There was a period, in the old Progressive Conservative dynasty days, when there wasn’t much daylight between a chamber of commerce crowd in Alberta and the party convention crowd. Maybe a number more windbreaker-clad ranchers at the latter, but both audiences would come to root for the same thing: a thriving, economy-boosting petroleum sector.
In 2025, they’re two strikingly different audiences — the Calgary business luncheon that stood up and cheered twice for Prime Minister Mark Carney when he discussed his pro-pipeline memorandum of understanding with Alberta one day, and the United Conservative gathering that booed Alberta Premier Smith on the same topic the next day.
The friction is the raucous sound of two trends colliding.
The UCP premier has never been so pro-Ottawa, and her party has never been so decidedly anti-Ottawa.
“I hope people today feel a lot more confident that Canada works than they did a couple of days ago,” Smith told her convention Friday. Boos rang out from the Edmonton Expo Centre seats — the kind that partisans normally direct at mention of the other guys, not their own leader and the notion that this country can work.
The UCP base’s separatist fervor proved a challenge for Smith this weekend, one she at times struggled to handle.
This party has repeatedly conveyed big demands and expectations to the politicians it elects, but members have never flared their temper at the leader like this.
What got big applause, by comparison? Jeff Rath striding to a convention microphone — the barrel-chested pro-separatist lawyer sporting his Alberta Prosperity Project logo on his ballcap.
He branded the “so-called memorandum” as one that lets Carney hike Alberta’s industrial carbon tax by 600 per cent. (More boos.)
Separatist activist Jeffrey Rath got a large ovation for advocating independence on the UCP convention floor. (X/davidjpba)
“How many of all of us favour a free and independent Alberta?” he implored United Conservatives. “Raise your hand! Stand up!” The vast majority in the room did, with sustained howls and cheers.
Then, not long after the first round of boos Smith received, she got them again for replying to Rath’s remarks that she advocates the halfway-there idea of “an independent Alberta within a united Canada.”
On Saturday, during her keynote in a slightly fuller hall, she risked losing the room again with a prepared speech that recommended keeping her province within Canada — typically, something that’s only an audacious thing for certain Quebec party leaders to say to their base.
“Let us not throw in the towel and give up on our country just as the battle has turned in our favour and victory is in sight,” Smith said. Some boos rang out again, but more applause counteracted them this time.
The same mixed reaction greeted the premier when she stressed that Canadians are getting behind Alberta’s pro-oil position: “Now is not the time to give up the fight!” Smith said, an exclamation mark in the advance speech draft given to media to signal what’s supposed to be an applause line.
There were speech lines that did get the United Conservatives standing to applaud, but none of them concerned pipelines, oil or the MOU. What brought them to their feet was Smith’s mention of protecting gun owners, fighting “woke” attempts to clamp down on controversial speech, and her government’s use of the notwithstanding clause to shield her laws on transgender youth from Charter rights challenges.
This gathering of more than 4,200 United Conservatives isn’t necessarily representative of the roughly 50,000 total card-carrying party members, or the hundreds of thousands in the much larger UCP voter base.
But there was one man with a good sense of the mood among interested partisans who didn’t shell out between $119 to $399 for a convention pass plus travel costs to attend the Edmonton event.
Jason Lavigne, from the village of Breton, Alta., brandished both a UCP member badge and a media lanyard this weekend. He was streaming video from his laptop throughout the convention, and boasted more than 5,000 live viewers on a combination of Facebook, X and other sites.
A stream of live comments from various apps popped on the screen as Smith tried to sell the MOU in her speech.
“How exactly is she trying to claim this as a win? Independence ASAP!” one said. Others rolled in:
“She lost half of her credibility in a week wow”
“BOOOOOOO”
“OMG she sure is working on selling her swamp land!!”
Jason Lavigne, a UCP member and independent video streamer, had thousands of live viewers of his convention feed. (Jason Markusoff/CBC)
Business leaders may be enthused that the prime minister and premier agree to roll back Trudeau-era climate policies and promote a new B.C.-bound oil pipeline, but Lavigne said his pro-independence audience is distrustful, and doesn’t like the idea Smith is working on “Liberal agendas” with Carney.
“They support her but they think they need to give her a new mandate,” Lavigne told CBC News after the speech. “And the new mandate would have to include something like independence from Canada.”
Smith has previously granted the UCP convention crowd’s wishes, from the transgender laws and new limits on professional regulators to the ban on vote-counting machines. The party passed new resolutions demanding she do more, from funding restrictions on late-term abortion to a ban on water fluoridation and a ban on Pride flags and other non-official Alberta or Canadian emblems on government buildings — but only the various boos and cheers signalled, informally, the base’s wishes on separating.
Smith said she’ll wait to see if a referendum petition drive brings that existential question to Albertans, and will proceed from there, though she noted polls show there’s not mainstream public support for independence.
WATCH | Many delegates say they never want to team up with Ottawa:
Smith tells UCP she will still hold Ottawa accountable, even with Carney deal
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith faced some opposition selling her new energy deal with Ottawa at her party’s convention. She vowed to ‘trust, but verify’ the federal government every step of the way when it comes to Alberta’s interests.
But separatists and the Alberta Prosperity Project have emerged as a vocal, powerful force within Smith’s party. And like Take Back Alberta before them, they tried to assert their will on the UCP through the convention’s election for party board directors — which, as TBA’s David Parker has argued, lets activists “control the party.”
Two years ago, Rob Smith (no relation to the premier) was elected party president as a TBA-backed outsider who’d helped oust past leader Jason Kenney.
Now, with the tide turning more separatist, flyers at the convention branded him the “establishment” guy — which confused the rancher, because he professes to stand with all members, be they separatist or otherwise, and is himself hopeful Alberta can one day achieve independence through a referendum.
Rival candidate Darrell Komick identified more with the separatists, and his campaign buttons pitched him as “your voice to government” — one who would push harder to get Smith and the UCP caucus to heed the grassroots’ demand.
Komick lost the vote, as did some but not all of the like-minded board candidates.
Smith-aligned insiders were relieved that he will remain president alongside a less aggressive board.
They hope for some internal stability, as the UCP begins nominating candidates and makes other pivotal preparations for the 2027 election. But the new party board remains a jumble of pro-independence activists and federalists.
That’s the new apparent dividing line within a party formed in a shotgun marriage between the Progressive Conservatives and Wildrosers.
It remains Danielle Smith’s party, but much of it is also loyal to Jeffrey Rath and a very different movement, pushing loudly in a very different direction. And the leader will have to continue figuring out how both of those facts can coexist without further clashes, or worse ones.
