LAKELAND – Changes made by the UCP board switching the in-person vote for the upcoming UCP leadership review on April 9 in Red Deer to mail-in ballots after the membership registration deadline, has led to further upheaval in the UCP caucus.
David Hanson, MLA for the Bonnyville-Cold Lake-St. Paul riding, stood with six other MLAs on the steps of the Alberta Legislature on Thursday to express discontent with the UCP board’s move to change the upcoming leadership review vote.
“I don't support changing the rules three-quarters of the way through the game,” Hanson told Lakeland This Week, Monday morning.
The changes to how the leadership vote would take place were decided last Tuesday when the UCP board made the decision to switch the voting methods.
A letter to party members was released on March 23 by UCP board president, Cynthia Moore, outlining the move to a mail-in ballot and switching the Special General Meeting (SGM) to a virtual event.
Moore went on to state that UCP membership has more than doubled with more than 15,000 people having registered to participate in the SGM.
This announcement came just days after the March 19 deadline to sign up. Memberships are required to vote in the leadership review at the UCP’s SGM.
“There were a lot of people in rural Alberta that didn't buy memberships because they couldn't afford to go to Red Deer. If we would have known ahead of time that they were going to change the rules, then I think a lot more people would have gotten involved and bought memberships,” said Hanson.
Also standing on the Legislature steps was UCP MLAs Jason Stephan, Angela Pitt, Richard Gotfried, Peter Guthrie and former UCP MLAs Drew Barnes and Todd Loewen who both now sit as Independents. There were also six UCP constituency associations presidents at the press conference.
“It’s just unfortunate that somebody chose to change the rules and that's why those presidents were upset, because they hadn’t been consulted at all and that is not the way our party is supposed to operate,” Hanson expressed.
“When you call an SGM, or leadership vote, the rules are laid out clearly and they're not supposed to be changed. In this case, the provincial board decided arbitrarily to change the rules.”
He continued, any decision like this should have been made at least 60 day prior to the April 9 vote.
With roughly two weeks before the vote is set to take place, Hanson said, “In my opinion, because they thought that the leader was losing, they changed the rules.”
He further added, “There were 33 constituency presidents that sent a letter saying that they wanted the SGM to remain in Red Deer in-person. And basically, that request was ignored by the provincial board.”
As a result of the leadership vote moving to mail-in ballots, a number of the association presidents are asking for the UCP board to resign, Hanson noted.
The growing discontent within the party has been growing for a while and it isn’t limited to decisions regarding the pandemic, says Hanson.
“There has just been a number of things. I look at just the popularity of the party right now, I think it’s an issue. We need to work on unity to make sure that we can get the conservative party re-elected in 2023 and not go back to four years of the NDP – because that's why we all fought for unity in the first place,” Hanson stated. “To watch that deteriorate is very frustrating.”
