Let’s cut to the chase: Who won last night’s United Conservative Party (UCP) leadership debate in Medicine Hat? Answer: Rajan Sawhney.
Leastways, candidate Sawhney did the best job of dismantling frontrunner Danielle Smith’s fatuous constitutional proposal and beating her up for her cruel and ludicrous suggestion cancer sufferers could have avoided their illness if only they’d invested more effort in self-care.
For all their talk about the need to be forceful with Ottawa, the others – including supposedly serious candidates Travis Toews, Brian Jean, and Rebecca Schulz – lacked focus and aggression when it came to countering the glibly confident Smith as she dodged, weaved, and distracted.
They permitted the now-acknowledged frontrunner to get away with blithely passing off her offensive cancer remark as a misunderstanding, and mostly didn’t press her very hard for refusing to acknowledge that her Alberta Sovereignty Act is a meaningless fantasy and an abandonment of the rule of law.
Smith’s facile promise that technology could help Alberta quickly achieve carbon neutrality without inconvenience or sacrifice passed unchallenged – unless something was said during one of the frequent interruptions in the UCP’s streaming service.
Unfortunately, Sawhney’s debating skill last night is unlikely to count for much when it comes to her chances of actually emerging in October as the winner of this wearisome and seemingly endless contest to replace Jason Kenney as leader of the UCP and, at least temporarily, premier of Alberta.
You could sense the Southern Alberta crowd in the helicopter hangar at Medicine Hat Regional Airport grumbling when Sawhney effectively skewered Smith.
You could hear them give Smith the loudest cheer of the evening when she complained about “lockdowns” by the Kenney Government. (Throughout the pandemic there were some restrictions but no lockdowns in Alberta.)
Such party members are sure to ignore the best and bluntest line of the evening, Sawhney’s warning to her fellow Conservatives that “a Danielle Smith victory today means a Rachel Notley victory tomorrow!”
After the debate, I spoke with former Alberta NDP leader Brian Mason, who debated Smith eight times in 2013 when she was Wildrose Party leader at a series of public events throughout Alberta on the differences between their two opposition parties.
Smith was polished compared to the others last night, Mason observed from his retirement home in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley. “The only person who grasped what was needed was Sawhney.”
“Schulz tried a bit, but she seemed to stay above the fray,” he added. “Jean and Toews and Schulz, who should be serious contenders, really didn’t do it, to their detriment.”
A sharp challenge like Sawhney’s “should have been coming from four or five of them,” he added, reminding me that the crowds who watched the 2013 debates gave him the win “six times, she won one, and there was one draw.”
Smith’s performance last night, he said, was stronger than in his debates with her, which mostly took place on college and university campuses.
But Smith, he said of last night’s debate, “dodged the cancer stuff,” constantly pivoting to attack the others instead of answering.
Mason said he agreed with Sawhney’s conclusion that a Danielle Smith victory now will likely mean a Rachel Notley win in the general election expected in 2023.
“I don’t think Rachel would let her get away with that,” he said, describing the former NDP premier as a much stronger, more skilled debater. “I think Rachel will be able to pin her down much more effectively than any of the ones tonight.”
As for the UCP candidates’ attempts to overcome Smith, “they went after her with varying degrees of effectiveness, but only Sawhney brought it to a concluding point,” Mason said.
They need to do better at the next debate on Aug. 30, he added. If anyone else is to win the UCP leadership, “they need to hit that part and hit it hard.”
One final observation: The candidates spent a lot of time at the start of the meeting complaining that everything about Alberta is broken – health care, education, you name it.
Just remember one thing, Conservatives have run this place for roughly 47 of the past 51 years.
Cast of Characters
It seems we’ve reached the point in this race where introducing every candidate in every column is more distracting than helpful. For those still confused about who was who last night, here is a brief cast of characters:
Jason Kenney, Premier of Alberta, defeated in a leadership review vote in May Support rabble today!
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Danielle Smith, former Wildrose leader, 2012 election loser, crossed floor to PCs in 2014
Brian Jean, Kenney rival, former Wildrose leader, and Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche MLA
Rajan Sawhney, former minister of transportation
Travis Toews, former minister of finance and choice of the UCP party establishment
Rebecca Shulz, former minister of children’s services
Leela Aheer, former minister of status of women, fired from cabinet by Kenney
Brian Mason, former NDP leader and minister in Rachel Notley’s cabinet
Jeff Davison, debate moderator and former Calgary city councillor
Raj Sherman, former Liberal leader and wannabe candidate, conspicuous by his absence
