Ontario Prime Minister Doug Ford on the left and Alberta Prime Minister Jason Kenney at the Premier’s Stampede breakfast during the Calgary Stampede on July 8, 2019. TODD KOROL / Reuters
Critics of Conservative prime ministers often group them all into the same category. But if there’s ever been a moment that shows how different they can be, it could be this spring, as the clearly contrasted destinies of Doug Ford and Jason Kenney unfold.
Mr Ford, the anti-establishment municipal politician who has become a more middle-aged Conservative, is likely to be re-elected prime minister. Mr. Kenney, who is focused on detail and politics, who wears his true blue conservatism up his sleeve, will resign in the coming months after a strong result of the leadership review last week.
Even Mr. Kenney, who won a massive majority in the 2019 Alberta provincial election, cannot help but make comparisons himself. During his weekly radio program, he said he has shown “the greatest tolerance for internal dissent” because he believes in the parliamentary system. But he said it could have been a miscalculation. Mr. Ford, on the other hand, expelled from the caucus a number of its MPs who spoke out against government policy or who did not get vaccinated, Kenney said.
“Perhaps one of my mistakes was not maintaining a stronger discipline like those other leaders.”
But paradoxically what he describes as a gentle touch when it comes to party discipline, Mr. Kenney has a people problem. As much as we all like to attribute great skill and strategy to political developments, our personality-driven world gives Mr. Ford.
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Ontario’s progressive Conservative leader is provoking strong reactions, both positive and negative, but he has his followers. There is a large contingent of non-conservatives in the province who will vote for Mr Ford on June 2 just to be judged as sincere or disliked less than the other party leaders.
This is also true when it comes to party members and advisers closest to Mr. Ford. At the press conference for the Ontario election campaign earlier this month, I was struck by Amin Massoudi, who has served as Mr. Secretary General. Ford and is president of the Conservative Progressive campaign, watching from the sidelines as Mr. Ford was speaking at a morning press conference. Mr. Massoudi nodded as Mr. Ford reached key conversation points.
I can’t think of anyone in Mr. Circle’s inner circle. Kenney as Mr. Massoudi, who has been close to Mr. Ford (and formerly his brother Rob) for a dozen years. There is no one in the inner circle of the Prime Minister of Alberta who understands his political brand and who looks to read the room.
This is not a fatal defect on the part of Mr. Kenney. A leader should not be seen as warm and affectionate. The ability of the Prime Minister of Alberta to prepare, speak with complex policies, or answer difficult questions has always been impressive, and very different from that of Mr. Ford, which avoids individual interviews with journalists and relies heavily on previously prepared conversation points. For example, the performance of Mr. Kenney earlier this month in defending Alberta’s oil exports and methane regulations to the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources would be hard to match for many leaders.
This combative and lonely political personality was fine when the UCP was up to the task. But as soon as there were questions about Mr. Kenney from winning the next election, this lack of allies became a responsibility within the party (as he did for then-Prime Minister Alison Redford in 2014). There were few public displays of caucus or cabinet support as the Prime Minister went through his campaign-style leadership review this year. The lack of cohesion around the leader was again shown this week in the statement of Cabinet Minister Doug Schweitzer, as he announced that he would not be running for the UCP leadership contest. Mr. Schweitzer mentioned former Prime Minister Jim Prentice, who died in a plane crash in 2016. He did not mention Jason Kenney.
Like Mr. Ford, Mr. Kenney, and an inexperienced cabinet made a number of unpopular decisions, even before the pandemic arrived. But Mr Kenney did not shy away from it and barely slowed down during the pandemic, pushing forward a grueling policy agenda to meet a self-imposed benchmark of “promises kept” that no regular voter was following.
Both Prime Ministers, Ford and Kenney, spoke out against a vaccine passport system last July, a position they would eventually be forced to change. But after a disastrous spring in which Mr. Ford delayed taking action on the rise in third-wave cases and then was forced to recant a policy of closing playgrounds and allowing indiscriminate police searches, had already become more cautious in statements about how the pandemic would unfold. .
Mr Kenney, on the other hand, had his worst term in government in the summer and fall of 2021, as he pushed for a big stampede celebration and punished those who expressed concern about pandemic variants. He then disappeared from public view and also left the province’s COVID plan without a leader for weeks while intensive case units were filled. Mr Kenney’s decision to implement a vaccination test system in September, a measure he says became inevitable, hurt him with a large number of UCP supporters.
But these differences are only part of the story, as comparing governing Ontario and Alberta is not comparing apples and apples. Mr. Ford might not have fully understood the PC party of which he became the leader in 2018, which had been largely modeled by his predecessor Patrick Brown, but compared to the nascent UCP, it was much more cohesive. Kenney also faces a much stronger political opponent than the popular Alberta NPD leader Rachel Notley, who has already served as prime minister, than what Mr. Ford faces the Liberals or the NDP. your province.
It is also hard to overstate how angry and disillusioned many people were in Alberta at the start of the pandemic. Ontario had a relatively good economic situation up to this point. But many Albertans were already facing long-term unemployment and loss of identity as the future of the oil and gas industry became increasingly uncertain.
Yes, the picture is different now: the economy and employment are recovering. But there is some uncertainty about what the future holds, and the feeling does not turn into a penny.
Mr. Ford has had to deal with political outrage in his province. But the displeasure directed at Alberta politicians has been of a very different kind, as Mr. Kenney well knows.
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