The St. Albert PC leadership candidate says the party has to raise the bar for personal conduct after two candidates dropped out of the race alleging harassment and no room for their ideas.
“I firmly believe we can do and need to do politics better,” former St. Albert MLA and current PC leadership candidate Stephen Khan said of the events during the PC convention in Red Deer Nov. 4 to 6, which he described as nasty.
Following the convention the only two women in the race, MLA Sandra Jansen and former MLA Donna Kennedy-Glans dropped out. Both women quit Nov. 8 citing events from the convention as their primary reason for quitting.
Jansen said that the harassment she experienced over the course of her campaign and during the convention was something she had “never before experienced.”
“My social media has been filled with filth, my domain name purchased to direct people to smear pieces on me and finally, this past weekend in Red Deer, the final straw,” Jansen said in a statement.
“Insults were scrawled on my nomination forms. Volunteers from another campaign chased me up and down the hall, attacking me for protecting women's reproductive rights, and my team was jeered for supporting children’s rights to a safe school environment.”
Although Jansen did not mention the PC leadership hopeful by name, she suggested that Jason Kenney and his supporters were to blame for the harassment at the convention.
On Nov. 8 Kennedy-Glans issued a statement removing herself from the race, saying that politics in Alberta are polarizing and there are “limited opportunities for centrists’ voices to be heard.”
This week Kenney was quoted in The Edmonton Journal as saying he too was harassed at the convention, and that his young supporters were shouted at by people twice their age. He said Jansen’s campaign manager Stephen Carter told him he wanted to “beat the expletive out of me.” Carter claimed his comments were taken out of context and that “I wanted to beat him electorally.”
Kenney sat at the centre of the controversy at the Red Deer convention.
His campaign brought three buses full of PC youth delegates supporting his ‘unite the right’ cause to Red Deer for the convention to vote for the PC Youth Association executive election. The youth delegates who supported Kenney were brought in to a private meeting where they met with former prime minister Stephen Harper.
“It’s absolutely fantastic that the youth are involved and engaged, but leave it to the alleged adults to mess things up for the kids,” Khan said. “It was really disappointing to see that old arrogant style of politics being played.”
Khan said the policy sessions were more heated than they had been since he began going to conventions. He specifically mentioned a session he spoke at relating to parental rights. The motion seemingly opposed a policy passed by the previous PC government allowing gay-straight alliances where they were requested in schools. The motion was withdrawn on Sunday.
“In my opinion there were a well-coordinated group of people who were trying to pull us back in time,” Khan said. “There was so much anger and vitriol. It was getting nasty. It was really unfortunate and people weren’t listening to each other and trying to understand each other’s specific points.”
Kenney, known for being fiscally and socially conservative, has been campaigning for PC leadership under a banner of trying to unite the right. He has been travelling the province since July with his message of uniting the PC party with the Wildrose party under a new banner.
“You’ve got a candidate who claims to be a unity candidate who is clearly there to break up and divide the party,” Khan said. “Politics is the art of compromise but I’m not prepared to compromise my values.”
Khan, Kenney, MLA Richard Starke and lawyer Byron Nelson are the remaining four candidates in the PC race. A leader of the party will be selected in March 2017.
