Some members of two right-wing Alberta parties are encouraging their membership to focus on their own parties rather than looking ahead to unity.
Stephen Harper joined the PC party to support Jason Kenney and he encouraged Wildrose Party members to do the same. Now members from both parties are encouraging constituents to focus on making their own parties better.
Following Harper’s message that encouraged members of the Wildrose to join the PC party, Brian Jean suggested his members focus on growing their own party.
“I truly believe the PC members should support and choose the leader that they want just like the Wildrose party members should stay with Wildrose and support the leader that they want,” Jean said.
Barrhead-Morinville-Westlock Wildrose MLA Glenn van Dijken said that he is not aware of any Wildrose members joining the PC party in his constituency. He has encouraged those who choose to hold membership in both parties to not sit on the board of either party.
Van Dijken said that the decision to merge with the PC party is in the hands of the grassroots members, but until then he will remain focused on the job at hand for his party.
“As an elected official I do not want to be seen as trying to manipulate anything in that process,” van Dijken said. “I truly believe in the grassroots members being the best way to build for the future a healthy movement.”
On the PC side, leadership candidate Stephen Khan says he is seeing the organized effort by the Kenney campaign as a “hostile takeover by the Wildrose party.”
But Kenney says that joining both parties is “perfectly legitimate.”
“It would be conservatives joining a conservative party to support unity,” Kenney said. “ I’m perfectly comfortable with Alberta conservatives working for unity by supporting both parties.”
Khan, along with the other leadership candidates Richard Starke and Byron Nelson, support rebuilding the PC party and reject a merger with the Wildrose party.
Khan says he sees the Kenney campaign breaking up the Wildrose party and the PC party by encouraging Wildrose grassroots members to infiltrate the delegate selection meetings to support Kenney.
Jean says that he “certainly hopes that’s not happening,” and is not focused on the PC race at this time.
“The Wildrose don’t really want them either,” Khan said of the Kenney campaign’s encouragement to join both parties. “They’re breaking our party. They’re breaking the Wildrose party.”
Khan said he is hearing complaints from members that controversial blue sheets of Kenney’s preferred delegates being handed out at delegate selection meetings have the names of members of the Wildrose party members.
He says this is an organized effort by the Kenney campaign to try to merge the two parties. Khan says it leaves members of the PC party without a home.
“Should Kenney win, of the current Progressive Conservative party, there will be a substantial amount of people who will have no political home and will not be able to vote for a ‘small-c’ right wing party,” Khan said.
Nelson, Starke, Kenney and Khan are all running to become the leader of the PC party. On March 18, 2017, the party delegates will choose a new leader.
