EXCLUSIVE: Alberta UCP members want to debate policies around Bitcoin, mRNA vaccines, separation and more
Members of Alberta’s United Conservative Party want a detailed plan explaining the “potential benefits and negative consequences” of the province becoming an independent nation, according to a draft, obtained by National Post, of prospective policy proposals to be debated at the party’s annual general meeting.
Each year, before the convention, the party collates a list of potential policy resolutions. The party’s members then go through the list, selecting the ones that are most important to them, and the final list sees debate on the convention floor. The meeting kicks off on Nov. 28 this year.
The draft resolutions, obtained by National Post, contain a much wider set of policy proposals than the final list of resolutions, and gives insight into the priorities of a swathe of the party’s membership.
“We do know that (Danielle) Smith is very closely attuned to the concerns of the party base, and that’s where this is,” said Duane Bratt, a University of Calgary political scientist, in an interview.
There are three separatist-adjacent proposals, coming at a time when Alberta alienation seems to once again be on an upswing. Over the weekend, thousands of supporters of Alberta independence rallied at the Alberta legislature, and there are duelling initiatives to get a secession referendum on the ballot. One of the proposals aims to ensure that a secession referendum appears alone, alongside no other referendums, if the question of leaving Canada is ever put to Albertans. Another aims to push for “Canada 2.0,” with an established Alberta Constitution “establishing Alberta’s sovereignty” and then negotiating “the terms of a new federation.” The third is the explanation of the benefits and consequences of secession.
“Many are in support of independence already but many aren’t either because of lack of real facts and education,” the resolution’s rationale explains.
The resolutions are wide-ranging. One says that cursive writing should be taught to schoolchildren, to ensure they have a connection to their past. Another suggests that the Calgary International Airport be renamed Calgary-Ralph Klein International Airport. (There was a failed push in 2015 to get the airport named after former prime minister Stephen Harper.)
There are some proposed resolutions that will be of interest only to locals, and only some locals at that, such as a proposal to allow for five-year vehicle registrations or allowing for single-egress stairs in apartment buildings to “unlock apartment construction affordability.”
Others are no surprise to anyone who follows conservative politics, such as allowing for publicly funded, privately delivered and privately funded and delivered medical services, restoring a 10-per-cent income-tax rate as the highest bracket in the province or pushing for innovation and economic diversification within the province.
Others, though, expose some of the tensions that exist — and have long existed — within Alberta’s right wing, between the concerns of the grassroots members and the more mainstream concerns that might appeal to a broader cohort of Alberta’s voting public. For years, Alberta’s occasionally unhappy conservative parties have struggled to hold together a large-tent party comprising many of the factions of Alberta’s right, from old-school progressive conservatives to those demanding the right to bear arms.
For example, member Dione Martin proposes an “immediate moratorium on the administration of mRNA technology to Albertans.” The COVID-19 vaccines are mRNA vaccines. There’s a call to create a “strategic Bitcoin reserve.”
Three constituency associations are calling on the province to push for greater transparency from the federal government on “weather modification or geoengineering programs.” Five constituency associations have banded together, calling for an end to water fluoridation, which they suggest “constitutes medical treatment without informed consent.” The constituency association of Grande Prairie calls on the province to study the “health impacts from devices that emit electromagnetic frequencies,” such as telecommunications towers near where people live.
“Public concern is growing and they need facts and data that come from non-bias trusted sources,” the resolution states.
Some of the proposals are likely to appeal to a broader cohort of United Conservative Party members, such as ensuring university instructors don’t “promulgate their personal worldviews in their classrooms” or that only official government flags can be flown over government buildings. The Calgary-Buffalo constituency association wants a ban on contractors of the public service and Crown corporations from including their personal pronouns in official communications, such as emails, in order to avoid perceptions of bias and prevent those who don’t have pronouns in their email signatures from feeling pressured to include them.
“The unilateral use of personal pronouns in official communications may be perceived as signalling a stance on gender identity, a contentious social issue,” the proposed resolution states.
There are also several policy proposals that have existed in Alberta for a long time — adopting an Alberta pension plan and a provincial police force, for example, and a resolution from Calgary-Buffalo calls on the government to ensure that temporary residents, visitors and “unsuccessful asylum-seekers” must pay for their health care while in Alberta. (The Alberta Next panel, which met over the summer to weigh options for increasing Alberta’s autonomy from Ottawa, considered whether Alberta should withhold social programs from newcomers if the “number or kind of newcomers moving to our province” isn’t in line with what the provincial government wants.”
“Alberta’s culture embodies personal responsibility,” the resolution states.
In perhaps a nod to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency in the United States, two constituency associations are calling on the government to establish an “Independent Reform Commission” to “reduce wasteful spending, eliminate excessive regulation and streamline government operations,” as, the resolution argues, reform “through normal political channels” has been unsuccessful.
Still others are fun, though perhaps a pipe dream. A proposed resolution from Lac Ste. Anne-Parkland suggests that Alberta should explore a merger with the Yukon and Northwest Territories, in order to get access to tidewater, in this case in the form of the Arctic Ocean, to move goods out of the province to international markets, in addition to changing the equalization formula for Alberta, and “Alberta would once again be a land of opportunity for business development and create jobs.”
“Constitutionally, this is achievable,” the resolution states. “Many in the north would want to be part of a province and shedding the Federal Vassal Status that currently exists.”
A prohibition on abortion is also unlikely. A call to allow for “clean coal” to fuel Alberta’s electricity grid is, even in fossil-fuel enthusiastic Alberta, unlikely, as the province just phased out coal power entirely in 2024. There’s a call for Alberta to establish a provincial senate of part-time, elected members to provide sober second thought; its unlikely many conservative Albertans see adding more politicians in Edmonton as a solution to any political problems.
In the end, only a few-dozen of the proposals will make it on the final list, but they normally nod at several of the different constituencies of the conservative party. In 2024, the party adopted a resolution that called on the government to “recognize the importance of carbon dioxide to life,” while also endorsing a resolution that wanted the government to make membership in the Alberta Teachers’ Association optional.
“We are a raucous family that has a lot of robust discussions,” said Smith last November.
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