An extended article by the Fifth Estate entitled “The Alberta question: How separatists took hold of the province’s governing party” implies the UCP is controlled by secessionists. It takes a deep dive into the recent history and growth of the independence movement in Alberta and how it impacted the UCP.

There can be no doubt there are secessionists within the UCP and they have influenced the direction of the party, but it’s far from a takeover.

The article goes back to when the membership of the party pushed Jason Kenney out as leader in 2022. It implies that the ejection was part of a long game to install a separatist leader in the party orchestrated by Dennis Modry. The ouster of Kenney had more to do with his authoritarian and flip-flopping stances on COVID-19 policies than provincial independence.

There was no talk of secession as a motivation during the organizing and voting in the leadership review at that time.

There is some overlap between figures who organized the removal of Kenney and those who are advocating for provincial secession today, but that doesn’t mean the motivation was secession in 2021/2022. The prime drivers of Kenney’s leadership review are very much on the outs with the UCP today and certainly aren’t controlling it in any way.

Polling has indicated that the majority of UCP members support provincial independence.

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That said, most of those members are pragmatic enough to understand that turning the party into one with a full and overt mandate of secessionism would likely tear it to pieces and cost an election in the near future. That’s why the push has been toward citizen initiative enablement rather than a party takeover. The intent was to take the question out of the hands of the party rather than drop it on the party’s lap.

Premier Smith is maintaining a balancing act between secessionists and federalists within her party. Her leaning has clearly been on the federalist side as she has taken solid stances against the independence-leaning side of Question 10 in the referendum and is heavily spending provincial dollars to campaign against Option 2.

Those are not the actions of a leader controlled by separatists. In fact, she has enraged the more militant ones, and they are organizing to try and have her removed.

The UCP membership contains many separatists. But then, the NDP membership contains many communists. It doesn’t mean either party is controlled by those factions. The state broadcaster has yet to do an expose of how much influence the communist wing has on the NDP leadership, however.

The UCP is not a separatist party. If it were to have a profile on Facebook where its relationship with separatists was categorized, it would fall under “it’s complicated”.