Conservatives Need Not Apply

This week, the United Conservative Party (UCP) government, is making it the law in Alberta that no other political party can use the word ‘conservative’ in its name. The UCP is clearly afraid of political competition.

They have created a law that political parties cannot have names that share the same words. New political party names cannot include the words: advantage, conservative, communist, democratic, green, independence, liberal, wildrose, and a handful of other words that have been used currently and historically by various provincial political parties.

Political party names like Progressive Conservative, Wildrose Conservative, or Freedom Conservative will no longer be allowed in Alberta.

The irony is that the UCP is not even a conservative party. Real conservatives respect and defend courts. Conservative academic, Jared Wesley, wrote this weekend on Substack that “if you actually take conservatism seriously - not just as a brand, but a genuine governing philosophy - you end up in a different place on courts and judges than Smith and her populists.”

Wesley thinks the UCP is a threat to our democracy. Everytime UCP MLAs stand together and vote for legislation that circumvents the courts, they remove one of the only real checks on a premier’s power and we slip into authoritarianism.

We cannot become desensitized to this shift in our democracy. This is not politics as usual. This is also not a left or right issue. Conservatives and progressives in Alberta are equally concerned about the direction that the UCP is taking our province because there does not seem to be any space for reasonable people in the UCP political tent.

The UCP government has invoked the Charter’s notwithstanding clause four times now, taking away the rights of select groups of Albertans. They did this to shield undemocratic laws from court challenges.

On the occasions when judges determine that a law created by elected representatives is unconstitutional, they are doing a job that elected representatives gave them. Judges play a critical role in the iterative process of our democracy. We need checks and balances.

It is a problem if a law is found to be unconstitutional by judges because it means it is unenforceable. It is then sent back to a government to decide if they want to fix it or pass the law notwithstanding the fact that it overrides a person’s Charter Rights.

As Wesley notes, It is not a problem that judges determine if a law is unconstitutional. The problem is populist governments don't like being told ‘no’.

That is a big problem for the UCP. They don’t like opposition (even though it is part of a healthy democracy). They don’t like reasoned debate. They don’t like to be held accountable for their policies and decisions. And now, it turns out, they don’t like competition either.

So, conservatives wanting to form an actual conservative party with Elections Alberta need not apply, because the UCP has determined it is no longer allowed in this province. When a government fears competition and accountability, it’s not conserving democracy, it’s dismantling it.

Our democracy is something that we make. It is something we invest in and work on everyday. We choose our direction forward. We just need a competent, ethical, provincial government that represents the priorities of Albertans and values democracy.