Western Canada: Jason Kenney returned to Alberta to unite the right. Now he’s leaving after less than a term

Good morning. It’s James Keller.

It wasn’t supposed to end this way.

Jason Kenney returned to Alberta six years ago as something of a conservative saviour on a mission to unite the right, unseat the NDP and restore what he saw as the province’s natural political state. That mission is ending early after Mr. Kenney received a paltry 51.4-per-cent support in a United Conservative Party leadership review, prompting him to resign and setting the stage for the party to hold a leadership race.

He is being pushed out after a tumultuous three years that were overshadowed by the COVID-19 pandemic, a sluggish economy that his government struggled to turn around, and a level of infighting within the UCP that quickly turned into open warfare. In this weekend’s Globe and Mail, a team of reporters look at what happened this week and what led up to Mr. Kenney’s spectacular downfall. (He intends to remain Premier until a successor is chosen.)

Mr. Kenney lept into provincial politics in 2016, returning to Alberta after a long career as an MP and federal cabinet minister with a plan to unite the right through a merger of the Progressive Conservative and Wildrose parties. The split among the province’s right-wing voters was seen by Mr. Kenney and others as the primary reason the NDP, under Rachel Notley, won the 2015 election and ended decades of uninterrupted conservative rule. Mr. Kenney described it as an “accidental government” as he warned that allowing Ms. Notley another term would be ruinous for the province.

He won the PC leadership with an overwhelming 75 per cent of the vote, and the merger was approved by members of both parties with near unanimous support. Mr. Kenney went on to lead the newly formed United Consevative Party, which won the 2019 election with about 55 per cent of the vote – a modest result for a conservative party by Alberta standards, but a landslide nonetheless.

When he was sworn in as Alberta’s 18th premier on April 30, 2019, enthusiasm among conservatives for Mr. Kenney and his government was high. He used that momentum to push through changes that ripped up NDP policies of the previous four years while also championing pet issues for the province’s conservative voters, including fighting against federal government policies on carbon taxes and environmental regulation, as well as implementing tax cuts and pursuing greater autonomy on things such as pensions and policing.

The glow didn’t last long. Mr. Kenney had been in office less than a year when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, prompting the government, like others across Canada, to shut down businesses and eventually impose mask and vaccine mandates. Some of the province’s most vocal opposition to those policies came from within Mr. Kenney’s own caucus and the see-saw of reopenings and restrictions whittled away at his support among conservative voters.

A common thread in the commentary this week has been that the pandemic is what ultimately led to Mr. Kenney’s undoing. There is a lot of truth to that. The health restrictions deepened divisions within the UCP and emboldened critics – including backbench UCP MLAs, some of whom became comfortable with openly calling for the premier’s resignation with little apparent consequence.

But it was also more than the pandemic. Mr. Kenney has a long history of combative politics, and his opponents have frequently complained of a top-down approach in his government that dismissed criticism, failed to listen to contrary views, and punished dissent.

There have also been frequent complaints, which have grown, that Mr. Kenney’s government has been moving too slowly on wrestling more autonomy from Ottawa, with little tangible progress on things such as an Alberta police force, a provincial pension plan and equalization reform. The outside forces that Mr. Kenney has spent years blaming for penning in the province’s oil and gas sector remain, largely unchanged.

With Mr. Kenney’s apparent exit in sight, the UCP must now choose a new leader who will be forced to contend with many of the same forces. The divide between what are seen as the moderate and further-right wings of the party continues to widen, and there are real questions about whether anyone will have better luck than Mr. Kenney.

It’s the same problem facing the federal Conservatives. Erin O’Toole was forced out earlier this year in light of a similar internal divide, and the similar forces have shaped the ongoing leadership race.

Our opinion team explored some of those issues this week.

Gary Mason writes that Mr. Kenney was felled by his own hubris, questioning whether another leader will be able to succeed where the current premier failed.

Campbell Clark says what happened to Mr. Kenney is evidence of a very particular form of “cancel culture” in Canada’s conservative parties, with leaders and high-profile members being cast aside more frequently and more quickly. “There’s a desire to rip out the pandemic and everything to do with it, especially authority figures. Not just to cancel restrictions, but cancel the people who made them in 2020 or whenever, institutions that were involved and authorities in general,” Campbell writes.

The Globe and Mail Editorial Board notes that Mr. Kenney’s departure only increases uncertainty within the UCP.

And for more on this story, listen to Globe reporter Carrie Tait break down what happened and what it means for the UCP in a recent episode of our daily podcast, The Decibel.

This is the weekly Western Canada newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox and Alberta Bureau Chief James Keller. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.