Feelings that the Alberta PC party has lost its way aren’t shared at the local level, said the head of the St. Albert PC Constituency Association.
The Southern Alberta constituency association of Highwood made headlines this week by publicizing a scathing letter to Premier Ed Stelmach and PC party president Bill Smith.
The letter asks what the party stands for and states the party “is nearing the precipice of moral insolvency to govern.” The association feels Alberta’s governing party is “bereft of policy, planning, execution, follow through and communication to the members.”
Those thoughts aren’t widely shared by local PC members, said Randy Duguay, president of the St. Albert PC Constituency Association.
“We had a board meeting earlier this week and there was absolutely no sentiment like that,” he said.
The Highwood association’s letter expresses anger that its MLA, former agriculture minister George Groeneveld, was dumped from cabinet when Premier Ed Stelmach shuffled his ministers in January. It also criticizes government legislation relating to land use and power lines.
“We implore the Alberta PC Association to take immediate action on restoring confidence and democracy to the party,” it states.
Association president Wendy Adam told the High River Times that the letter was carefully crafted by 20 to 25 members who were fed up with the party’s top-down leadership style. In recent months, four board members have resigned, with some buying memberships in the Wildrose Alliance, she said.
Duguay said he respects the association’s decision to express its views.
“Good for them for having the courage to raise their concerns and I think any constituency should be able to have that,” he said.
Nevertheless, he doesn’t share the view that the party is in shambles.
“I’m not feeling that the party is coming apart. I find the PC party to be very responsible in how it conducts itself and I’m sure that will be the case here too,” he said.
The premier’s office and party president Bill Smith have both said they will take some time before responding to the letter.
The party would be wise to “freeze out” the disgruntled faction because no party can survive very long with that kind of open animosity, said Keith Brownsey, a political scientist with Mount Royal University in Calgary.
While this type of “factional” disgruntlement is common in political parties, it only tends to surface publicly after a party has been in power a long time, he said.
“It’s very arrogant on the part of the constituency association,” Brownsey said. “This opens up a huge opportunity for all the opposition parties … to say these guys aren’t united, they’re warring amongst themselves.”
NDP MLA Rachel Notley agreed.
“The discipline that you see in political parties comes from everybody believing that taking direction from the top is in their best interest,” she said, and the letter writers are obviously not buying into this notion anymore.
“This is what happens when a party becomes fundamentally weakened,” she said. “This kind of stuff happens more and more publicly.”
