Alberta’s Wildrose Party held its annual convention this past weekend in Calgary. Surprising no one, party leader Brian Jean received a 78 per cent approval rating from the delegates. (Actually, 78 per cent of attendees voted against having a leadership review, which amounts to the same thing.)

It should have been higher. Jean did a yeoman’s job of resurrecting the party after its previous leader’s attempt at self-destruction.

It has been a turbulent year in Alberta politics. Eleven months ago, the then-leader of the Wildrose opposition, Danielle Smith, walked across the floor of the Alberta Legislature, taking half her caucus with her. Stunning the province’s politicos, they joined Premier Jim Prentice’s Progressive Conservative caucus. Loud cries of “traitor” could be heard from Fort McMurray to Fort McLeod.

To Wildrose’s rescue came the affable but low-key former Member of Parliament Brian Jean. Notwithstanding the tragic death of his son during the leadership campaign, Jean was easily able to fend off two challengers and became leader of the Opposition, squaring off against Prentice, his former federal caucus colleague.

With the Opposition in complete disarray, Prentice seized what he saw as an opportunity, broke Alberta’s vague fixed election date window and called an election a year earlier than planned. With Jean having been party leader for just days, and the third-party Liberals getting by with an interim leader, a PC re-election seemed assured.

But politics is a funny business. Alberta voters, tired of Allison Redford’s free-spending habits and angry with Prentice over the early election call and an unpopular budget, put an end to the PCs’ four-decade run in power.

Rachel Notley, leader of the fourth-party New Democrats, was the only opposition leader with any familiarity with her job; the NDP was also the only opposition party with enough cash to purchase even a modest media buy. The NDP went from a caucus of four to an improbable 54 seats and Notley became premier. The PCs were reduced to 10 seats and humbled by third-party status.

Wildrose survived. Although its popular vote slid from 34.29 per cent in 2012 to 24.23 per cent, it actually increased its seat count from 17 (which dropped to eight with the defections) to 21 and maintained Official Opposition status.

Most observers had written Wildrose off after Smith’s desertion; Brian Jean deserves credit for hauling them back from the brink. He also has shown himself adept in question period. Less adversarial than Ms. Smith, he appears to be more interested in constructive criticism than in being contrarian and mean-spirited.

Alberta is rapidly shedding the remnants of its ‘redneck’ social conservatism, although it’s still present in southern and rural Alberta and (not surprisingly) in some corners of Wildrose. Alberta is rapidly shedding the remnants of its ‘redneck’ social conservatism, although it’s still present in southern and rural Alberta and (not surprisingly) in some corners of Wildrose.

But Wildrose has set its sights on the brass ring in the next election, not expected now until 2019. The usual unite-the-right activism is on display at gatherings like the party’s weekend convention. “Conservatives can’t and shouldn’t be fighting each other,” Jean said in his keynote speech. But then came the twist: Rather than merging the so-called conservative factions, Jean is proposing more of a takeover.

Specifically, he held out an olive branch to disenchanted PC supporters, promising them they would be welcome in the Rose Garden. Jean cleverly wants to “unite the right people”, as opposed to formally uniting the parties.

But building a viable conservative coalition may prove a daunting task. It’s true that the Alberta PC party has suffered severe brand damage. The party raised an impressive $800,000 in the first three months of 2015 but a paltry $15,000 in the third quarter. But it’s far from certain that most disaffected Progressive Conservatives would pick Wildrose as their home if and when their own house is destroyed.

Jean’s olive branch notwithstanding, most Wildrose members don’t consider the average PC supporter to be truly “conservative”. They certainly didn’t when the PCs were in government. The Wildrose has hard core conservative Alberta locked up. The ‘progressive’ conservatives, or Red Tories, may prove difficult to attract.

It’s a myth that Alberta is built on conservative bedrock. For decades, from Lougheed through Getty and Klein, Albertans demanded the best of everything — the widest highways, the best schools and hospitals. When resource revenues were plentiful, governments could keep taxes low. When natural gas and crude prices tanked, governments racked up huge deficits. But at no time did Albertans lose their appetite for big, expensive government.

Alberta is also rapidly shedding the remnants of its ‘redneck’ social conservatism, although it’s still present in southern and rural Alberta and (not surprisingly) in some corners of Wildrose. Alberta is becoming increasingly urban and we have welcomed domestic immigration from every province and from beyond Canada’s borders. We are Canada’s youngest province and getting younger and more urban with every census. New and younger Albertans dispel old stereotypes and are generally more welcoming and tolerant.

Meanwhile, the Wildrose Party is ideologically, almost pathologically, opposed to deficit financing. In the recent federal election, the Liberals went from zero to four seats in Alberta after promising to run deficits for at least three years. In seats that the federal Conservatives held, the Liberal vote still doubled. Pragmatists understand that deficits are occasionally unavoidable and sometimes even desirable.

It’s also interesting to note that in the May election, the PCs — although they got less than half the seats Wildrose won — actually got more votes than Wildrose, indicating a broader, less centralized base of support.

Alberta is not an ultra-conservative province; it’s not a socialist province either. The NDP had to abandon many of its hard-left positions to win mainstream electoral support. Albertans are increasingly more progressive than conservative socially, and fiscally conservative only in a pragmatic sense.

A perfect storm of timing and preparedness set the conditions for Rachel Notley’s meteoric ascent to the premier’s office. But the future of Alberta lies neither in the hard right nor the left. In May, almost 35 per cent of Albertans chose a progressive centrist party (PC, Liberal or the upstart Alberta Party). Electoral success in Alberta depends on uniting the center.

Brent Rathgeber was the Conservative MP for the riding of Edmonton—St. Albert from 2008 to 2013, when he resigned from the Conservative caucus to protest the Harper government’s lack of commitment to transparency and open government. He ran and lost in the 2015 federal election to a Conservative candidate. He is the author of Irresponsible Government: The Decline of Parliamentary Democracy in Canada.

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