Article content continued

He is the architect of a united conservative movement, a path that started with the takeover of the Progressive Conservatives, driving a merger with the Wildrose and building a new party with the sole purpose of winning Alberta back for conservatives.

That single-minded determination has led to some troubling allegations about the measures his campaign team took to secure the UCP leadership.

Those include claims that they aided a “kamikaze candidate” against a leadership rival. But if Kenney can bring his intense focus to bear on goals such as new pipeline paths, all Albertans will be the beneficiaries.

NDP Leader Rachel Notley’s carrot approach on the pipeline file was a well-meaning endeavour but it failed to produce results. Now, it’s time to try the stick.

Notley’s government has an admirable list of accomplishments in the last four years. Most laudable, they cut child poverty in half in the midst of a painful economic downturn.

And they made gutsy moves, like bringing in a provincial carbon tax, an earnest effort to fight climate change.

But that approach was supposed to be the ticket to winning social licence for Alberta’s oil. It should have been our route to tidewater. The world’s energy economy is slowly shifting, but it’s not there yet. Now is the time Alberta, and by extension the rest of Canada, should be capitalizing on that resource to help bankroll a greener future.

For Kenney to be most effective, he must focus, as he has pledged, on the economy. And he must do this while also ensuring that racism and homophobia have no place in his party. Removing privacy protections for students participating in gay-straight alliances must be a non-starter and compromising a woman’s reproductive rights would be a mistake.

Alberta is a province whose 21st-century sentiments are quietly centrist and pragmatic.

The election comes down to competing visions for the future of Alberta. On Tuesday, voters should choose the UCP.