-drawn sleighs any time soon, I’m guessing that they’re not looking to St. Nick for many aviation safety tips.

But that, of course, is not the heart of Grills argument. His main problem is with Santa’s girth.

It’s a literalism I find hard to take. Santa isn’t supposed to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jude Law. He’s no GQ cover boy. He’s every child’s ideal of the perfect grandfather, cosy, cuddly and ready to listen. Children love him because he isn’t dashing off to the gym, because he has time for them. Who wants to sit on the lap of a gaunt or hard-bodied St. Nick when you can snuggle into a bowlful of jelly?

Who wants to snuggle a hard body Santa?

Santa’s not obsessed with body image. He doesn’t dye his hair or trim his beard. He’s been wearing the same rumpled red suit for years. He, in all his incarnations, is centuries old. He’s earned his avoirdupois, fair and square.

Besides, it’s cold and dark at the North Pole now. An extra layer of insulation can’t come amiss, especially when he’s flying at night, at high altitudes. If the reindeer union isn’t complaining, if Santa can still squeeze down a million chimneys, who’s Grills to gripe?

On a more serious level, this is about more than beating up on Father Christmas. Yes, it’s true, childhood obesity is a serious problem in western industrialized cultures, where kids get too little exercise and too much access to junk food. But so, too, are anorexia and bulimia.

What disturbs me most about Grills’  Santa-bashing is his implicit logic that it’s immoral to be overweight, that it’s inherently evil to take a sensual pleasure in eating.

Santa isn’t morbidly obese. He’s an energetic hard-working guy who tends to be a little portly, a classic endomorph. For some Aussie academic to demonize him because of his body type isn’t merely silly — it sends children of all sizes and weights an ugly message about social acceptance, about how we’re all “supposed” to look.

There isn’t any one right shape to be, or only way to be healthy. Believe me, as any overweight child or adult can tell you, being fat in today’s world is no cause for cheerfulness. Heavy-set people face enormous prejudice in our culture, fuelled, not just by consumerist media messaging, but by zealots like Grills.

Here’s my advice to the earnest prof.

Naughty or nice?

Santa Claus can’t be neutered and warped into some role model or didactic lecturer. That’s not his mythic function.

A Santa who preached sermons to children about fibre and transfats and seatbelts wouldn’t be Santa at all. Kids would spot him for a phoney in a heart beat. Santa is an archetypal figure of indulgence and plenty. His size isn’t literal. It’s metaphoric, the outward sign of his power, his wisdom, his omnibenevolence, his freedom. We can’t shrink or constrain him, any more than we can constrain the joy of the season.

That’s the only lesson Santa has to teach us — to open our hearts and love without judgment, to have a merry, merry Christmas.

(Paula here. I hope you enjoyed that holiday tonic from 2009. To download it, and some of our other holiday favourites, as a free iTunes podcast, click here.)

Federal immigration minister Jason Kenney. Complete and utter email etiquette breach.

UPDATE: Late Tuesday afternoon, Jason Kenney finally apologized to Thomas Lukaszuk. Not publicly, however, and not during Question Period – Kenney’s spokesperson simply assured media that an apology had indeed been issued privately. You can read Peter O’Neill’s story about the apology here.

Lukaszuk, let me just say, has played this perfectly. In Boston on government business, he’s been completely and utterly silent on Twitter and Facebook all day, behaving with perfectly tuned wounded dignity, and allowing House Leader Dave Hancock  to speak publicly to Kenney’s remarks. (For the pugnacious Lukaszuk, I can only imagine that maintaining such elegant silence has taken an act of superhuman political will.) Meantime, Kenney’s refusal to apologize all afternoon allowed people like Thomas Mulcair, Linda Duncan, Bob Rae and Justin Trudeau to paint themselves as Alberta’s allies in Ottawa. Oh, yes, the ironies have been most delicious.

And now, the original blog. :

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The “reply all” button is, without a doubt, one of the scariest features of any email system.

Few other functions on your computer leave you as open to the potential for public humiliation. Let your finger land in the wrong spot, and you could accidentally send your whole office your most intimate holiday photographs, or share that rant about your boss, not just with your best friend, but with everyone for whom you work, boss included.

Let us take a moment then – albeit a brief one – to feel just a teensy bit sorry for federal immigration minister Jason Kenney, the human being.

As my colleague Graham Thomson first reported this morning, last week, Kenney received an email from the legislative assistant to Wetaskiwin MP Blaine Calkins. Calkins is the chair of the federal Conservatives Alberta caucus. Calkin’s assistant had emailed every Alberta CPC MP, wanting to know if any member of the caucus wanted to host a caucus lunch or dinner for Alberta’s new deputy premier, Thomas Lukaszuk.

It seems Kenney’s not the hospitable type.

“I say a definite ‘no’ to Lukaszyk (sic). I don’t think it makes sense to create a precedent to do a special caucus meeting for every visiting minister from the provincial government.”

Then Kenney added this wee kicker:

“Plus he is a complete and utter asshole.“

Then, Kenney hit reply all  – and the “private” email went, not just to Calkins’ assistant, but to all 26 Alberta Conservative MPs and all their assistants. Which meant that very shortly after, it wasn’t “private” any more.

(To read the full text of the email, click here)

Of course, you can hardly blame the rest of us for giggling – in no small part because many of us have written things in email that we’d rather not see splashed on the front page of The Edmonton Journal. There but for the grace of God go most of us.

But that is surely no excuse for Kenney’s bad manners or bad judgement.

Now, I’m no prude. I’m not going to pretend that I’m shocked and appalled that Jason Kenney used a “bad” word.

Despite the immigration minister’s much vaunted “family values” reputation, I’m not the tiniest bit surprised to find out that one of the righteous rigid moralists of Stephen Harper’s cabinet has a potty mouth.

I don’t expect 21st century politicians to employ the vocabulary of Victorian Sunday school teachers. Of course, it’s childish and stupid for a federal cabinet minister to call Alberta’s deputy premier an asshole in official written correspondence to caucus colleagues. But I’m pretty sure Kenney has used worse terms to describe Lukaszuk in casual conversation. (Golly gosh, I’ve used some pretty colourful language in my day to describe various Alberta politicians. Just not in my columns.)

Once upon a time, of course, a senior cabinet minister didn’t handle his own correspondence. He dictated such things to an assistant or secretary – who likely tidied them up before mailing them out to colleagues. These days, even the most senior people handle their own mail directly, and in real time.

Kenney received the note from Calkins’ aide last Wednesday at 4:57 PM, Ottawa time, and answered it at 5:02 PM – hardly allowing himself time for any kind of considered diplomatic response.

There was no editor or assistant to stand between Kenney and his id. His stream of consciousness flowed out through his finger-tips….and we all got splashed with the backwash.

(Given all the potential for politicians and other public figures to embarrass themselves on Twitter and Facebook, I suppose the intriguing thing is that Kenney was caught out by relatively old-fashioned email.)

But what’s truly interesting here is what Kenney’s ugly, ugly comment reveals about the dire state of relations between the federal Harper Conservatives and the Alison Redford Progressive Conservative variety.

It’s no secret that many members of Harper’s caucus were working hard behind the scenes to get Danielle Smith and the Wildrose Party elected.  They lost that fight – but clearly, some of them aren’t quite over it. In other words, while I’m not surprised to see Kenney bad-m0uth (or bad-type) a political opponent, it is a surprising to see how deep the animosity between the federal and provincial Conservatives really runs.

Alberta’s premier and her deputy – perhaps they should be the ones sending Kenney flowers.

Does Kenney owe Lukaszuk an apology? Well, Miss Manners would probably say yes. Actually, I think Lukaszuk (and Redford) owe Kenney a huge vote of thanks.

Kenney’s infantile email gives Lukaszuk a simply brilliant opportunity to play the bigger man, to be both the injured party and the superior Alberta.

Lukaszuk’s own strategic weakness is to type first and think later – he’s never shy about getting involved in Twitter smack-downs with political rivals, or in opening his mouth to get off a clever quip, without always considering the consequences. Now, he gets to enjoy the rare opportunity of being above the fray, of looking mature and thoughtful and statesmanlike, like the person who’s really best suited to represent the interests of Albertans.

And really, what Alberta politician doesn’t want to look as though he’s protecting his province from the bad guys in Ottawa – even if lots of those bad guys are actually from Alberta?

UPDATE: Interviewed Tuesday morning on the Dave Rutherford Show on CHED Radio, Jason Kenney declined the opportunity to apologize for his email or his language. He said he would not comment on internal communication or a private email, and insisted his government had an excellent relationship with the government of Alberta. (He did not add, “Except, of course, for that asshole, the deputy premier.”)

Liberal MP Justin Trudeau is calling on Kenney to apologize. As for NDP leader Thomas Mulcair? He was reported by Global Television to have said of Lukaszuk, ” I can assure you he is a complete and utter gentleman.” The two met during Mulcair’s recent tour of the oil sands.

If federal cabinet ministers Jason Kenney, Maxime Bernier and Ed Fast didn’t fully appreciate just how much northern Alberta’s oilsands-driven economy is contributing to Canada’s GDP, or the magnitude of the region’s pressing labour force needs, they do now.

A delegation of Edmonton business and educational leaders travelled to Ottawa last week, where they delivered that message in spades in private meetings with several senior members of the Harper government.

They included representatives from the Prime Minister’s Office, as well as Immigration Minister Kenney, Bernier (the Minister of State, Small Business and Tourism), and Fast, the Minister of International Trade, Minister of Asia-Pacific Gateway.

“What I learned from this is there’s a real need to continue to tell the Edmonton and northern Alberta story,” says Brad Ferguson, the newly minted CEO of Edmonton Economic Development Corp. (EEDC).

“I was a little shocked at the lack of true understanding of the growth that we’re incurring here, our contribution to Canadian GDP, and our need for infrastructure to support those things. So it provided a great opportunity for us to meet with federal politicians and really punch home the northern Alberta story.”

For Ken Barry, Chairman of the Board at the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce – which co-led the mission with EEDC – the Ottawa trip was his second in two years.

“Our objective was to drive home some of the issues we’re facing in the West that we think are unique, and sometimes misunderstood elsewhere in the country,” he says.

“But we also wanted to point out the opportunities that they present for us as a city, as a region and as a contributor to the national economy. So we were quite pleased to get the audiences we did with various ministers from various portfolios from around the country, and to have a chance to talk about things like the workforce, the challenges we face and how it is unique to our part of the country.”

Besides Ferguson, Barry and Chamber President Martin Salloum, the Edmonton delegation also included Chris Fowler, President of Canadian Western Bank, Doug Cox, President of Nunastar Properties, NAIT chief Glenn Feltham, Dr. Jodi Abbott, CEO of Norquest College, Lindsay Dodd, CEO of Savvia Inc., Paul Verhesen, CEO of Clark Builders, and Robin Bobocel, the Chamber’s VP, Public Affairs.

Tourism was another key focus of the Ottawa discussions, says EEDC’s Ferguson.

“We have a real concern in Canada that we’re cutting back our support for the Canadian Tourism Commission at a time when every other market in the world is beefing up their competitiveness for tourism,” he says.

“So we wanted to make sure we delivered that message and the importance of their support for tourism in general and to our economy as a whole.”

Ferguson says he was particularly impressed with Kenney.

“What I really enjoyed about Jason Kenney was his ability to say ‘Here’s what we’ve done, here’s where we are, and here are the next two years ahead of us in terms of what we’re doing in immigration.’ It wasn’t about just foreign temporary workers, it was around students, skilled and unskilled workers, everything. He did a great job of laying that out.”

Some people probably expect me, as a Muslim, to applaud the recent decision of the Federal Court of Appeal. Zunera Ishaq, a 29-year-old devout Muslim, successfully challenged the government’s ban on the wearing of the niqab at Canadian citizenship ceremonies.

Ms. Ishaq and her supporters must be overjoyed the court has sided with them. I am pleased that the niqab has become an election issue and also that Conservatives are planning to appeal the ruling.

The niqab nonsense has been going on for quite some time and we need to put an end to it. I disagree with quite a few things the Conservatives have been doing lately, but on the niqab issue I agree with Stephen Harper that all applicants should reveal their faces when receiving Canadian citizenship.

As Harper’s Alberta lieutenant Jason Kenney recently said: “At that one very public moment of a public declaration of one’s loyalty to one’s fellow citizens and country, one should do so openly, proudly, publicly without one’s face hidden.” A person’s face shows his or her identity, and no one should be ashamed of showing one’s face in public.

Muslim scholars, imams and even niqab wearers have publicly stated that wearing a niqab is not part of the Muslim religion. Women are not forced by their religious or cultural beliefs to conceal their faces behind the niqab, and neither are they forced by anyone else, including their husbands. It is a woman’s personal and private choice.

The issue has divided the country. The pro-niqab camp argues the government has no business getting involved in what dress or outfit one should wear. In a democratic country like Canada, the government should not be dictating to anyone what or what not to wear.

Citizenship ceremonies are solemn, historic and emotional public festivals signifying Canada’s diversity and pluralism. Singing our national anthem proudly, openly and en masse is a big part of those ceremonies. No exception should be made for those who do not want to show their face, whether they’re wearing a niqab, a mask or any other face cover.

Canada is a democratic country where individual liberties of religion, free speech, association, movement and so on are respected, but there are also limitations to individual liberties. It is not proper, for example, to run naked on the streets. There are norms of public behaviour and accepted standards of conduct we have to abide by in civilized societies.

At citizenship ceremonies, people swear allegiance to the country and take oath to uphold Canada’s Constitution. It’s a serious affair, and revealing the faces of those participating is important. If it were simple, a dummy could be propped up in his or her place to obtain citizenship. Why even bother to attend?

Niqab is a cultural phenomenon practised by Muslims in the Middle East, Pakistan and some African countries. It is out of place in modern societies.

The same arguments apply when applying for a driver’s licence. Would Ms. Ishaq be allowed to have her picture taken wearing her beautiful niqab? How would a police officer determine her identity if and when she is stopped for a traffic violation? Should we also make an exception for her and other niqab-wearing women?

A friend recently talked of trying to help a Muslim youth. Due to his contacts, my friend was able to get the youth a job at a bottle depot. The youth, who had been unemployed for more than six months, had the audacity to tell my friend he cannot work there because his religion forbids him to handle alcohol bottles.

The youth was told in polite terms that his religion forbade him to drink alcohol, but nowhere was it specified that he couldn’t touch empty alcohol bottles. The youth was not satisfied with the explanation, and my friend lost interest in helping someone who didn’t have the common sense to differentiate the thin line in his religion.

I am all for the deeply rooted western tradition that protects individuals from coercive powers of the state, church or society. As a Muslim and a visible minority, I’d be the first person to safeguard and protect minority rights whenever they are trampled upon. But on the niqab issue, I am with the government.

A Muslim woman can go to Mecca for hajj — the sacred Muslim pilgrimage — without wearing a niqab, but she refuses to attend a citizenship ceremony and show her face. How hypocritical!

Ms. Ishaq, this Muslim is against you on the niqab issue.

Mansoor Ladha is a Calgary-based journalist, travel writer and author of Aga Khan’s Shia Ismaili Muslims.

Two of Calgary’s political heavy hitters are squaring off over the Conservative party’s handling of the niqab issue and subsequent comments from Conservative cabinet minister Jason Kenney created a firestorm on Twitter.

“It seems to me that it’s the mayor and people like him who are politicizing it. I don’t think this should be an issue of contention,” said Kenney.

Check out reaction from around the web:

Playing politics is a serious allegation these days.

With a federal election in full swing, plus some jousting in Alberta over a new NDP government, politicians are increasingly accusing other politicians of playing politics. It’s an odd accusation.

We pick up on Naheed Nenshi’s tiff with Jason Kenney over the niqab debate, as well as former CPC MP and Alberta trade envoy Rob Merrifield’s accusations of interference from the office of Rachel Notley, who’s in eastern Canada and the U.S. this week to discuss pipelines. A final French language debate takes place Friday night, and the leaders are fresh off a foreign policy debate earlier in the week.

This week on The Press Gallery, Edmonton Journal’s politics podcast, city columnist Paula Simons, reporter Sheila Pratt and National Post reporter Tristin Hopper join host Brent Wittmeier to chase headlines and play politics.

Good Stuff from the Gallery, a weekly segment, concludes the show.

Paula’s pick:
Weed Whackers: Monsanto, glyphosate, and the war on invasive species

Sheila’s pick:
After the Sands, by Gordon Laxer

Tristin’s pick:
Parkland: Four Days in November: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Vincent Bugliosi

Brent’s pick:
To uncover or not to uncover: Why the niqab issue is ridiculous, by Andrew Coyne

It might not be the shortest news release ever from an Alberta government, but it’s got to be close.

Just 40 words in two sentences — pretty much a tweet — from Alberta’s Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, Oneil Carlier, on Monday.

The topic: the Alberta government’s response to Canada signing on to the monumental trade deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP.

“Alberta is a trade-focused province and we support the responsible growth of trade opportunities for our export sectors. This is a wide-ranging agreement that we need to review in detail before we know what the overall consequences are for Albertans.”

In other words, we’ll get back to you.

Given that details of the yet-to-be-ratified trade deal among 12 countries — including Canada, the U.S., Australia and Japan — are hugely complex and, up until now, hugely secret, it’s only reasonable that Alberta would want time to think it over.

But that’s only part of the reason the Alberta government has election-onset laryngitis.

The NDP government doesn’t want to say or do anything that would trip up federal NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair in the final two weeks of the election campaign.

That’s why the Alberta NDP government is not releasing its provincial budget, with an expected $6 billion-ish deficit, until Oct. 27 — eight days after the federal election.

Look at what happened last week when Rachel Notley said Mulcair’s proposal for a federal cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions “may not be our best road forward.”

Notley was rewarded with stories of a “rift” between her and Mulcair. Her subsequent attempts to explain that she liked Mulcair’s overall plan, but not enough to sign on to it, didn’t make things any better.

Now we have the TPP. On the surface the deal would seem to be good news for Alberta by helping promote sales of our beef, grains and lumber. You’d think the Alberta government would be a little more enthusiastic, especially an NDP government trying to defy the stereotypes and cast itself as a friend of business, trade and profits.

The problem for Notley is that Mulcair — trying to win support in vote-rich, up-for-grabs Central Canada — is critical of a deal that is not so good for the automobile manufacturing sector and is making dairy farmers nervous.

That’s why Mulcair is saying things like this: “If Mr. Harper has signed a deal that takes away supply management, hurts the farming families, hurts autoworkers, the NDP is not in any way shape or form bound by what Mr. Harper negotiated without a mandate in the dying days of his awful 10-year reign in Canada.”

What’s an NDP premier to do?

Keep her mouth shut and let her cabinet colleagues say as little as possible. Here is Finance Minister Joe Ceci on Monday, managing to sound exactly like the agriculture minister: “This is a wide-ranging agreement and really we need to see the full details of which before I can know what the overall consequences are for Albertans.”

But what if the deal is in the best interest of Alberta?

What if defence minister and Calgary Conservative candidate, Jason Kenney, is right when he says, “This is going to create tens of thousands of new jobs, perhaps even more, especially in places like Alberta, where we have so much in terms of export industry”?

Alberta’s NDP government should have its experts working round the clock to pore over the TPP and give us an answer before the election.

If Kenney is right and Mulcair is wrong, the Alberta government should trumpet that fact from the top of the Legislature.

Which is what it would do for sure — if not for that bad case of election-onset laryngitis.

gthomson@edmontonjournal.com

Rona Ambrose’s first day as leader of the official opposition got off to an intriguing start. While her caucus colleague Jason Kenney was fulminating on Twitter, somehow blaming Justin Trudeau for the death of the Keystone XL pipeline, Ambrose took a far more measured stance.

“I spoke to Prime Minister Trudeau today and encouraged him to continue advocating for market access for the energy sector,” said Ambrose, the MP for Sturgeon River–Parkland, in a written statement Friday.

“The Official Opposition urges the new government to open talks with the US government as soon as possible,” the statement continued.

It’s the calm, cool language you’d hope to see from an opposition leader. But the contrast between Ambrose’s diplomatic diction, and the heated rhetoric of Conservative partisans, shows just how large a challenge she faces, as the public face of a divided party.

Things heated up even more later in the day, when Ambrose appeared on CBC’s Power and Politics TV show, and said she supported a national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women. She called it a non-partisan issue — a remarkable about-face, given Stephen Harper’s fierce resistance to such an inquiry. Friday night, vocal Conservative partisans were on Twitter, calling for her resignation.

When Ambrose first entered public life, she came across as funny, smart, self-deprecating, not a rigid ideologue. When she became environment minister, in 2006, she was a rising star, the youngest woman ever appointed to cabinet. But the environment portfolio was a truly no-win job in a Harper regime. After less than a year, Harper demoted her, to western economic diversification. She became more and more careful, more and more nervous with the media. She seemed terrified of going off-script or deviating from the PMO-issued party line. Strict loyalty got her promoted, but didn’t win her much public respect.

“Her time in the environment ministry didn’t go well for her, and anyone who’s been through that baptism of fire becomes cautious,” says Danielle Smith, the former Wildrose leader. “But you lose something when you stick to the script. You lose some personality.”

Now, Ambrose has to be in the spotlight, in both official languages. And she has to bridge the re-opened gulf between the party’s Reform and Progressive Conservative wings. She needs to find her own voice — and backbone.

Kim Krushell is a former Edmonton city councillor, who dealt with Ambrose on Edmonton’s LRT file.

“She had a job to do as a cabinet minister and that was to stay on message, and she did that job,” says Krushell. “Now she needs to step up into this new job and show more of herself.

“I’ve seen her do stilted speeches. But I’ve also talked to her when she’s more herself than what the media has seen. She’s an introvert and she’s guarded with the media. She’s a reserved person, but I’ve also found her to be someone who will listen.”

Interim party leader is an unenviable task at the best of times. Bob Rae did it well for the federal Liberals, after the Michael Ignatieff flame-out. Dave Hancock handled the role with good grace after the Redford meltdown. But Ambrose may have an even harder and more thankless task.

It’s going to be especially challenging, says Smith, with so many social issues on Trudeau’s agenda, from marijuana legalization to changes to the sex trade laws to doctor-assisted suicide. It won’t be easy for the Conservatives to present a new and united image, when caucus social conservatives are at odds with more libertarian conservatives on such emotional issues.

It will be harder if caucus members gunning to become the next leader pander to the hard-core party base and  undercut her authority.

“She’s going to have to be the grown-up in the room,” says Smith. “I think she’s going to be a careful caretaker, solid and not embarrassing.”

Even without Harper’s controlling hand, Ambrose may not be truly able to speak for herself, Smith says, if she has to represent the will of her caucus.

But Krushell says Ambrose must redefine herself, to keep her party from lurching far to the right and into electoral oblivion.

“There’s a lot of enthusiasm about Trudeau and the Liberals. To offset that, she’s going to have to reach out. She has an opportunity to set a different tone, to be more open and transparent and listen to what people have to say. I think she’s going to have to change. She’s going to have to learn to deal with the media and seem real.”

Perhaps, given Friday’s news, she’s already starting.

psimons@edmontonjournal.com

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Listen to the latest edition of the Journal’s The Press Gallery podcast:

Just in time for the Calgary Stampede, it’s a rootin’, tootin’, bronco-bustin’ good time in the Press Gallery this week as the panel weighs in on Jason Kenney’s plan to unite the right in Alberta.

Can Kenney really ride this bull into the premier’s office in 2019? How hard will progressives push back against the former federal cabinet minister? And should Rachel Notley and the NDP be worried? panelists Graham Thomson, Paula Simons and Emma Graney do their best to lasso these questions and more, as we kick off the summer with bang.

Good stuff from the Gallery:

Paula’s Pick:

Jason Kenney: An explosive solution to the Alberta PC’s history problem, by Colby Cosh in the National Post

Emma’s Pick:

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s coverage of the Australian national election

Keith’s Pick:

Alberta Health review of Primary Care Networks

Graham’s Pick:

The Edmonton Public Library. Get a library card like Graham just did!

Allow me to indulge myself in another column on the Progressive Conservative leadership ambitions of federal MP Jason Kenney.

Yes, I’m sure other things happened in Alberta politics this week, but come on, did any of them come close to a politician announcing he was running to be captain of a political ship so he could ram it into another political ship, sink them both, then have the survivors swim to a new ship that, by the way, they’d have to construct themselves from scratch?

This improbable story has summer blockbuster written all over it, except that the PC leadership race doesn’t officially start until Oct. 1 and won’t wrap up until the leadership vote March 18.

Kenney is the first and only candidate in a marathon race that doesn’t start for almost three months.

Why is he launching so early?

That was just one of the obvious questions being asked this week after Kenney announced his strategy to win the PC leadership, then open unite-the-right negotiations with the Wildrose, organize a joint membership vote to dissolve both parties to form a brand new party that would then hold a leadership race with Kenney emerging as winner to lead the new party to victory against the NDP in the 2019 general election.

Whew.

I get all swoony just thinking of the column-material potential for the next three years, if Kenney’s plan works.

But why is he starting the process now?

Well, Kenney is a federal Conservative (who’ll hang on to his job as Calgary MP until Oct. 1) who needs time to build a campaign machine among provincial conservatives. Also, the Alberta’s PCs have changed the leadership race rules so the winner won’t be chosen by a one-person-one-vote system, but by an old-school delegate system where each of the party’s 87 constituency associations will send 15 delegates to the March leadership convention.

“This is a huge project that will require every day possible to build it,” Kenney said this week in an interview. “I see my candidacy as a vehicle for the grassroots desire for a united party. That means I’ve got to sign those people up and list them, tens of thousands of them.

“That’s a huge organizational effort made even more difficult by the delegated convention model. So, I’m going to need every hour of daylight as it were to reach out to those grassroots supporters.”

Also, by going early with a splashy campaign launch covered by national media, Kenney is hoping to scare off anybody else thinking of running for the PC leadership.

He didn’t actually say that, but when I asked if his early launch is intended to “Bigfoot” the competition, he smiled and offered a quote I admit made me laugh out loud: “You might say that, I couldn’t possibly comment.”

As any political junkie would know, this is an quote from the 1990s British TV series House of Cards (the better one before Kevin Spacey’s version). It was the main character’s backhanded way of saying “yes.”

It would seem Kenney has a dry sense of humour and might have his critics now comparing him to the House of Cards’ most dastardly character, Francis Urquhart, or Frank Underwood in the American version.

Not that other prospective PC leadership candidates are laughing. Calgary MLA Sandra Jansen is so appalled at the possibility of Kenney destroying her party she’s thinking of running herself. But she won’t be rushed by Kenney’s timetable.

“I’ll make a decision when I’m good and ready,” said Jansen.” If his goal is to try and take over the party with an influx of his right-wing supporters, then it’s his prerogative to give it a try.”

Another possible candidate, MLA Richard Starkey, also said Kenney’s timing “has no bearing on my decision, whatsoever.”

PC party officials are hoping to have half a dozen candidates in the race come Oct. 1.

It appears we won’t know until then if Kenney has scared anybody off.

gthomson@postemedia.com

Twitter: Graham_Journal

CALGARY – Former prime minister Stephen Harper has thrown his weight behind Jason Kenney, endorsing his former lieutenant in Kenney’s run for the Progressive Conservative leadership and plan to unite Alberta’s right.

Speaking at Saturday evening’s Calgary Heritage Stampede barbecue, expected to be his last as the riding’s MP, Harper said Alberta conservatives can no longer afford to be split between the PCs and Wildrose.

“I would ask all Alberta members of the Conservative Party of Canada to join me and work to elect as the next leader of the PC party of Alberta, the Honourable Jason Kenney,” Harper said in brief remarks before introducing interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose.

Kenney, the Conservative MP for Calgary Midnapore, announced this week he would run for the PC leadership seeking a mandate to unify the Tories with the Wildrose party.

“He has demonstrated time and again that he is a principled, thoughtful and highly capable conservative,” said Harper, who said he believed members of Wildrose also wanted conservative unity and positive change.

Ambrose also said she is “100 per cent” behind Kenney’s run for the Progressive Conservative leadership and plan for unity.

“I have for over a year now been unabashedly supportive of uniting the right in Alberta,” she told reporters at Heritage Park.

“I’m incredibly proud and happy that Jason has stepped forward to help lead this movement and I’m behind him 100 per cent.”

Ambrose said both Wildrose Leader Brian Jean and interim PC Leader Ric McIver are friends and she has spoken to both urging them to get behind uniting conservatives.

Kenney, Jean and McIver are all in attendance at the Conservative barbecue.

As lifelong Albertans and Alberta voters for 45 years who have never missed voting in any election, my wife and I were offended and disturbed by Jason Kenney’s comment at his news conference regarding the “accidental” NDP government of Alberta.

We would have hoped that a longtime MP would have a bit more respect for the electorate than Kenney demonstrated by that remark. He may have strongly differing perspectives from those of the current, duly-elected government of Alberta (which is of course his right), but to refer to this government as “accidental” is to insult and demean every Alberta voter who chose to put an end to 44 years of one-party rule in this province.

We did not make a mistake when we marked our ballots. Such attitudes, in my view, make him unqualified for the leadership of a political party in Alberta, and certainly for the premier’s chair.

Alan Vladicka, Edmonton

The second coming of Jim Prentice 

Graham Thomson really nailed it in his columns of July 7 and 8 regarding Jason Kenney’s plan to end Alberta’s PC Party. As a long-standing member of PCAA, I wonder how many other party members are excited to see another PC from Ottawa decide to grace us with their presence to save us — yet again.

Jim Prentice was completely blind to the role of rank and file PCAA members in what happens in this province. With the early election, we responded in large numbers by not voting altogether or, for those who were that angry, voting NDP. 

Now along comes Jason Kenney who wants to lead the PC party in order to — wait for it — get rid of it. If Kenney truly wants a new political party in Alberta then he should at least please have the guts to start his own political party in Alberta. Leave the PCAA to our members to decide our fate.

Earle Snider, Edmonton 

Two sides to labour dispute

Malcolm Mayes put the wrong letters on the mailbox in Friday’s cartoon. He used “strike.” Seems a bit unfair given that only Canada Post management has invoked shutdown via lockout. It’s hard for organized labour to be seen in a positive light when it is portrayed as the bad guy even when it is not.

Charles Hitschfeld, Edmonton

Make medical fees clear

Re. “Alberta radiologists dominate doctor’s top-10 billing list,” July 6

Could someone please explain to doctors, dentists, physiotherapists, nurses, etc. that they can have their health profession one of two ways.

If you have a provincial schedule of fees paid for by the public purse (guaranteed pay and no business risk) then you have to divulge completely your financial and income records so you have the public licence to charge what you charge and the public can judge if it is getting its money’s worth.

Or terminate your schedule of fees and be forced to advertise your prices with the public and each other to create fair competitive prices and value for money. You can’t have it both ways. 

Don Thompson, Calgary

Letters welcome

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I had no idea Wildrose Leader Brian Jean was so resilient.

He’s going ahead with plans for his summer-long town hall tour of the province, starting with a gathering in Airdrie this Friday evening.

Then he’ll be in Red Deer, Edmonton, Grande Prairie and Calgary, to name just a few of the communities on his yet-to-be finalized itinerary.

And he’ll be doing this exhausting tour despite a myriad of knives stuck in his back.

This poor guy has been stabbed so many times by so-called friends he must be feeling like Julius Caesar on his last visit to the Roman Senate.

Last Wednesday, Jean’s former federal Conservative colleague Jason Kenney announced a plan to, in so many words, win the leadership of Alberta’s Progressive Conservative party and merge it with the Wildrose into one new political party with Kenney as leader. Goodbye PCs. Goodbye Wildrose. Goodbye Brian Jean.

Then, at a Calgary Stampede event Saturday, two more of Jean’s old federal Conservative colleagues — former prime minister Stephen Harper and current Conservative interim leader Rona Ambrose — endorsed Kenney and his plan, while Jean was right there in the hall watching.

“I’m not upset at all,” said Jean afterwards. “I think this is great, this is a great step forward for Alberta and a great step forward for the conservative movement.”

You think rodeo cowboys are brave for facing rampaging farm stock?

Try keeping a smile on your face while your friends — one of them being the former prime minister — do their best to turn you into a political gelding on a public stage while everybody watches.

On Monday, I asked Jean in a phone interview if he had any warning at all that his old boss Harper was about to support Kenney.

After a four-second pause, Jean said, “No, I did not, I was not aware.” But he refused to wallow in pity or recriminations. “I’m going to continue to focus on the priorities of the residents I serve and the people of Fort McMurray. No matter what anybody else does, I’m going to keep my eye on the job I was hired for.”

You’ve got to feel at least a pang of sympathy for Jean, no matter your political persuasion.

He’s doing his best to personify courage as Hemingway defined it: grace under pressure.

“I am a Wildrose member,” he said. “I don’t play silly political games.”

I asked him if he thinks Kenney is playing silly political games.

There was no pause this time. “I’m not going to comment on that,” replied Jean, which, of course, is a comment in itself.

Jean is in a quandary. He doesn’t want to alienate supporters of a unite-the-right movement intrigued by Kenney’s pitch, but he certainly doesn’t want to surrender the Wildrose and his leadership without a fight — especially when Kenney still has a complex eight-month-long fight of his own to take over control of the PC party in the face of fierce opposition from party members such as MLA Sandra Jansen.

For his part, Jean is not fighting back with knives of his own. His defence is more subtle. He’s rallying his troops to counter Kenney’s appeal.

Wildrose MLA Nathan Cooper, for example, says people in his riding of Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills are offering Brian “an incredible amount of support.”

“It’s so important that we, the Wildrose, continue to do what we’ve done and that is to try to consolidate conservatives and I know Brian is extremely, extremely well supported in the constituency,” says Cooper.

Jean is trying to distance himself from Kenney’s strategy. “Let the PCs decide their fate,” he says, as if Kenney’s fate in the PC leadership race has no impact on the Wildrose. Obviously, it most certainly does.

For Jean and his supporters, the simplest way to stop Kenney’s plan is to have the PC party stop it for them.

gthomson@postmedia.com

Twitter: Graham_Journal

It was with great interest that I read your coverage on dental fees.  A few years ago I was badly injured in a traffic accident in Phoenix, and my travel insurance company was billed $9,500 for three hours in the emergency room before I was allowed to return to Canada for major surgery.  Within minutes of the insurance company receiving those Arizona medical bills, they demanded a repricing, and ended up paying $2,230 in total rather than the full $9,500. 

Why do the large health insurers not refuse to pay the dental bills when they are over-the-top expensive and simply demand they be repriced? These insurers have the clout and must use it, or dental care will become a service exclusively for the rich. 

Inez Dyer, Edmonton

Does Kenney want an “Albrexit”?

The latest contender for the leadership of the Conservative party of Alberta has also come out in support of Brexit.  If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would be inclined to suspect there may be a movement afoot to remove this province from Confederation and establish a sovereign state of Alberta, one in which we would be free to pursue a glorious and unfettered low-tax, zero-debt and carbon-friendly future.

I am not a conspiracy theorist, but I am concerned about some of the implications of Jason Kenney’s past positions and pronouncements for the future of this province.  It seems he is intent on importing the same discredited, inward-looking, unilateral and populist-pandering notions from national to provincial politics.  That whole approach was soundly rejected by an overwhelming majority of Canadians, but it seems that Mr. Kenney believes it will still fly in this province.

Anthony McClellan, Edmonton

Better Alberta coverage needed

Re: “Climate Change Action Needs Wider Recognition,” Graham Thomson, July 2

Graham Thomson’s thoughtful column on climate change action makes a number of good points.  One concerns the ongoing lack of coverage by local and national media of the changes being made in Alberta by Premier Rachel Notley and the NDP government.  Some Albertans who follow politics via conventional print, radio and TV are getting cranky with this lack of observation and reporting.  Who is deciding what is newsworthy and why are those decisions being made?  Is it big conservative business in central Canada pulling the strings?  Considering that Canada seems to have woken up to the economic importance of Alberta to Canada, broader coverage is in order.  

Elinor Burwash, Edmonton

Seniors grateful for roadside help

We were returning from vacation in British Columbia July 4 when we got a flat tire near Calgary.  We attempted to call the AMA, but the call would not go through. We used the red towel off a golf bag and tried to flag someone down for half an hour, and not one car stopped.  We are seniors, our trunk open. We looked like travellers with a problem.  We felt betrayed by our Alberta neighbours.

Finally two men stopped. One, Jeff from Kal Tire Calgary, decided it would be best to fix the flat, spending a considerable length of time and putting it back on the car.  Neither would take any money, indicating if you can’t lend a hand to a stranger in need, what kind of person are you.  Thank you God for sending them to us.

Laurene Park, Edmonton

Smith comment unfair

Re: “Kenney will enter PC fray with eye on uniting right,” July 6

I am appalled at this quote from Danielle Smith:

“There has to be a fundamental recognition that Calgary and Edmonton are far more progressive on social issues than the rural areas, whether it’s assisted dying, whether it’s abortion, whether it’s LGBTQ rights, whether it’s pot legalization.”

Is this an indication of what politicians past and present think of rural Albertans? I cannot believe that we have survived out here this long without any deep thoughts on local, provincial, national or world issues! There is a reason Danielle Smith is no longer leading any party, as she is not in touch with the real world. What an insult to the intelligence of rural Albertans.

Beth Elhard, Castor

 Letters welcome

We invite you to write letters to the editor. A maximum of 150 words is preferred. Letters must carry a first and last name, or two initials and a last name, and include an address and daytime telephone number. All letters are subject to editing. We don’t publish letters addressed to others or sent to other publications. Email: letters@edmontonjournal.com

I admit it. I have a problem.

I am hopelessly addicted to all the stories, speculation, whispers and behind-the-scenes shenanigans involving Jason Kenney’s strategy to unite the right. Or as one wag dubbed it, “unite the gripe.”

The more you dig into this affair, the stranger it becomes, as if that were possible.

The straight-up story is bizarre enough. Kenney has announced his intention to win the leadership race of the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party after which he would open unification talks with the Wildrose to dissolve both parties, form a new party, hold a leadership vote for the new party, become leader and, finally, go on to defeat the NDP in the 2019 provincial election.

Kenney has received endorsements from former prime minister Stephen Harper and federal Conservative leader Rona Ambrose. He seems to have set many right-wing hearts all aflutter, especially those who still rail against the NDP victory in the 2015 election and who think the only way to defeat the NDP is by combining the forces of the PCs and Wildrose.

However, there are many in the PC party and Wildrose who believe they can win the next election on their own and bristle at Kenney’s arrogance as he descends on the scene deus ex machina-style to save the day.

Jen Gerson, the National Post’s Calgary-based correspondent, wrote a few days ago that the endorsements from Harper and Ambrose have “infuriated” longtime Progressive Conservatives, who were less than impressed with Kenney when he turned up at a PC Stampede event Monday night.

In Edmonton, former PC MLA Thomas Lukaszuk has argued Kenney should be barred from the race. And some senior Wildrose officials opposed to Kenney’s strategy tell me they also hope Kenney is disqualified by the PC executive.

They point to the rules governing the 2014 PC leadership race, where candidates had a “fiduciary” responsibility to protect the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta and were sworn to “avoid causing harm or disrepute to the PCAA and its ‘brand’ through any detrimental action or conduct, whether intentional or unintentional.”

The PC party is still drawing up its new leadership rules, but if they’re similar to 2014’s you have to wonder how Kenney could be allowed to run if his goal is to dissolve the party.

But here’s where this story gets even more interesting.

Some senior PC officials say they’re not interested in keeping Kenney out; they want to make sure he can stay in.

They don’t want to give Kenney any grounds to accuse the party of being exclusive or undemocratic by barring him from the race. More crucially, they’re hoping an open race with half-a-dozen candidates discussing a myriad of issues will wrap up on the convention floor March 18 with Kenney’s defeat.

The race won’t officially start until Oct. 1 and so far Kenney is the only openly declared candidate, although there are names that keep popping up. Among them, PC MLAs Sandra Jansen and Richard Starke along with Edmonton Coun. Michael Oshry. Other names bobbing to the surface more recently are Calgary lawyer Doug Schweitzer, who ran Jim Prentice’s leadership campaign in 2014, and Edmonton lawyer Harman Kandola, who ran unsuccessfully as a PC candidate in the 2015 election.

And here’s another wrinkle to this Shar Pei of a story.

There is a suggestion among those supporting Kenney’s plan that if he were to be successful in dissolving the PC and Wildrose parties he could transfer all the assets and money from the old parties to the new.

Such a transfer would be illegal, according to Elections Alberta. But there are those who point out the law is actually silent on the matter and they suggest Kenney would be smart to simply go ahead with the transfer and see how Elections Alberta reacts.

But I’m getting ahead of myself and this yet-to-be launched race.

We have yet to see if the PCs even let Kenney run.

gthomson@postmedia.com

Twitter: Graham_Journal

Lost in the flurry of activity around uniting the right and Jason Kenney’s dramatic entrance into Alberta politics is Brian Jean.

The Alberta Wildrose Party leader is not centre stage — but he is not exactly relegated to the peanut gallery either.

In the drama that is Alberta politics, Jean’s new role is not one to envy. Now his job is to convince voters that his party should be the government while a former colleague and fellow conservative argues that it should no longer exist.

Jean sees himself uniting the right in Alberta the same way Justin Trudeau united the left in last fall’s federal election — by simply persuading voters to vote for his party and diminishing his rivals at the ballot box.

There is a long-standing history of mergers on the right — provincially and federally — but Jean describes this latest attempt as a “distraction.”

Kenney’s entrance into the Alberta Progressive Conservative leadership race is based on a pro-merger platform.

Meanwhile, Jean says he is happy to negotiate, and perhaps all this talk of mergers is unnecessary.

“We were consolidating the right under the Wildrose banner. There’s no question at all it was working 100 per cent,” Jean said in a recent interview.

Wildrose leader Brian Jean says Jason Kenney’s plan to unite conservatives in Alberta is a “distraction.”

On paper, the Wildrose Party appears to have a strong case for Alberta’s conservative voters. A poll conducted in May by Insights West showed the party with the support of 35 per cent of decided voters. The NDP government was at 27 per cent and the Progressive Conservatives were 13 points behind the Wildrose with 22 per cent. 

David Yager has been associated with the Wildrose Party since 2008, serving as its president from 2012 to 2014. He believes the party is up to the challenge of broadening its tent and appealing to fiscally conservative voters across the province.

“Brian has an understanding, from working with (former Prime Minister Stephen) Harper for 10 years, about where that centre-right line should lie to win,” says Yager.

Jean was the member of parliament for Fort McMurray-Athabasca from 2004 to 2014 and briefly served as a parliamentary secretary in Harper’s government.

There are some in the Wildrose Party who believe Rachel Notley’s NDP government is on the ropes — due to falling oil prices and a sputtering economy — and they believe that could forge a path to victory for the Wildrose. By appealing to fiscal conservatives and staying away from the social issues that have plagued them in the past, they think the party has matured.

“These are just not winning issues particularly in the urban centres in the 21st century. I think most of the people in the party accept that,” says Yager.

But even as the Wildrose pushed its polling lead over the NDP government to eight points, the clamour for a united conservative party only got louder. Groups like Alberta Can’t Wait and the Alberta Prosperity Fund agitated for a unified front to defeat the NDP in the 2019 provincial election.

And, on July 6, their prayers were answered: Kenney, a federal MP and former cabinet minister in Harper’s government, announced his intention to seek the leadership of the PCs and merge that party with the Wildrose Party.

Bumps along the road for the Wildrose

Kenney’s argument for the merger is not that the Wildrose can’t beat the NDP. He just does not want to take any chances.

“Is it possible that the PCs or Wildrose could win the next election? Yes. But as long as they’re divided, it’s also possible the NDP could win with 35 to 40 per cent of the vote, and that is a risk I am not prepared to take,” Kenney said in a recent interview.

His concern comes from the fact that, despite the party’s electoral decimation in the 2015 election, the PC party still has a stubborn foothold in Calgary. An electoral map of the province shows a tight cluster of blue ridings in the city and a vast sea of Wildrose green surrounding it. The people involved in uniting conservatives in Alberta don’t see much hope of either party supplanting the other in those areas.

“The PCs in Calgary are still polling pretty high, almost the same as the Wildrose, without a leader. And this is going to be the lowest that they are, so it’s time for us to stop the infighting, because a lot of the reasons the Wildrose grew … those reasons are now gone,” says Prem Singh, who runs Alberta Can’t Wait, a group trying to unite conservatives under one banner.

A presentation distributed to the media by Kenney at his Edmonton announcement on July 7 acknowledges that the “Wildrose is a potent electoral force.”

Since 2012, the party has polled over 40 per cent several times but has never been able to carry those numbers into an election. Both Kenney and Alberta Can’t Wait point to polls conducted this spring that peg support for a hypothetical united conservative party at 43 per cent.

Jean’s case for the Wildrose Party is about earning the trust of voters, working hard in the legislature and hoping to reap the electoral rewards. The case for a merger between the two parties on the right is often a pure numbers game.

Beyond the electoral math, the Wildrose leadership team has had other struggles this year. One constituency association — Lac La Biche-St Paul-Two Hills — called for a leadership review at the party’s annual general meeting in October. The move was seen by some in the party as the first step in a concerted effort to undermine Jean as leader.

“It’s pretty well documented that there are certain individuals out there who are actively trying to take Brian Jean down through various motions at the constituency level,” says Brock Harrison, former communications director for the Wildrose Party. “I don’t think it’s going to work. The Wildrose did a pretty good job putting the lid on this one.”

Yager says it’s clear that the people behind the motion hadn’t thought it through beyond the fact that it would create trouble for Jean. Neither Yager or Harrison are sure what the end goal of the so-called coup was — if there even was one.

“It was so clumsy. Who in God’s name, if you thought it through, what credible human would want to be the leader of a political party that had a leadership review every year? Nobody,” says Yager. “They’ve just got to realize that they could be their own worst enemy.”

Both men say there is an activist side of the Wildrose Party that can flare up every now and then. Yager says it’s simply the product of a grassroots “direct drive” party — and he points out that engaged party members are more of a blessing than a curse for party leadership.

Former Wildrose leader Danielle Smith has raised this topic on her afternoon radio show at Calgary’s CHQR. She has said there is a side of the party obsessed with ideological purity, and those members would be better suited to a debating club than a political party.

Tom Flanagan calls Kenney’s move an “audacious plan.”

Smith believes her own troubles started when she marched in a Pride parade, offending the sensibilities of some members.

Harrison says Smith could have done a better job handling that faction of the party but echoed her overall assessment.

“The objective of political party is to win elections and I think that there definitely is a group of Wildrose members — it’s hard to define who they are — but there’s definitely a bloc of Wildrose members who have been somewhat of a barrier to building a political party, a broad-based centre-right political party that can win elections year after year,” says Harrison.

Political scientist and longtime conservative political operative Tom Flanagan says it’s a mistake to think of this faction of the party as far right or even necessarily ideological.

“It’s actually more of a populist element in Wildrose, which was also in Reform, which isn’t necessarily more ideologically conservative,” says Flanagan.

“But they have constant emphasis on grassroots and they tend to be kind of suspicious of all authority. When there’s a really popular leader, people like that get marginalized.”

Jason Kenney hopes to be that leader, but he has a complicated and circuitous path to the premier’s office.

‘An audacious plan’

The hard part for Kenney, according to Flanagan, is not the merger with the Wildrose Party, but winning the PC leadership in the first place.

Making it even more difficult, he says, is that Kenney is running on an explicit promise to merge the party with another one, a rare, if not unprecedented position.

“Yeah, I call it an audacious plan. It’s unprecedented. There’s no model that I can think of to follow. And there are a lot of obstacles on the way,” says Flanagan.

This puts the Wildrose Party in an awkward position as they prepare for an election.

Jason Kenney signs a “grassroots guarantee” during a media conference at the Matrix Hotel about his Progressive Conservative leadership campaign in Edmonton, on July 7, 2016. 

Jean says the only real option open to him and his party is to keep doing the work of the official opposition, and hope that voters will reward him with the job of premier.

“Over the next year, the PC party itself, the members of the PC party will be involved in a divisive battle. There’s no question it’s going to be divisive,” says Jean.

“They will be deciding who they are first of all. Because they are truly lost in the policy debate about who they actually are, or who they aren’t.”

That battle officially kicks off in October, but Kenney’s entry may as well have been the starter’s pistol firing. Flanagan and Kenney both say they expect the new party will lose people on both sides of the ideological spectrum. Kenney says he hopes to minimize it, but that losing some members is inevitable.

“Whether it’ll be a mass exodus, I don’t know,” says Flanagan.

If Kenney wins the leadership of the PCs, he’ll have to fight a new battle to negotiate a merger and then convince members in both parties to approve it. The Wildrose constitution demands a 75 per cent approval and Kenney is confident that it won’t be a problem, pointing to the federal merger between the Canadian Alliance and federal PC Party where both votes came in at more than 90 per cent approval.

The federal merger in 2003 took months to negotiate and became acrimonious at times — and there’s always the possibility that the “debating club” faction of the Wildrose Party proves prickly again.

“It’s ambitious, but doable,” says Kenney.

In 2004, the newly formed federal Conservative Party, in a slightly chaotic state, reduced the Liberals to a minority. Reflecting on what he learned from that experience, Kenney says mostly that “we should have done it a long time before.”

Which explains his urgency now.

To Jean, the upheaval in the PC Party isn’t much more than an irritant right now.

“A lot of people think we should get excited about this but it’s just one of those distractions, much like some others we’ve had this past year with the NDP, the carbon tax, and some other things,” says Jean.

For Flanagan, who speaks wistfully of the federal merger negotiations 13 years ago, it has injected some excitement into Alberta politics.

“It’s worth doing. It’ll make politics fun again. Rather than a show about nothing, it’ll become a show about something,” he says.

Related

• Graham Thomson: Kenney's plan to unite the right would kill the PC Party and the Brian Jean's leadership
• Brian Jean and the Wildrose renaissance

For now, Jean finds himself an observer in the drama that’s about to play out. He has had no substantial meetings with Kenney, just a 30-second phone call before Kenney’s announcement and a cordial chat when they ran into each other at an event.

As for Kenney’s future plans for the Wildrose party?

“I’m just learning of that through the media,” says Jean.

sxthomson@postmedia.com

twitter.com/stuartxthomson

To mark the tragic Bastille Day attack in Nice, this week’s episode has a bit of a French theme. The accents are bad, but the debate around the latest developments in Alberta’s affaires politiques can’t be beat.

Alas, no baguettes and brie, but the panel does into the beer, both figuratively and literally, as they discuss the Alberta government’s latest move to try to protect the province’s craft breweries.

Emma Graney, Paula Simons and Graham Thomson also take on former prime minister Stephen Harper’s endorsement of Jason Kenney as the next Alberta PC leader … and where that leaves Wildrose Leader Brian Jean.

And for all those fantasy fictions fans, tune in to learn what the Lord of the Rings and the Alberta oilsands have in common.

Good stuff from the Gallery:

Paula’s pick:

Theresa May: Unpredictable, Moralistic and Heading to No. 10. By Gabby Hinsliff in The Guardian

Graham’s pick:

The Pokemon Go phenomenon, explained by a Millennial. By Lauren O’Neil. CBC News.

Keith’s pick:

Wildrose versus Jason Kenney in Battle over Alberta’s Political Right, by Stuart Thomson. Postmedia.  

Emma’s pick:

Rescuing America’s Roadside Giants, by Jasmine Taylor-Coleman, BBC News

According to some observers of Alberta politics, there were events happening this week unrelated to Jason Kenney’s entrance into the province’s Progressive Conservative leadership race.

I was skeptical at first.

I mean, come on, what else could possibly be going on?

But after some investigation, I now reluctantly admit they might have a point.

There would indeed seem to be evidence of life in Alberta politics other than that most political of animals, Jasonium Kenneysius.

Let’s take a look at just a few of the non-Kenney items this week.

On Monday, the Alberta government announced two incentive programs to help energy companies drill new wells or squeeze oil and gas out of old wells. Sounding much like Progressive Conservative governments of old, the new NDP government said it had to provide aid to energy companies during the economic downturn caused by low oil prices.

Adding to the irony was the reaction of left-leaning commentators such as the National Observer online news agency, which complained not only did Alberta’s government fail to raise royalty rates this year, “(it) has now made matters even worse with Monday’s announcement of two new subsidy programs, both gobsmacking examples of corporate welfare.”

It’s enough to make you think it’s 2008 and Ed Stelmach is still premier.

For their part, oil industry officials gave grudging thumbs up, but certainly weren’t stampeding to the NDP’s defense.

“It does help offset some of the higher costs of doing business in Alberta,” said Kevin Neveu, president and chief executive of Precision Drilling Corp. “Right now, in this environment with low commodity prices, it remains to be seen how effective it will be.”

The biggest problem facing the energy industry, the government and the province is, of course, the depressed price of oil. Unfortunately, there is little to nothing a government of any political stripe can do to level the playing field in the face of world commodity prices. It’s a bit like a mouse playing see-saw with an elephant.

On Tuesday, the mouse climbed back on the teeter-totter. In a speech to an investors forum in Calgary, Premier Rachel Notley said oil and gas companies could start operating under the government’s new royalty scheme now rather than waiting for it to come into effect Jan 1.

“We are hopeful that this decision will get more rigs going sooner and put more Albertans to work. In particular, those workers who have been hit the hardest — rigs and service industry folks,” said Notley in a prepared copy of her speech.

Again, industry officials say any improvements in drilling and jobs will be incremental.

Despite complaints from opposition politicians to the contrary, the NDP is not driving the energy industry into the ground. The culprit is the price of oil.

On Wednesday, the government unveiled a new Oilsands Advisory Group that, to the delight of the opposition Wildrose, included a co-chair who just a few days ago compared Alberta’s oilsands to Mordor, the land of evil in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.

“When you’re there it feels a bit like Mordor — as far as the eye can see it’s mines, basically, and huge toxic ponds, lakes really,” environmental activist Tzeporah Berman told an environmental reporter in London.

She has since expressed regret for her comments, saying she looks forward to helping Alberta find ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the oilsands.

The government says it wanted to invite a wide cross-section of voices onto the panel to find solutions as well as stop the old cycle of recriminations and dead-end rhetoric. You have to admit Berman offers up a voice never heard on any panel cobbled together by the old PC governments.

The Berman controversy led to Wildrose MLA Leela Aheer offering up a term never heard, I bet, in Alberta politics: “I can’t help but be super-duper concerned.”

Gosh, I’m looking forward to more super-duper weeks like this in Alberta politics, with or without Jason Kenney.

gthomson@postmedia.com

Twitter: Graham_Journal

Whoever said money can’t buy happiness never worked for a political party.

In politics, money and happiness are pretty much the same thing.

The more money in a party’s bank account, the bigger the smiles on the politicians’ faces.

That’s why Wildrosers are grinning from ear to ear.

New fundraising figures released by Elections Alberta show the Wildrose collected $467,000 in donations in the second quarter of the year, that’s April to June.

The NDP raised $362,000.

The Liberals brought in $57,000.

And, the Progressive Conservatives? They raised a total of $27,000 in the second quarter, according to Elections Alberta.

That’s why PC MLAs might be looking down in the dumps these days. Of course, they’ve got other things on their minds, notably Jason Kenney’s announcement he’s running for leadership of the PCs so he can dissolve it with the Wildrose into a new right-wing political party.

More on Kenney in a sec.

Officials with the NDP and PCs insist the fundraising numbers don’t tell the whole second-quarter story.

Both parties held conventions during that period — and convention money is not counted by Elections Alberta.

NDP provincial secretary, Roari Richardson, says his party actually raised a total of $600,000 when you include money generated at its annual general meeting in June. But he couldn’t say how much of that money was spent to cover the cost of the convention.

And PC party president Katherine O’Neill says her party cleared about $100,000 from its 1,000-delegate convention in Red Deer in May.

So, the PCs raised almost $130,000 in the second quarter.

And it will do better in the third, O’Neill predicts: “We have a new team solely focused on fundraising.”

Yes, but the party — once a fundraising juggernaut — is still in third place. That’s a consequence of losing the 2015 provincial election and then being beaten over the head by the new government’s first piece of legislation. The NDP outlawed political contributions from corporations which had been the mother’s milk of the PC party for decades.

There is a clear winner from the second quarter fundraising: Wildrose leader Brian Jean. “The Wildrose party is back,” he said after seeing the numbers. “We are doing better than ever.”

Jean will be hoping the Wildrose resurgence under his leadership will help him stave off the Kenney-led coup to mash the Wildrose and PC party into a new political entity.

But Kenney says his plan is already gaining momentum. After learning that the PCs collected $27,000 in the second quarter of the year, he said his leadership bid raised more in one day than the PCs did in three months.

And he’s also receiving a different kind of support, one that’s sure to raise a few eyebrows and provide ammunition for his critics.

Alissa Golob, an anti-abortion activist in Ontario with a group called Right Now, has written a blog urging fellow pro-lifers in Alberta to join the PC party to vote for Kenney.

In the blog entitled “Jason Kenney: a man with a plan,” Golob says, “Our organization was formed to nominate and elect pro-life politicians. That is the sole purpose for our existence. Jason Kenney is a pro-life politician.”

In an interview on Monday, Golob said even though she doesn’t live in Alberta her organization is national in scope and it wants to have an influence in every province. According to her post: “Passing a piece of provincial legislation that restrictions abortion is arguably one of the most effective ways to decrease the abortion numbers in our country.”

The Golob blog raises a thorny issue for Kenney who has tried to distance himself from his anti-abortion roots as his leadership campaign gets underway. 

An email from the Kenney campaign on Monday said, on the issue of abortion under Kenney, “a united provincial conservative policy would follow the approach of Stephen Harper’s government in not initiating legislation on it.”

Kenney will be hoping that’s the end of the issue. But I somehow doubt his critics — in the PC party, the NDP government and maybe even in the Wildrose — will be so quick to let it go.

gthomson@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/Graham_Journal

Progressive Conservative leadership hopeful Jason Kenney is set to launch a cross-provincial road trip Monday in Edmonton.

Kenney will announce details of the “Unite Alberta Truck Tour” during a brief news conference near the legislature at 10 a.m.

On hand will be a Dodge Ram truck Kenney will use for the journey. It is not known how many stops Kenney plans to make, though his first destinations are believed to be in northern Alberta.

The federal MP and former cabinet minister announced plans early last month to shake up Alberta politics by winning the PC leadership and then uniting the Tories with the Wildrose party.

He will conduct the tour while still serving as the federal MP for Calgary-Midnapore, a seat he plans to keep until October.

To date, no other candidate has stepped forward to take on Kenney for PC leader.

Wildrose leader Brian Jean launched his “On Your Side” town hall series on July 15 in Airdrie. Two upcoming stops, in Lethbridge and Calgary, are listed on the Wildrose website, though the remainder of the itinerary is “to be determined.”

Jean has said he is open to uniting the parties under the right conditions.

kgerein@postmedia.com

twitter.com/keithgerein