The United Conservative Party is requiring all candidates for its board positions to sign a declaration that they’ll abide by the Alberta referendum’s clear rejection of separating from Canada, as part of Premier Danielle Smith’s push to assert her party as a federalist movement.
Multiple pro-independence advocates seeking to win UCP director posts told CBC News on Tuesday that they’re willing to sign the agreement, but it won’t change their long-term aspirations for an independent or sovereign Alberta.
Last week, after Albertans voted by a three-to-one margin to stay in Canada and not pursue an independence referendum, Smith urged the UCP members on both sides of the referendum to avoid splitting apart and unite behind a pro-Canada position.
She also announced she expects all election candidates, party board members and riding presidents to abandon separatist advocacy — or “join a different party.”
This new declaration that all party board candidates are being asked to sign is the first apparent attempt to put that expectation into writing.
The document, posted online by separatist activist Jeff Rath and later verified by Smith herself at the legislature, asks them to sign their names beneath the statement: “In both my candidacy for, and if elected to, the provincial UCP board of directors, I recognize, respect and will abide by the majority decision made by Albertans on Question 10 of the 26/10/19 referendum.”
A copy of the declaration that applicants to the UCP’s upcoming board of directors election must sign. (X/jeffrwrath)
Current board members and people running in the provincial election will be asked to make similar pledges, Smith told reporters Tuesday.
“The expectation will be that everybody will pledge to not only respect but abide by what Albertans have told us,” she said.
Chris Scott, who spoke at several independence rallies and ran the group Let’s Talk Alberta, said he’ll sign the document, ahead of his bid to become a UCP director for central Alberta.
Given the public’s massive rejection of the idea of leaving Canada, he’s willing to shift his short-term advocacy to pursuing more “sovereignty” for the province within Canada.
“My personal position on independence hasn’t changed, but part of that position is acknowledging that there’s a number of things that we can do within the current terms of Confederation,” Scott said in an interview.
“And Danielle has indicated before that she wants to pursue those things and cool down the independence movement.”
Jason Lavigne has applied to become the party’s vice-president of policy and governance. He ran a third-party advertising and sign campaign urging Albertans to vote for the pro-independence Option 2 on the referendum.
He said he’ll sign the UCP’s candidate declaration because he respects the democratic process’s outcome, “regardless if I had my own views on it.”
Lavigne hopes the premier will pursue creating Alberta’s own pension plan and tax collection agency, although she’s remained cool to these ideas.
“Independence was the ideal outcome, and I would like to see more sovereignty if full sovereignty is not on the table,” he said.
Others in the independence movement have criticized the declaration as a heavy-handed “loyalty pledge” to the UCP establishment, including Take Back Alberta’s David Parker.
“These are the actions of incredibly desperate people,” he wrote online.
Chris Scott of pro-independence group Let’s Talk Alberta is seeking a spot on the UCP’s provincial board. (Mantai Chow/CBC)
Board candidate Vince Byfield, who has called for “independence if necessary, but not necessarily independence,” said he gladly signed the form, but doesn’t feel it will stifle what he can or cannot say in public.
“The thing I admire most about the UCP is allowing [free] expression of thought,” said Byfield, who was previously a UCP Edmonton director and is vying for a vice-president spot on the board.
“I think what the premier is trying to get at here is that we’ve had the run [on independence], and let’s leave it at that.”
United Conservative activists have long placed much emphasis on the makeup of the party’s board of directors, some believing they can use it to “control” the UCP and push it in more firmly conservative directions.
Mitch Sylvestre of separatist group Alberta Prosperity Project (APP) told his group’s supporters to attend late November’s party convention to help him elect a pro-independence board willing to support a review of Smith’s leadership.
“If you’re buying a UCP membership, you are not buying it to support the UCP — you’re buying it to support our cause for independence,” he told more than 1,100 APP followers on a Zoom call last week.
Behind federalist Danielle Smith, many of her party’s senior organizers back separatism
However, it’s unclear which board hopefuls will be on APP’s candidate slate. While Lavigne, Scott and Byfield were Sylvestre’s fellow travellers on the separation referendum, they all have pledged support for Smith’s leadership through at least next year’s election.
“Let me ask you this, is there any obvious replacement?” Byfield said. “Would you can your CEO if you didn’t have anybody waiting in the wings?”
On Monday, Sylvestre’s own northeast Alberta riding association voted 10-9 to demand a leadership review.
Bonnyville-Cold Lake has joined at least two other ridings — Highwood and Calgary-Buffalo — to call for Smith to face another vote of party members, like the one that felled ex-premier Jason Kenney in 2022.
Sylvestre, the association’s president, said some riding members questioned the timing of a leadership review, one year away from the next election.
“It wasn’t a question of whether they were happy with Danielle or not. It was a question of: is it going to affect our election results?” he told CBC News.
“And the other [side] said: we believe that she’s unelectable right now, the way she’s behaving.”
Mitch Sylvestre is trying to rally fellow separatists to challenge the Danielle Smith’s leadership. (Kory Siegers/CBC)
Scott Cyr, the Bonnyville-Cold Lake MLA, issued a statement criticizing the vote, saying it’s “time to build bridges, not dig deeper trenches within our party.”
Cyr stated that “many constituents” are disappointed with the results of the unity referendum, while others wanted to stay.
“Both perspectives deserve respect,” he said. “Whatever our views on Alberta’s future within Canada, we must find common ground rather than allow those differences to divide our communities.”
Smith herself has been expressing hope that hard feelings about the referendum don’t lead to a split in the conservative movement, as happened when she led the Wildrose Party against the governing Progressive Conservatives last decade.
“I know that there’s probably still a lot of emotion related to events of last week, and we do want to be able to talk about that,” she told a small gathering of UCP supporters in Innisfail on Monday, before she visited a local zoo.
“But I think that for the next year, we have to be laser focused on winning every single seat.”
What does the future hold for Danielle Smith?
There is no scheduled leadership review at November’s annual UCP convention in Calgary. At the last review in 2024, she won the backing of 91.5 per cent of delegates. Twenty-two of 87 riding associations must demand a leadership review to force another vote on Smith’s position.
Party members will debate a series of policy resolutions at next month’s general meeting — which in the past have influenced Smith government actions.
While none of this year’s resolutions call for another independence referendum, other policy proposals could generate controversy. One asks UCP members to endorse limiting transgender women’s access to women’s washrooms and change areas, while another would block the provincial government or other public entities from delivering Indigenous land acknowledgements.
