Promising to change the United Conservative Party (UCP)’s tone, although not necessarily its right-wing agenda, Rebecca Schulz stepped forward in Calgary yesterday as the latest candidate to replace Jason Kenney as party leader and Alberta premier.
She wants to “move past the infighting chaos and elites,” she said on her campaign website, a clear shot at Kenney and many of his key supporters. “Enough with the Old Boys Club and infighting,” she says in her campaign video.
At an event the day before, she’d promised “compassion and common sense in addition to conservative values” while pulling back the veil a little with the narrative that the UCP’s problem is not the policy decisions the Kenney Government has made but “how they are communicated with the public.”
Mostly under the radar during her term as minister of children’s services in Kenney’s cabinet, the first-term MLA for Calgary-Shaw nevertheless comes highly recommended – by Brad Wall, former Saskatchewan premier and the man Kenney once referred to as “the real leader of Western Canada.”
That was back when NDP Opposition Leader Rachel Notley was still premier of Alberta, and the implication was that Kenney would soon occupy that particular leadership role. Well, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose!
The thirty something Schulz, who turned up in Alberta in 2016 for a senior marketing job at the University of Calgary, was elected with a convincing victory in her riding in the 2019 general election – with more than 65 per cent of the votes cast.
Had she not worked as a media relations officer in Wall’s office from 2009 and 2012 and earned his recommendation, despite a good public relations resume, chances are her candidacy would have been shrugged off as insignificant by the UCP establishmentarians supporting former finance minister Travis Toews for the job and the Wildrose rebels who favour their former party leader Brian Jean.
Given the once-much-lauded Wall’s support, however, not to mention that of former federal Conservative interim leader Rona Ambrose, that’s harder for the usual suspects to do – especially since Toews himself is a relative newcomer to politics.
It probably also doesn’t hurt in UCP circles that Schulz’s husband is the communications vice-president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.
As Alison Redford, Alberta’s first female premier, proved in the fall of 2011, third place is not necessarily the worst place whence to launch a campaign.
While Toews is said to be backed by at least 23 sitting MLAs, Schulz was flanked by three at her Calgary newser: Health Minister and Calgary-Varsity MLA Jason Copping, who plans not to seek re-election but is one of Kenney’s more capable ministers, Brooks-Medicine Hat MLA Michaela Frey, regularly trotted out by the UCP to oppose federal restrictions on firearms, and Calgary-Klein MLA Jeremy Nixon. Nixon is the brother of UCP House Leader and Environment Minister Jason Nixon, and it is interesting to speculate on what the influential Nixon clan senses about the way the wind is blowing.
Rule set for leadership race
Also yesterday, the UCP published its rules for the leadership contest – which will come with a steep $175,000 entry fee presumably not only intended to keep frivolous candidates out of the race but some good ones too.
Indeed, it’s too bad for Toews’s supporters, basically the old Kenney crowd, that Jean is independently wealthy and can likely afford whatever financial barriers the party tries to throw in his way.
The former Wildrose party leader, who was defeated by Kenney for the UCP leadership in 2017, won a by-election in Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche in March promising to challenge and replace the premier.
Don’t be surprised if the steep candidates’ tariff – in the form of a $150,000 entrance fee and a refundable $25,000 compliance deposit – results in a few drop-outs.
Parties aren’t supposed to use candidate fees for general fund-raising, but it’s hard to imagine that some of this windfall won’t find its way into UCP campaign coffers – especially after the plan to collect steep membership fees paid by bagmen for Kenney’s doomed leadership review vote in April fell apart when the premier’s campaign got into trouble.
So this now leaves the UCP leadership race with eight declared candidates:
In addition to Schulz, Toews and Jean, four others have registered with Elections Alberta: Danielle Smith, also a former Wildrose Party leader; Bill Rock, mayor of the Village of Amisk; Independent MLA Todd Loewen, kicked out of the UCP caucus by Kenney; and former deputy UCP leader and cabinet minister Leela Aheer, fired from her cabinet role by the premier.
Rajan Sawhney, who announced her candidacy on Monday, is not yet listed on the Elections Alberta site, but it’s safe to say her candidacy is official too, since she resigned her position as transportation minister to seek the job.
The government announced yesterday that Sawhney’s duties will be taken over by Infrastructure Minister Prasad Panda, and those of Schulz by Community and Social Services Minister Jason Luan.
Meanwhile, there are additional rumoured candidates, most prominent among them Calgary Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner, who seems to spend as much time in Oklahoma as Alberta.
Yesterday’s unlikely addition to that list was Conservative-turned-Liberal Raj Sherman, who served disastrously as Alberta Liberal leader from September 2011 to January 2015.
In the highly improbable event Sherman won, he would have the opportunity to be the first Alberta politician to destroy two political parties!
The winner, of course, gets the right to take on Notley and the NDP in the next provincial election. Notley will not be a pushover.
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