Sundown 95

Interesting.

Alberta Conservatives Need to Learn from the Past, which is why I think it's time to further reform the UCP. Alberta conservatives have never been an easy group to unite. We are a coalition of fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, environmental conservatives, libertarians, pragmatists and people who simply want governments to spend responsibly, respect individual freedom and stand up for Alberta. We agree on many of the problems facing our province, but we don't always agree on the solutions, or the path forward. Today, one of the biggest divisions is over Confederation itself. Some Albertans believe Canada can still be reformed and that Alberta's interests can be protected within it. Others, like me, have concluded that the experiment has failed and that we need to consider a fundamentally different future. Both groups have legitimate concerns. But there is one thing we should all be able to agree on: our political organizations must serve the interests of Albertans, not the other way around. It's time to have an honest conversation about reforming the United Conservative Party. The fear of splitting the conservative vote. The most common argument against reform is straightforward. We can't risk splitting the conservative vote and hand the next election to Nenshi and the NDP lunatics. That's a real risk with our first past the post system. In 2015, the Progressive Conservatives and Wildrose ran separate campaigns. The NDP formed government, despite the two conservative parties collectively receiving more than half of the popular vote. Then, in 2019, following their merger, the United Conservative Party retook office. We should learn from that history. But we need to learn the right lesson. The lesson is that conservatives need an effective political organization capable of bringing people together around a common purpose. It is not that one particular party must remain unchanged forever. The merger that created the UCP was an organizational solution to a divison problem. It brought two parties together, but it did not eliminate the differences in political philosophy, priorities and expectations among their supporters. It was a first step. It also did not guarantee that the resulting party would always represent the interests of every group within that coalition. Unity is valuable, but unity without a shared purpose is fragile. If the only argument for keeping the UCP exactly as it is today is the fear of splitting the vote, we have reduced our political strategy to a defensive exercise. We are no longer asking whether our party is delivering results. We are asking only whether changing it might be dangerous. The status quo is not risk-free. There is often a tendency to treat the status quo as the safe option and reform as the risky one. Humans don't liek change...it's just a fact. But maintaining the status quo is also a decision, and decisions have consequences. If a party fails to address the concerns of its supporters, it risks losing their confidence, participation and commitment. Some may disengage. Others may refuse to volunteer, contribute financially or support its candidates. Still others may look for alternatives. That's already happening. UCP membership is down from the historic high of 110,000 members to only 40,000. We should not assume that every dissatisfied conservative will automatically return to the UCP when an election approaches. Nor should we assume that every voter who leaves the UCP will vote for the NDP. Voter behaviour is more complicated than that. My question is whether the party can maintain a broad and durable coalition while continuing to deliver meaningful results for its supporters. If it can, there is a strong case for keeping it. If it can't, then reform deserves serious consideration. Here in Alberta, conservatives don't treat political parties as permanent institution that voters are obligated to support regardless of their performance. The engineer in me thinks of it as a vehicle for achieving political objectives. When the vehicle needs repairs, we repair it. When its direction needs correcting, we correct it. Reform before replacement. There is a practical reason to consider reforming the UCP before creating an entirely new party. The UCP already has an established organization, constituency associations, experienced volunteers, fundraising capacity, candidates and a recognizable political identity. These are valuable assets built through years of effort. Why discard an existing political structure before making a serious attempt to change it? Reform offers a way to preserve what works while addressing what does not. That means creating a party that is more responsive to its membership, more transparent in its decision-making and more accountable for delivering on its commitments. It means allowing competing conservative philosophies to be debated honestly rather than expecting everyone to accept a single approach simply because it is the established one. It also means recognizing that conservatives who disagree about Confederation are not necessarily enemies. They may disagree about the ultimate destination while sharing many immediate objectives. This is not an argument for watering down every position until nobody disagrees. It is an argument for building a political organization in which differences can be addressed openly and decisions can be made with a clear understanding of what members actually want. We're close to that ideal, but we need a little more work. We need to stop confusing loyalty with results. One of the greatest obstacles to political reform is the understandable reluctance to abandon something we have invested so much time and energy in building. This happens all the time, not just in politics. Many conservatives worked hard to unite the Progressive Conservatives and Wildrose. They volunteered, donated money, knocked on doors and campaigned for the UCP. They did so because they believed a united conservative party could deliver better government. That effort was not wasted. The merger addressed a genuine organizational problem. But the fact that a decision was right at the time does not mean it must remain right forever. Our loyalty should be to the principles and objectives that brought us together, not to the permanent preservation of a particular political structure. The purpose of a political party is to serve its supporters. The purpose of its supporters is not to serve the party. If we cannot question our own organization, we have abandoned the very principles of accountability that we expect from government. What should reform look like? Reform should not simply mean replacing one leader with another and carrying on as before. Nor should it be a vehicle for one faction to impose its priorities on everyone else. It should begin with an honest assessment of what Alberta conservatives want to achieve. Our goal is not just to keep the NDP out of power. That requires asking some difficult questions: - What does fiscal responsibility mean in practice, and how should government be held accountable for it? - How should Alberta defend its constitutional jurisdiction and economic interests? - Which problems can realistically be addressed through negotiations and reforms within Confederation? - What should happen if those efforts fail to deliver meaningful results? - How can the party better represent its members and hold its leadership accountable? - What common objectives can unite conservatives who disagree on social policy, environmental issues and Alberta's constitutional future? - and more... A serious reform process would establish clear priorities, measurable objectives and a transparent mechanism for assessing progress. It would give members a meaningful role in shaping policy and determining the party's direction. It would also establish a process for reconsidering the strategy if the desired results do not materialize, and pivoting. What about those who believe Confederation cannot be saved? This is perhaps the most difficult issue facing Alberta conservatives right now. Some believe that the answer lies in electing better provincial governments, negotiating more effectively with Ottawa and pursuing greater provincial autonomy within Canada. Others believe that decades of conflict demonstrate fundamental structural problems that cannot be resolved through another round of negotiations. These positions cannot simply be dismissed. A reformed UCP would need to acknowledge the disagreement rather than pretend it does not exist. It should distinguish between achievable near-term objectives, longer-term constitutional reforms and the different views members hold about Alberta's ultimate future. That does not mean every position must become official party policy. It means members deserve an honest debate about the alternatives, the evidence supporting them and the consequences of pursuing each course. If the party's membership concludes that Confederation can be repaired, that position should rest on a credible strategy (not just "I think I can succeed where everyone else failed") and demonstrable progress. If members conclude that it cannot, they should be able to discuss the implications without being dismissed merely for questioning the established approach. The important thing is to replace assumptions with evidence and indefinite promises with measurable objectives. Again, that's the engineer in me speaking. Reform does not mean ignoring electoral reality. Nobody should pretend that changing a party's direction is without risk. Internal reform can fail. It can create divisions. A new party can split votes and produce unintended consequences. Reforming the UCP offers an opportunity to address dissatisfaction without immediately creating a competing organization. It allows conservatives to test whether the existing party can become more responsive before concluding that a separate party is necessary. There is no need to treat every disagreement as a reason to split. Equally, there is no reason to treat the possibility of a split as grounds for refusing to examine alternatives. The choice we face. Alberta conservatives have already demonstrated that they can overcome their differences to build a unified party. We should take pride in that accomplishment. The circumstances have changed. The debate over Confederation has intensified. Expectations have evolved, and many of us are questioning whether the political arrangements we once supported can still deliver the outcomes we want. We can treat the existing structure as something that must be preserved at almost any cost, hoping that the current approach will eventually produce the results we seek..... Or we can recognize that a political organization must continually earn the confidence of its supporters, and undertake a serious effort to reform it. Reform does not guarantee success. But neither does the status quo. The difference is that reform creates an opportunity to identify what is not working, correct it and establish a better path forward without immediately abandoning the organization we have already built. We should learn from 2015 that divisions can have serious electoral consequences. We should also learn from the creation of the UCP that political structures can change when circumstances demand it. The goal should not be to keep the UCP alive at all costs. The goal should be to build the most effective political organization possible to serve Alberta and its people. It requires conservatives to recognize that disagreement is not betrayal, that reform is not necessarily division, and that loyalty does not mean accepting the status quo indefinitely. Before we abandon the UCP and start over, we should make a genuine effort to reform it. And before we reject reform out of fear, we should ask ourselves one final question: If we are unwilling to change our approach when we believe it is no longer delivering the results we need, what exactly are we trying to preserve? Cheers my friends.