Strange coincidence: I was attending a breakfast meeting with the president of the St. Albert Wildrose Constituency Association (we sit on a volunteer community board together) when news broke this morning that PC Alberta and the Wildrose had arrived at an agreement-in-principle to merge.

I asked the riding president if he knew anything more than I did. He did not. Apparently, any promises made after the infamous Jim Prentice/Danielle Smith floor-crossing deal that these negotiations would not end in another confidential backroom arrangement proved untrue. It is no secret that proxies of Brian Jean and Jason Kenney have been meeting since Kenney took the PC helm two months ago. (In fairness, since each side nominated envoys and the names were made public, you can’t really call them secret backroom negotiations.)

So steps one and two have been completed in Jason Kenney’s Five Point Plan to become premier of Alberta. Step one was to become leader of the PCs. Step two is to negotiatiate a framework agreement with the Wildrose to create an united, free-enterprise party.

Step three, undoubtedly, will be the most challenging one so far: to have the tentative framework ratified by the grassroots membership. The local Wildrose riding president told me that the merger must be approved by 75 per cent of members — a difficult threshold.

There are still some hard-core Reformers among the Wildrose membership who are deeply suspicious of anything PC. They joined the Rosies because they saw PC Alberta — especially in the post-Klein era — as a bunch of free-spending Liberals in disguise. That said, they see Jason Kenney as one of them, and like him.

Moreover, the only thing they loathe more than the remnants of the PC dynasty is the current NDP government. So they might hold their collective noses to support unification and allow some progressives into their fold, if they believe that’s the price they must pay for a change of government in 2019.

The ratification vote on the PC side will be even more interesting. The PC constitution permits a lower bar on a vote to dissolve and merge the party: 50 per cent of the membership. Formal party mergers are actually forbidden under the Alberta Elections Act, so both parties likely would have to wind themselves down and create a new third party.

Here’s the wildcard question: Will the anti-unity progressive PCs stick around and fight for their party, or do they think that it’s already lost? Here’s the wildcard question: Will the anti-unity progressive PCs stick around and fight for their party, or do they think that it’s already lost?

(Alternatively, one party could agree to dissolve itself and allow its members to join the other party. That seems highly unlikely to me; neither party would accept being the junior partner in a lopsided merger process that looks more like a takeover.)

Two months ago today, the PC party elected Kenney as its leader on a unification platform. The leadership contest was less about choosing a leader than it was about the existential question of whether the party itself should carry on. Initially, there were five anti-unification candidates against Kenney as the sole unification advocate. Eventually, the anti-unification forces were reduced to two and Kenney won easily on the first ballot.

But as the opponents of merger dropped out, so did their supporters. Superior organization allowed Team Kenney to dominate the delegate selection meetings, accounting for his impressive victory.

A lot of anti-unification (or ‘pro-rebuilding’) PC members were shut out of the delegate selection process. Assuming they maintained their party memberships, they now will be able to participate in the ratification vote. That 50 per cent threshold for the PCs might be harder to get to than the 75 per cent threshold for Wildrose.

On the other hand, a lot of anti-merger PCs didn’t stick around. Some high-profile former cabinet ministers burned their PC memberships and broadcast the video online to protest Kenney’s victory.

In fact, on the Easter weekend in Red Deer, a group of ‘rebuilders’ — including former PC cabinet minister Stephen Mandel — met with a view to starting a new center-right alternative to the PC party they just abandoned.

So here’s the wildcard question: Will the anti-unity progressive PCs stick around and fight for their party, or do they think that it’s already lost?

That question also plays into Wildrose’s ratification vote. Many hardcore Rosies would be thrilled to see what they regard as the ‘left flank’ of PC Alberta vanish. A cull of progressives likely would make the merger project more palatable to the right flank of Wildrose.

To make matters even more complicated, this week PC MLA and defeated leadership candidate Richard Starke sent out a mass e-mail, promoting (basically) himself. My theory is that he’s running for something. Whether he’s running for the leadership of a unity party, or a new center-right party, or something else entirely — your guess is as good as mine.

Premier Rachel Notley has every reason to be concerned. Her re-election hopes were dealt a severe blow last week when Christy Clark failed to secure a majority in the B.C. election, throwing the future of the Kinder Morgan expansion, and the construction jobs that come with it, in doubt.

One plus one does not necessarily equal two in politics — but it certainly equals more than one. Notley must be hoping that a new progressive, center-right party rises out of the ashes of the PCs. She insists that both the PCs and Wildrose are growing too extreme to be electorally viable, and are not a threat.

The political landscape of Alberta is changing, as we become increasingly urban and ethnically diverse. I’m not sure it has changed as much as Notley hopes it has.

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