David Parker, founder of Take Back Alberta, speaks to a small audience in the basement of Deer Run Community Centre in Calgary on April 24.Jude Brocke/The Globe and Mail
Danielle Smith doesn’t want to talk about Take Back Alberta. But with the group’s leader launching a social media volley against the United Conservative Party establishment this week, the Alberta premier will be forced to confront the problem festering in the UCP’s right flank.
Some day soon the same angry forces could be knocking at Ms. Smith’s door, as well.
TBA is a loosely affiliated, individualistic movement that emerged in 2021 out of division among conservatives over pandemic rules and vaccine mandates. The group infamously takes credit for rallying the leadership review votes to push Jason Kenney from office last year.
Its firebrand leader, David Parker, stayed relatively quiet during the May provincial election, as the UCP focused on defeating the NDP, but he’s back in force now and making use of his bully pulpit to attack party president Cynthia Moore. She is seen as loyal to Kenney, the former UCP leader who Mr. Parker once supported but now despises. He’s trying to get Ms. Moore to resign or at least not run for another term. Among the many accusations he has lobbed is that she is a “power-hungry tyrant.”
There was no comment from the UCP on Mr. Parker’s written attack late Friday. But the fight relates, in part, to what The Globe’s Carrie Tait reported on earlier this week (adding to her extensive coverage of TBA), about how a battle over the sticker price of the UCP’s coming annual general meeting is a proxy for the larger clash over the direction of the party. Factions are warring over control of the November AGM, where half the seats on the UCP’s provincial board will be up for grabs.
Mr. Parker has said on numerous occasions that he wants control of those seats. As Ms. Tait writes, his “campaign to get everyday Albertans involved in politics at all levels is motivated by the belief conservatives like him have been shoved from power.”
It’s an incredibly complicated dynamic, and it’s hard to know by what degree Mr. Parker is overstating his group’s influence. The home-schooled son of a preacher has spent months speaking to crowds in town halls, farmhouses and churches across the province (social conservativism is also a strong theme). He has said he has the support of somewhere around 30,000 Albertans. But others within the UCP argue that those he identifies as TBA members, including current party board members, don’t think of themselves that way.
Ms. Smith did not actively push Mr. Kenney from office, but her leadership campaign won support from those who follow TBA principles – especially the idea that the former premier was too hard on the COVID-19 unvaccinated and too soft on Ottawa.
TBA claims to have sway over members of the party board, but Ms. Smith’s pat answer when asked about the influence of the group is, “we have a one member, one vote system.”
Ms. Smith, as Premier, attended Mr. Parker’s wedding early this year, and the two are described as friends. Yet Mr. Parker has said he’s willing to take her down, if need be. “The leaders come and go, folks,” he told a crowd in March. “We need to control the party that’s in power.”
Despite coming from different sides of the conservative movement, the premier and Ms. Moore have embraced each other in public. Ms. Moore has praised Ms. Smith’s leadership, and is a key link to more middle-ground Alberta conservatives, and to the party’s roots. Ms. Moore’s late father, Amoco Canada Petroleum executive and philanthropist Sherrold Moore, was a key part of former Progressive Conservative premier Ralph Klein’s inner circle.
On Thursday, the Premier did speak to the TBA criticism of Ms. Moore, but only in the most general way. “Every single member of our executive is valued, and they were put there by the members of our party and I support every single one of them,” Ms. Smith told reporters.
“We’re having a robust discussion because we’re leading into an AGM,” she added. “Sometimes they have a difference of opinion on how we should move forward on things. But I’m confident that we’re going to be able to sort that out.”
There is no doubt the premier would rather be talking about other things, rather than the people who helped bring her to power but who also want to tear the system down. Her office has to negotiate, or battle, with Ottawa over key energy and environment files, guide the economy through inflation and higher interest rates, and manage an influx of newcomers that University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe said is putting the province on track for its fastest population growth since 1914.
But all this inside-baseball UCP stuff does matter to the wider world. Albertans have seen a lack of policy cohesion and problem-solving for two years as the party’s internal battles have taken attention away from, you know, actually governing the province.
Conservatives should know that if they have any hope of winning future elections, they need to maintain the tenuous trust Albertans have in their movement. Not being consumed by internecine strife is the bare minimum.
In an interview after the May 29 election, senior NDP strategist Jeremy Nolais said his party has more work to do but felt optimistic it could win the next election. “We could be right there in four years, or sooner. Who knows with these guys?”
The NDP understands that conservatives can be their own worst enemies. It’s still unclear whether some of the loudest voices within the UCP grasp this.
In that vein, the premier needs to have a few candid conversations with her friends and fellow board members. As soon as next year, she could face a party leadership review. And we all know how that turned out for the last UCP leader.