"There was really no light between the Kenney government and the oil and gas industry, and that is not good for democracy," said Adkin with the University of Alberta. Political scientist Laurie Adkin said the prosperity-first doctrine was narrowly defined to the benefit of a select few. Wesley said such an ethos may have captured the mood of conservatives and enthralled others, "but as Albertans and their government were forced (during COVID-19) between prosperity and compassion - or as Kenney put it `livelihoods and lives' - his focus on livelihoods was really out of touch with what people were looking for." Kenney, said Wesley, spelled it out in his maiden speech as UCP leader in 2017 by reminding supporters that "in order to be a compassionate and generous society, you must be a prosperous one first." Kenney's plan for Alberta was founded on the conservatism of "prosperity first," said political scientist Jared Wesley with the University of Alberta. He gambled big and lost $1.3 billion on the failed Keystone XL oil pipeline. Kenney cut corporate income taxes, abolished the former NDP government's consumer carbon levy, slashed post-secondary funding, launched more privately delivered care in the public health system, reduced minimum wage for kids, went to war with teachers, sought wage cuts in the public sector, ripped up negotiated bargaining deals, and attacked doctors and nurses as comparatively overpaid underperformers. Taking the reins of power, he went to work. It was a higher calling, a "moral cause" to redistribute earth's bounty to neighbour nations so they could avoid buying it from human-rights-abusing dictators. To him, oil and gas were not just good business. He came toting a "fight back strategy," vowing to take on Trudeau and the other happy hit men of the "Laurentian elite" hell-bent on strangling Canada's energy "golden goose." They sought a stick with which to hit Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. And they felt like suckers, giving billions of dollars in equalization payments and in return being ignored or demonized as climate criminals. Some Albertans were angry with Ottawa over rules deemed to be hindering energy projects. Budgets were bleeding multibillion-dollar deficits. Alberta's economy was in the doldrums, its oil and gas sector in the bust phase of its traditional boom-bust cycle. The former Calgary member of Parliament dismasted Rachel Notley's NDP using an audacious blueprint that united two warring conservative factions. Kenney, whose office did not respond to requests for an interview for this story, rode to success in the 2019 provincial election. Instead, UCP members pick a new leader on Thursday, turning the page on a triumph-turned cautionary tale that saw Kenney's philosophy and management style crash head-on into a once-in-a-generation catastrophe.
He had planned for one more provincial election, he said. "I was never intending to be in this gig for a long time," Kenney told an audience earlier this month. It's Premier Jason Kenney's swan song message as he prepares to depart the province's top job, forced out by the very United Conservative Party he willed into existence.
EDMONTON - Don't cry for me, Alberta, I was leaving anyway.
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