A Foothills MLA who worked on a merger agreement between the Wildrose and Progressive Conservative Parties said it’s in the best interest of party members and Albertans.
Wildrose Party leader Brian Jean and PC leader Jason Kenney announced an agreement to merge their parties on May 18. It will be put out to the members of both parties to approve, with vote dates to be set in the coming weeks.
If approved, they will join together to form the United Conservative Party and a leadership race will be held later this year.
It’s a milestone moment, said Livingstone-Macleod MLA Pat Stier.
“We’re making history here,” he said.
Stier was part of a committee that worked on the agreement.
He said they wanted to have a new leader in place before the fall session starts, which usually happens around Halloween.
“We wanted to have about a 90 day window for the campaign,” said Stier. “We didn’t want to drag it out like the last one (the PC Party leadership race) they just had.”
As well, he said they wanted to give party members 60 days to consider the question of unity and make a decision.
The founding principles of the new party include equality of all before the law; economic freedom and protection of property rights; fiscal and environmental responsibility, and grass roots democracy.
The agreement also lists universal access to public health care and “compassion for the less fortunate through progressive social policies” as guiding principles.
Stier said these principles will create a “big centrist tent” that should appeal to a wide range of Albertans. He said a party can’t be everything to everyone, or represent every niche. Still, Stier said he believes the core principles will be acceptable for the majority of conservative-minded Albertans.
“We spent extra time on these principles because we wanted to ensure that we were covering every possible angle that we could,” he said.
Highwood MLA Wayne Anderson said the new party will have a greater chance of victory in the next provincial election.
“The reality is, what we need to bring back to Alberta is common sense government and that’s what we’re going to do with the united Conservative Party,” he said.
Anderson said he believes Calgary will be the battleground area in the next provincial election and that the United Conservative Party would be able to win in city.
He expects the process of merging the two parties and their constituency associations to move smoothly, particularly in the Highwood.
Anderson said the presidents of the Highwood Wildrose and Progressive Conservative associations have already met and association members of both parties have been on the same side in the past before the formation of the Wildrose Party.
“There’s a lot of people that I’ve known from the old party that want to work with us, we’ve talked about that for a while. This isn’t something that just started yesterday,” he said.
Highwood PC association president RJ Sigurdson was unavailable for comment over the long weekend.
