Pizza, pretzels and “beverages” were served as the “Wildrose Nine” — the collection of MLAs who crossed the floor on Wednesday to join Alberta’s long-governing Progressive Conservatives — held an emotional meeting with Premier Jim Prentice.
Mr. Prentice spelled out his plan to improve the Alberta government, everything from the pending oil bust, to the fiscal crisis, to a creeping culture of entitlement.
“He talked it through, top-to-bottom,” said Rob Anderson, a key Wildrose MLA who spearheaded the union. “He talked about how he was going to fix it.”
By the end, Mr. Anderson said, he was convinced that the group had made a correct and principled decision — although he knew he and his party’s leader, Danielle Smith, would be subject to outrage and scorn in the days and weeks to come.
The episode will go down as not only entirely unexpected and bizarre, but also as unprecedented. Opposition parties exist to challenge the ruling order, not to join it: there has simply never been an example of a floor crossing quite like it.
According to several sources, it’s a strange tale that can trace its roots to the spring of this year, when Mr. Prentice was deciding whether to run for the leadership of Alberta Tories. It took on a new urgency last month when Ms. Smith flirted with joining a different party and culminated with the rousing words of the party’s icon, Preston Manning.
Back in the spring the PC caucus was in turmoil. In March Alison Redford resigned amid scandal. The centrist, Red Tory coalition that banded together to give her a mandate in 2012 was shattered and disheartened. PC MLAs, who didn’t support her leadership bid and never got behind her after it, were leaderless and rudderless. Many were discussing whether the party had made a fatal mistake by wavering to the left in recent years, which contributed to the rise of the Wildrose.
Amid the panic, rumours began to emerge that Mr. Prentice, a former federal minister, might be wooed to the job.
According to a source close to his campaign, Mr. Prentice’s true Conservative credentials were a boon: this had the “happy coincidence of undercutting the Wildrose, of course.”
“OK, this is stuff that Jim believes in anyway. He wins the leadership, gets into the legislature, starts enacting this stuff. We were joking, laughing, [saying] what’s the Wildrose going to do?”
At the time, the source said, the plan was for Mr. Prentice to win a majority government in 2016 on a right-wing platform, thus eliminating Wildrose’s raison d’etre.
In May, just as Mr. Prentice was announcing his decision to run for the leadership, Ms. Smith announced a merger had already been proposed — a claim vociferously denied by Mr. Prentice’s team.
What PC supporters could not have predicted was the strategic door that opened to them several months later, when Mr. Prentice and his new cabinet ministers swept four open seats in an Oct. 27 byelection.
“The result was everything we hoped for. Three out of four would have been great. Four out of four was the wildest dream that we worked hard to achieve,” the source said.
Before the results had even been counted, rumours had begun to circulate that Ms. Smith’s leadership was in peril — indeed, winning Calgary West, which was lost by Wildrose candidate Sheila Taylor by only 300 votes, likely would have saved the leader.
The byelection losses set up an irrevocable chain of events that would end in Wednesday’s defections and the probable disintegration of the Wildrose Party.
According to Mr. Anderson, informal talks between friends of friends across party lines began as the legislature session started in October. By mid-November, the wheels began to come off the Wildrose bus.
The internecine split between the Wildrose’s libertarian and socially conservative wings became apparent during its annual general meeting in Red Deer on Nov. 14-15, when MLA Jeff Wilson put forward a proposal to explicitly guarantee the rights of all Albertans regardless of sexual orientation.
Despite the fact that the membership voted in favour of an identically worded statement the year previous, the party voted against Mr. Wilson’s motion. It was seen as an explicit and personal protest of Ms. Smith and her leadership.
Ms. Smith — now a PC MLA — told the Calgary Herald that a group had arrived to that AGM intending to “teach me a lesson for walking in the Gay Pride parade.”
“Unfortunately, as I’ve been trying to press the Wildrose to become more mainstream, the more I pressed on that it seems the more reaction I got in the opposite direction.”
According to several sources, she was so furious that she openly mused about several options, including joining the Alberta Party, a more centrist party with not a single seat in the legislature.
Ms. Smith did not respond to requests for comment on the claim.
Within days came the second blow: MLAs Ian Donovan and Kerry Towle announced they were crossing the floor to the Conservatives.
At the time, Ms. Smith characterized Ms. Towle’s decision as opportunistic. “In the end, some people don’t turn out to be who you thought they were, so we’re going to move on with the caucus that we have,” Ms. Smith said.
Yet shortly afterward, Mr. Anderson said he was tasked with striking a negotiating committee to pursue a unification. Several issues were at play, Mr. Anderson said. Tanking oil prices were threatening to blow a $7-billion hole in the province’s budget.
But there was also a sense that Mr. Prentice really was the conservative premier that the province needed in a time of crisis.
“There was a moment for me. I stood up in the legislature and gave a member’s statement on the state of our finances, with oil plunging the way it was,” he said. “I looked across the way and Premier Prentice was pounding his desk as if he were a Wildrose member of caucus.
“I sat across from Alison Redford when she dropped f-bombs on me after a couple of questions. It’s such an extreme change.”
Ms. Smith said her views on Mr. Prentice softened after Nov. 19, when a testy exchange between Mr. Prentice and Wildrose MLA Gary Bikman was ameliorated with the premier’s gentlemanly note of apology.
The unification agreement was hammered out within a few weeks; on policy matters, there was little to contend.
Wildrose MLA Drew Barnes said he first caught wind of the deal last Sunday. By Tuesday, most of the remaining 14 MLAs gathered in an Edmonton Ramada to discuss terms.
Mr. Anderson said it was a sombre meeting, only a handful of MLAs could be counted on to cross. Then he called in Preston Manning, the founder of the Reform Party. The man who oversaw so many fractious attempts to unite the right throughout the 1990s.
“I met with them earlier this week and there were two basic things I said to them: One is that they should take pride in their accomplishments. That Wildrose really forced changes in the PC leadership by holding two of the previous leaders accountable for their behaviour,” Mr. Manning said. “And secondly that by getting 440,000 votes in the last election, they have pushed things on to more fiscally responsible grounds, which enabled the current premier to move there.”
Mr. Manning praised the disheartened Wildrosers by pointing out that the statement of unification essentially committed to most of the opposition’s platform — and especially to a balanced budget.
“The big picture, and this was certainly in their mind, and in the mind of the premier, is that the province is heading into deep water, and it’s absolutely essential to get the budget balanced as fast as possible,” Mr. Manning said.
Mr. Anderson said Mr. Manning’s pep talk was the moment that turned the tide.
“The vast majority of Wildrose caucus members look at him with a great deal of affection, as someone who is a statesman, a man of impeccable integrity, and someone we care a great deal about,” he said.
Mr. Manning swayed several MLAs, likely enough to encourage the nine to walk out of their party as a bloc, according to Mr. Anderson (although others in the room remain skeptical of his true impact).
“Even going into that final discussion, many had not made up their minds. If only three or four decided to go, I don’t think it would have happened,” Mr. Anderson said.
By Tuesday evening, there were nine: Danielle Smith, Rob Anderson, Gary Bikman, Rod Fox, Jason Hale, Bruce McAllister, Blake Pedersen, Bruce Rowe and Jeff Wilson.
Later that night, they went to one of the MLA’s apartments and met with Mr. Prentice.
It was the calm before the storm.
Mr. Anderson said he knew how bad it was going to get.
“I knew how hard it would be for a lot of people in Wildrose to understand. There are a lot of wonderful people in the Wildrose movement, salt of the earth conservatives who have spent a ton of time, money, blood and effort to build a grassroots movement,” he said. “We knew so many would be disappointed. They just wouldn’t understand. Sometimes you’re fighting something so long that you think that’s what life is.”
On Wednesday, Mr. Prentice took news of the floor crossing to his caucus. If rumours are to be believed, it was a contentious meeting.
Late the next day, Mr. Prentice and Ms. Smith emerged from a meeting and announced the Tories would now hold 72 of the 87 seats in the legislature. Ms. Smith had resigned that morning; her last request as leader was that her former party, now a rump of five MLAs, consider a formal reunification.
“What we’re telling our Wildrose family — and we still consider them family — is that the fight is over in this regard. We won. We won. We have a conservative premier in government, and he is completely committed to the conservative principles he espouses,” Mr. Anderson said.
Ms. Smith’s final request has been denied by the executive committee.
Original Article
Source: news.nationalpost.com/
Author: Jen Gerson
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