David Parker’s bespectacled eyes widened as the leader of Take Back Alberta told fellow political activists what will go down at the United Conservative Party’s annual convention this weekend.
It’s different from what most traditional politicos will say is happening at Calgary’s BMO Centre — a political schmoozefest where members get to clap thundersticks for leader Danielle Smith, get tipsy at hospitality suites and choose the party apparatchiks who manage fundraising dollars and help constituency associations file documents on time.
Parker sees it in more revolutionary terms.
He sees this as a chance to elect an “absolute majority” of the UCP board, loyal to his movement and its beliefs.
‘Control your politicians’
Parker has taken credit for helping drive Albertans to channel their anger with COVID rules into toppling former premier Jason Kenney, replacing him with Danielle Smith, and electing like-minded conservatives to form half the UCP board at the annual general meeting last fall. He’s among the organizers who encouraged 3,725 Albertans to attend this weekend’s event, largely to finish with the other half of board posts.
But the charismatic Parker has lately tried to shake accusations that he’s a wannabe puppetmaster, rather than a great empowerer of the grassroots. “I don’t want to control the premier; I’m not interested in that,” he told a crowd in the small town of Taber, Alta., last month. “I want you to control your politicians. I want the people to be the ones who are in charge.”
WTH is TBA and how are they changing the UCP?
Featured VideoMeet the group that’s pushing to have a big impact at the United Conservative Party’s Annual General Meeting this weekend. Rob Brown dives into who’s behind Take Back Alberta and what they want.
The attendees at the Take Back Alberta events Parker has held around the province are galvanized by continued fights against the threat of mask mandates or any threats to their personal liberties, and more lately by the fight for “parental rights” when it comes to transgender kids. Those voting for UCP president at the AGM will also get to vote on several policy resolutions about things like student pronouns and medical freedoms.
On the convention’s eve, Parker struck an even more determined tone on social media.
“After this AGM, the grassroots of the UCP will be in charge,” he wrote Thursday night. “Those who do not listen to the grassroots or attempt to thwart their involvement in the decision-making process, will be removed from power.”
But if there’s a “control” mentality that much of those record throngs bring to the United Conservative AGM, political veterans have a warning for them:
Parties don’t work that way.
Delegates listen to UCP Leader Danielle Smith at the 2022 party AGM. (Jason Markusoff/CBC)
“The reality of modern politics is that the influence of the elected board is overstated, or not that significant,” says David Yager, the president of the Wildrose party when Smith led it a decade ago.
These were thankless tasks to run party operations, especially outside of election periods — it was administrative, technical governance fodder, and nobody wanted the jobs.
“You didn’t go to the bathroom in the middle of a meeting because you came back in and you discovered you were president,” Yager quipped.
That couldn’t be farther from the excitement buzzing around Danielle Smith’s party in 2023. Local UCP groups and Take Back Alberta have hosted multiple candidate forums for posts like vice-president of communications and south regional director. Other activists have made candidate interview videos.
It stems from misinformation about how much the boards matter, says Dustin Franks, who was a Calgary director of the party until being swept out by the so-called “freedom movement” last fall.
“It’s like a dog who (chases and) finally gets the bumper off a car, and then they’re like, I don’t know what to do now,” Franks told CBC News. “What is their movement trying to accomplish apart from taking over a board?”
It’s those policy issues, like residual COVID frustration, that animate many of the new UCPers. Joanny Liu, is a traditional Chinese medical doctor who helped lead “freedom rallies” in Calgary during the pandemic, and is now running for UCP secretary.
“It’s really important to press our MLAs to bring all those policies, the best ones, into law,” Liu told a Take Back gathering last week at a northeast Calgary hotel.
An organizer of past Calgary rallies against vaccine mandates and COVID rules is running for secretary of the UCP. (Helen Pike/CBC)
As much as most party leaders like to say they listen to the grassroots, there’s normally tension between the decision-makers and the mere party card-carriers.
Kenney initially wooed United Conservatives with promises of a “grassroots guarantee” that he’d carry forth their wishes.
But that willingness hit a wall in 2018, when the members at the first UCP convention voted to require parents to be notified if students enrol in a school gay-straight alliance. Not wanting to let the NDP make hay on a socially divisive issue, Kenney rejected that resolution, saying “I hold the pen on the platform.”
Federally, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is similarly grappling with his party members’ recent proposal to ban medical interventions for transgender youth.
Although Smith is generally as driven as this part of the UCP base is on loathing pandemic restrictions, her personal convictions cut against the conservative trend to, as she puts it, “politicize” the situations of transgender or transitioning youth.
At last year’s AGM, members overwhelmingly supported a resolution demanding that government protect the rights of parents “so as not to require them to affirm or socially condition a child in a gender identity that is incongruent with the child’s birth sex” — but Smith and her cabinet effectively ignored that wish.
It could be different this time, with so many people excited to attend this convention and vote for executives and policy ideas.
Jack Redekop, who’s running for the presidency, has promised that his party executive would demand twice-yearly reports from the UCP leader on how they’re implementing party policy.
Even though many members misunderstand the party board’s ability to get policies approved, they will expect to see action from the premier, says fellow presidential contender Rob Smith. “If they don’t, there will probably be some pushback.”
Premier Jason Kenney was forced out of the leadership of the UCP by activists in Alberta’s ‘freedom movement’ who were angered by the province’s COVID public health rules. (Dave Chidley/The Canadian Press)
This base, after all, turfed Kenney for going against its wishes on pandemic rules, and Rob Smith and Redekop are both folk heroes in many circles for being two of the UCP riding presidents who challenged the ex-premier’s leadership.
But these conservatives appear solidly behind Danielle Smith.
Parker praises Smith as a freedom fighter, but sounded his own caution this week on a UCP channel on the social media app Telegram. “The freedom movement cannot be her friends,” he wrote. “They must hold her accountable.”
It’s not clear how much the premier is quietly trying to stage-manage the outcomes of this convention, as leaders often do. Her Saturday speech to the convention crowd, and her reaction to the resolutions voted on later that day, may help shape how much pushback there really is.
Even if Smith is able to successfully shrug off controversial party resolutions like others have, a more activist core of party directors could steer Alberta’s governing party in different directions. The stuff a board does do matters: they’ll wield control over fundraising messages, candidate nominations, and can frame the conditions around a leadership review — which, if one convention resolution passes, would take place next year.
New guard, old guard
There has been reported friction between the new crop of members and Kenney-era establishment members on the board — including outgoing president Cynthia Moore, whom Parker has called a “power-hungry tyrant.”
Insiders say it’s wrong to consider the TBA-aligned members of the board as drones willing to carry out the wishes of Parker or the freedom movement. But they risk causing headaches for a leader who will naturally want to assert her own, ahem, control over the party.
“They don’t always know what’s good for her and what’s going to hurt her,” says one United Conservative familiar with party matters.
TBA isn’t endorsing anybody this year, though other groups have, including the pro-independence Alberta Prosperity Project. The preferred choices for president in the “freedom” crowd are Redekop and Rob Smith, against small-town newspaper owner Ruven Rajoo and Rick Orman, an Alberta cabinet minister in the 1980s who’s been active in provincial conservative politics ever since.
Some activists view Orman’s long resume as a negative, and argue that he’s too much of an establishment man. His pitch at debates is more focused on building a party machine that can defeat the NDP next election, rather than grassroots engagement and changing government policy.
As his way of downplaying the importance of a UCP president in the policy-making food chain, Orman is fond of saying: while more than 3,000 Albertans casting ballots for the UCP board is high by party AGM standards, close to one million voted for Danielle Smith as premier.
At the same time, however, while most Albertans can’t weigh in on her leadership until the 2027 general election, that smaller group will get their say sooner.
MONTREAL – A Quebec political party has voted to support one of its members facing backlash for saying that racialized people are regularly disparaged at the provincial legislature.
Québec solidaire members adopted an emergency resolution at the party’s convention late Sunday condemning the hate directed at Haroun Bouazzi, without endorsing his comments.
Bouazzi, who represents a Montreal riding, had told a community group that he hears comments every day at the legislature that portray North African, Muslim, Black or Indigenous people as the “other,” and that paint their cultures are dangerous or inferior.
Other political parties have said Bouazzi’s remarks labelled elected officials as racists, and the co-leaders of his own party had rebuked him for his “clumsy and exaggerated” comments.
Bouazzi, who has said he never intended to describe his colleagues as racist, thanked his party for their support and for their commitment to the fight against systemic racism.
Party co-spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois said after Sunday’s closed-door debate that he considers the matter to be closed.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 18, 2024.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Democrats who control both chambers of the Virginia legislature are hoping to make good on promises made on the campaign trail, including becoming the first Southern state to expand constitutional protections for abortion access.
The House Privileges and Elections Committee advanced three proposed constitutional amendments Wednesday, including a measure to protect reproductive rights. Its members also discussed measures to repeal a now-defunct state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and ways to revise Virginia’s process to restore voting rights for people who served time for felony crimes.
“This meeting was an important next step considering the moment in history we find ourselves in,” Democratic Del. Cia Price, the committee chair, said during a news conference. “We have urgent threats to our freedoms that could impact constituents in all of the districts we serve.”
The at-times raucous meeting will pave the way for the House and Senate to take up the resolutions early next year after lawmakers tabled the measures last January. Democrats previously said the move was standard practice, given that amendments are typically introduced in odd-numbered years. But Republican Minority Leader Todd Gilbert said Wednesday the committee should not have delved into the amendments before next year’s legislative session. He said the resolutions, particularly the abortion amendment, need further vetting.
“No one who is still serving remembers it being done in this way ever,” Gilbert said after the meeting. “Certainly not for something this important. This is as big and weighty an issue as it gets.”
The Democrats’ legislative lineup comes after Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, to the dismay of voting-rights advocates, rolled back a process to restore people’s civil rights after they completed sentences for felonies. Virginia is the only state that permanently bans anyone convicted of a felony from voting unless a governor restores their rights.
“This amendment creates a process that is bounded by transparent rules and criteria that will apply to everybody — it’s not left to the discretion of a single individual,” Del. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker, the patron of the voting rights resolution, which passed along party lines, said at the news conference.
Though Democrats have sparred with the governor over their legislative agenda, constitutional amendments put forth by lawmakers do not require his signature, allowing the Democrat-led House and Senate to bypass Youngkin’s blessing.
Instead, the General Assembly must pass proposed amendments twice in at least two years, with a legislative election sandwiched between each statehouse session. After that, the public can vote by referendum on the issues. The cumbersome process will likely hinge upon the success of all three amendments on Democrats’ ability to preserve their edge in the House and Senate, where they hold razor-thin majorities.
It’s not the first time lawmakers have attempted to champion the three amendments. Republicans in a House subcommittee killed a constitutional amendment to restore voting rights in 2022, a year after the measure passed in a Democrat-led House. The same subcommittee also struck down legislation supporting a constitutional amendment to repeal an amendment from 2006 banning marriage equality.
On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers voted 16-5 in favor of legislation protecting same-sex marriage, with four Republicans supporting the resolution.
“To say the least, voters enacted this (amendment) in 2006, and we have had 100,000 voters a year become of voting age since then,” said Del. Mark Sickles, who sponsored the amendment as one of the first openly gay men serving in the General Assembly. “Many people have changed their opinions of this as the years have passed.”
A constitutional amendment protecting abortion previously passed the Senate in 2023 but died in a Republican-led House. On Wednesday, the amendment passed on party lines.
If successful, the resolution proposed by House Majority Leader Charniele Herring would be part of a growing trend of reproductive rights-related ballot questions given to voters. Since 2022, 18 questions have gone before voters across the U.S., and they have sided with abortion rights advocates 14 times.
The voters have approved constitutional amendments ensuring the right to abortion until fetal viability in nine states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Ohio and Vermont. Voters also passed a right-to-abortion measure in Nevada in 2024, but it must be passed again in 2026 to be added to the state constitution.
As lawmakers debated the measure, roughly 18 members spoke. Mercedes Perkins, at 38 weeks pregnant, described the importance of women making decisions about their own bodies. Rhea Simon, another Virginia resident, anecdotally described how reproductive health care shaped her life.
Then all at once, more than 50 people lined up to speak against the abortion amendment.
“Let’s do the compassionate thing and care for mothers and all unborn children,” resident Sheila Furey said.
The audience gave a collective “Amen,” followed by a round of applause.
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Associated Press writer Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, contributed to this report.
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Olivia Diaz is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative.
NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump says he will nominate anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, putting him in charge of a massive agency that oversees everything from drug, vaccine and food safety to medical research and the social safety net programs Medicare and Medicaid.
“For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social site announcing the appointment. Kennedy, he said, would “Make America Great and Healthy Again!”
Kennedy, a former Democrat who ran as an independent in this year’s presidential race, abandoned his bid after striking a deal to give Trump his endorsement with a promise to have a role in health policy in the administration.
He and Trump have since become good friends, with Kennedy frequently receiving loud applause at Trump’s rallies.
The expected appointment was first reported by Politico Thursday.
A longtime vaccine skeptic, Kennedy is an attorney who has built a loyal following over several decades of people who admire his lawsuits against major pesticide and pharmaceutical companies. He has pushed for tighter regulations around the ingredients in foods.
With the Trump campaign, he worked to shore up support among young mothers in particular, with his message of making food healthier in the U.S., promising to model regulations imposed in Europe. In a nod to Trump’s original campaign slogan, he named the effort “Make America Healthy Again.”
It remains unclear how that will square with Trump’s history of deregulation of big industries, including food. Trump pushed for fewer inspections of the meat industry, for example.
Kennedy’s stance on vaccines has also made him a controversial figure among Democrats and some Republicans, raising question about his ability to get confirmed, even in a GOP-controlled Senate. Kennedy has espoused misinformation around the safety of vaccines, including pushing a totally discredited theory that childhood vaccines cause autism.
He also has said he would recommend removing fluoride from drinking water. The addition of the material has been cited as leading to improved dental health.
HHS has more than 80,000 employees across the country. It houses the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Medicare and Medicaid programs and the National Institutes of Health.
Kennedy’s anti-vaccine nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, currently has a lawsuit pending against a number of news organizations, among them The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy took leave from the group when he announced his run for president but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.
