EDMONTON—Leading conservative politicians touted him as the voice of the disgruntled Alberta oil worker.

Before the United Conservative Party and long before the Yellow Vests protests, Bernard (The Roughneck) Hancock won the praise of Jason Kenney and then-Wildrose Party leader Brian Jean as an everyman who stood by them, ready to sweep conservatives back into power after their 40-year dynasty was toppled by a shocking NDP landslide.

Hancock, who famously spoke at a September 2016 Canadian Association of Oilwell Drilling Contractors press conference in Ottawa with a oil-smeared face, wearing overalls and a hard hat, was eager to help the Wildrose and Progressive Conservatives unite in Alberta under the UCP banner.

Hancock promoted the cause on controversial right-wing media outlet Rebel Media.

But the honeymoon appears to be over.

“I was stupid enough to believe a politician when he makes a promise,” Hancock said, speaking with Star Edmonton on Thursday.

Read more:

'Grassroots guarantee' website down as UCP leader overrides party’s resolution

Seventeen members of United Conservative Party constituency association resign over failed ‘grassroots guarantee’

Speaker at rally says Alberta oil ‘puts tofu on the table in Toronto and Vancouver!’

While he still travels the province giving speeches and organizing pro-pipeline rallies, the Grande Prairie-based oilfield worker has pulled his support from Kenney and the UCP.

Some of Hancock’s reasons seem more superficial, like his distaste for the blue pickup truck Kenney travelled the province in to drum up support from conservative voters early in his campaign.

“Some guy gets a stock blue Dodge truck — I mean buddy didn’t even jack it up or put mud tires on it. He didn’t even put a levelling kit on his truck. Come on man, who are you trying to fool?” Hancock said.

The rest of it goes deeper than that.

Hancock was enticed by Kenney’s “grassroots guarantee,” a promise the UCP leader made in August 2017 that the party’s direction would be fuelled by members and not imposed by leaders.

But after the party’s first policy convention in May 2018, Kenney said he would not commit to a policy delegates voted for that would have parents notified if their kids are involved in a Gay-Straight Alliance at school.

The day after the convention, Kenney’s Grassroots Guarantee website went offline. He blamed it on technical issues, but it never resurfaced — until someone reposted the archived site under a new domain to remind voters of the lapsed promise.

“I make no comment confirming or denying my involvement (in the new website),” Hancock said.

Hancock is not the only one feeling abandoned by the party that’s leading in Alberta polls.

Last month, 17 members of a UCP constituency association in Calgary resigned because of what the former president described as “dictatorial” leadership that betrayed the party’s grassroots promise. Raman Seetal, president of the association for Calgary-Falconridge, said at the time that members were left out of decisions about memberships and nomination candidates.

Hancock said he worked on several nominations, and claimed the UCP promise of hands-off, open nominations turned out to be bogus.

He has been upset by Kenney’s call for an equalization referendum, which he sees as “an expensive waste of taxpayer money,” and said Kenney’s support for curtailing oil production to boost prices was the final straw.

In December, the UCP let his membership lapse.

Today, Hancock compares Kenney as a leader to a televangelist selling holy water to sick people who desperately want to believe in a cure.

“In a way I feel like, ‘How could you have even thought Jason Kenney knows what matters to working-class people? The guy’s never had callouses on his hands in his life,’” Hancock said.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

That’s not to say he’s jumped on the NDP bandwagon. He has equally harsh words for Premier Rachel Notley and even Stephen Mandel’s Alberta Party.

Hancock said Notley’s election only made matters worse for oil workers and created “thousands” of rabble-rousers like himself who are determined to be a constant thorn in the government’s side.

He predicts the NDP will lose the election this spring and never form government in Alberta again.

Thinking ahead to the looming election, he compares voters’ choices to a South Park episode where students have to choose between a “giant douche” and a “turd sandwich” for a school mascot.

“That’s essentially what Albertans are being given the choice between. Because the exact same people who were in power before are being elevated back into power, just because people hate Rachel Notley,” he said.

He has a theory about Canadian elections: that we tend to vote from a place of anger. That is to say, we don’t vote politicians in because we like them as much as we vote them out because we dislike them.

The Vancouver-born labourer, who has “tripped thousands of kilometres of pipe” at various jobs across Alberta since 2006, has been put through the ringer himself. He’s been mocked and heavily criticized as a shill or a phoney since becoming Alberta’s unofficial working-class ambassador.

He said he regularly receives death threats.

Hancock insists he has never been paid for his advocacy, and in fact takes time off work to give speeches and help organize pro-pipeline protests.

Hancock’s distrust of government and anger about the flailing energy sector are common threads among the protest movements sweeping through the province.

Among them are the so-called Yellow Vests, who show up to his own events and have come to represent a smattering of pipeline advocacy, anti-immigration rhetoric and conspiracy-theory peddling.

Hancock calls the Yellow Vests gullible and naïve, and specifically takes umbrage with the factions of the movement that espouse racist ideas and carry signs depicting violence against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

He feels it’s in our ethos as Albertans to be conservative, but his personal politics are no longer aligned with any particular party or point on the spectrum.

He said he despises socialism, but muses that capitalism, for its faults, at least turns the “worst of human nature” into something productive.

Hancock feels some affinity with the Freedom Conservative Party, led by ousted UCP member Derek Fildebrandt, as the only unwhipped caucus in the legislature.

When asked if he would ever run for office, he said there’s not a chance.

“In politics you’ve got to be lily white, because people are vicious. People almost hate politicians as much as they hate journalists. Because politicians, like journalists, lie to people to get what they want out of them,” he said.

“The way we can solve these problems is to take the power away from the politician and make them accountable to the people. That’s what people are asking for, and that’s what Jason Kenney said he was going to give us. And this is really bad, because people get even more cynical — and there’s nothing worse than cynicism.”

Correction — February 11, 2019: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly said Bernard Hancock helped organized the Nisku convoy in December.

With files from Kieran Leavitt

Read more about: