Alberta’s political culture and history played a part in Jason Kenney’s downfall

Jason Kenney’s imminent resignation as Alberta premier shows that even leaders with track records of success can fall victim to unpredictable crises, poor leadership choices and the unspoken norms of provincial politics.

Kenney failed because he didn’t fully understand Alberta’s populist and leader-centric culture and its role in creating expectations about how the province should be governed. But even though he faced a challenging set of problems, the final outcome is Kenney’s own responsibility.

What makes Kenney’s poor showing in the recent leadership review so striking is the fact that he played a key role in the Stephen Harper government’s electoral success and the creation of its policy agenda.

He represented something that some contemporary Canadian conservatives struggle with: a coherent, consistent and electorally viable conservative approach to governing.

In addition to his roots as the director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, Kenney was also seen as the key architect of the Conservative Party of Canada’s success in appealing to suburban immigrant communities through the careful articulation of shared social conservative values.

That’s why Kenney was able to establish himself as the heir apparent to Alberta’s conservative movement in 2017. In doing so, he managed to unite two bitterly divided parties, the Progressive Conservatives and Wildrose, into the United Conservative Party (UCP) and delivered a big majority win in the 2018 provincial election.

Started on a high as premier

As premier, Kenney not only had the support of his large caucus, but he also had the majority of the province behind him to pursue his promises to expand the energy sector and take a more confrontational stance against what some Albertans believe is an increasingly hostile federal government.

Unlike the centrism pursued by some of his fellow Conservative premiers, Kenney continued to run Canada’s most consistently conservative government throughout his tenure, introducing corporate tax cuts, reduced spending, strong deregulation and overhauls to the school curriculum.

Nevertheless, before finishing his first term, Kenney’s premiership is now effectively over following his poor showing (51.4 per cent) in the UCP’s leadership review.

What went wrong? Some observers have pointed to the UCP’s ultra-conservative faction that’s punished Kenney for his occasional support of COVID-19 restrictions. Others also cite Kenney’s autocratic leadership style.

These are both only partially true. A full understanding of what occurred requires a broader look at Alberta’s general political culture and history.

Alberta is anti-establishment

Although historically supportive of conservative governments, Alberta’s conservatism is consistently overstated. In addition to being the home of notable leftist movements, polls have consistently shown that Albertans are in line with the rest of Canada in supporting high levels of government spending and interventions to address issues related to poverty, the environment and discrimination.

Alberta is better understood by examining how it’s been shaped by the anti-establishment, grassroots and populist sentiments that are a feature of both left and right.

This is largely the product of history, because Alberta’s role as a frontier society fostered the belief that prosperity and well-being would come through self-reliance, fairness and the wisdom of ordinary people, rather than tradition, authority or hierarchy. This has come to be romanticized as the prototype of the contrarian, free-thinking Albertan “maverick.”

The province’s ongoing reliance on oil and gas exports has historically united Albertans, while also placing the federal government in the role of the villain for its perceived hostile interventions in Alberta’s energy sector.

This populist culture is evident in direct democracy initiatives at the local level that has allowed citizens to have a more immediate role in decision-making through practices like referendums and the ability to recall elected politicians.

But it’s also created a leader-centric provincial dynamic. Through the common practice of attacking the federal government or other supposedly hostile forces, several leaders have found success in positioning themselves as the authentic voice of Alberta.

When combined with Albertans’ general lack of partisan attachment and a majoritarian electoral system, this has allowed these leaders to create an illusion of unanimity through substantial electoral wins, despite the fact that a large portion of Albertans may oppose them.

It’s a tricky dynamic: despite having significant power, leaders are also pressured to be effective, fair, democratic and anti-elitist towards the public and their own caucus. Alberta has had popular, larger-than-life leaders, but it’s also had a number of premiers who — due to economic downturns, personal scandals or inadequate caucus management — can be regarded as failures.

Uneasy alliance

What puts Kenney in the second category is the fact that enough of his party lacked confidence in his leadership. Wildrose party members, who Kenney had successfully merged into the UCP coalition, initially liked his contrarian tradition of opposing what they viewed to be the elitist, self-interested and out-of-touch power brokers in the mainstream PC party. To them, Kenney had simply returned to the old form.

The trends were there before the pandemic. The race between Kenney and Brian Jean, the former leader of Wildrose, for control of the UCP left a bitter aftertaste due to allegations of criminal identity fraud that is the subject of an ongoing RCMP probe.

Former Kenney staffers also alleged a toxic environment of long hours, sexual harassment and alcoholism. Discontented caucus members also complained of a premier’s office that was insular and failed to consult with caucus which, in their view, contributed to many of the government’s mistakes.

The province’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic entrenched this opposition. The response itself was inconsistent as Kenney manoeuvred between a public that supported restrictions and a more skeptical caucus.

His promise to totally reopen in the summer of 2021 was his biggest mistake because a subsequent outbreak forced Kenney to backtrack and simultaneously disappoint both sides. Kenney’s own personal integrity was also compromised, as both he and cabinet ministers were caught violating their own restrictions.

Kenney’s failure, therefore, is largely the immediate consequences of his own leadership choices. But there’s a broader context. The premier not only faced an unprecedented crisis, but dealt with a profoundly contrarian wing of the Albertan conservative movement. Kenney, to his credit, made an effort to consult and accommodate these voices once dissent began to congeal.

But Alberta provincial politics is a gamble. Although leaders have the potential to become era-defining personalities — think Ralph Klein or Peter Lougheed — they can also be quickly cast aside. Kenney’s fall from grace is a vivid illustration of the volatility of the province’s political landscape.

Sam Routley, PhD Student, Political Science, Western University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.