“I don't dream of measuring the curtains in the premier's office,” Jason Kenney said over a mid-afternoon glass of Diet Pepsi in a Calgary truck stop diner last week.
“I am (seeking the Progressive Conservative leadership) because I want Alberta to be Canada's conservative beating heart.”
Does he want to be the next Progressive Conservative leader to restore the dynasty founded in 1971 by Peter Lougheed?
No, he said, he does not think in terms of a dynasty. He would not presume to call himself the successor to Peter Lougheed and Ralph Klein, “the greatest Canadian premiers.”
Kenney regards his political life as a vocation, a conviction that reflects his Christian faith. So it is not surprising that for him the Alberta premier's office has a deeper meaning than just power, or the restoration of a 44-year political dynasty that fell victim to its own “arrogance, sense of entitlement and cronyism,” to use his own words.
Kenney's deeper meaning is Alberta as the heartland of Canadian conservative values.
A year ago he thought of himself as a likely national Conservative Party leadership candidate. So did many, including hundreds who joined the party at his behest.
As a federal cabinet minister in Stephen Harper's government, he did more than most to build a new Canadian conservative political coalition particularly by reaching out to new Canadians as minister for citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism.
He attended 6,000 functions with immigrant communities across the country, earning the nickname from his political colleagues as the minister of curry in a hurry.
Looking back over the five months since the July 6 announcement that he would seek the Progressive Conservative leadership, he concedes that many Conservatives that he recruited were taken aback.
His decision surprised even himself.
Kenney's big campaign idea is to “unite Alberta.”
Kenney said there can't be a united conservative party without unity in the Alberta Progressive Conservative Association after the leadership convention next March.
Some PC members may not want to remain in the party if Kenney is their leader. That does not deter Kenny from his unity goal.
He is not the sole proprietor of the idea of uniting Alberta conservatives to defeat the NDP in the next provincial election.
Brian Jean, the leader of the Wildrose Party is working for conservative unity and has two advantages that Kenny lacks – a seat in the legislature and status as the leader of official Opposition.
What Kenney is advocating as the middle ground with Jean and Wildrose is a commitment by both parties to a fair and open referendum next summer of the membership of the two parties.
If a clear majority of party members approve of creating a new united party, there would be a leadership election in the winter of 2018.
All of this is well-known to active members of the two parties and those who follow Alberta politics closely.
What is less clear is the “why.”
Kenny believes that Alberta is off track with the NDP government. Rachel Notley was elected “by mistake,” as Albertans voted against the PC dynasty, not for the NDP agenda.
It's not that Premier Notley is on the right side of history and that there is a new Alberta that is progressive. The way Kenney sees it, Notley's politics are not Alberta's.
He points to the federal election results in October 2015, five months after Notley won the provincial election. In the federal results Conservatives won 29 of 34 seats, and a lopsided majority of the votes.
He warns that if conservatives don't unite to defeat her and Notley is re-elected to a second term the economic and political devastation of a second NDP term will be almost irreparable.
- Frank Dabbs is a veteran political and business journalist, author of four books and editor of several more.
