Alberta Review: Looking Back on AGMs
Past and present
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Note: While I fully understand the news cycle has moved passed the weekend’s UCP AGM here in Alberta, I still chose to share this today; perhaps we’d all be better off if we focused on things closer to home everyday, anyway.
Many politicos, myself included, see conventions as one of the ultimate expressions of democratic life. There’s a romanticism about the convention—most of us, at least those of us who really dig these things, see nostalgic visions of buttons, straw hats, and delegates being pulled by one campaign or the other for a last-minute vote as if the vote wasn’t pre-determined months before. We dream of the convention where a speech by a candidate changes our minds, and a small group of insiders decide the fate of the world.
This is the vision I had when I went to my first Progressive Conservative AGM in 2016. The dynasty had finally ended, and I, along with my dad, felt that it was time to get fully involved. We were on our Constituency Association board, and it was time to go to Red Deer (more often than not, these are in Red Deer, for obvious reasons).Â
I’ve gone to a lot of AGMs since then, sometimes as an observer, sometimes as a member, sometimes as a party insider shaping discussion and run of show and the optics to outsiders behind the scenes. They never cease to amaze me. I’ve been to small ones, a few hundred strong, and this weekend, I was at the UCP’s, where 6,000 people came together in what was one of the largest political conventions in the country’s history.Â
This year, I skipped the most important and real reason for political conventions—the hospitality suites. Facing an illness and the need to work all weekend, I decided to forgo what is the most fun and rewarding part of these gatherings. This is where you network and forge everlasting bonds with like-minded people. It is also where a lot of the real work goes on, from voting wrangling to mind-changing.
That, though, remains a nostalgic view. The new-look UCP party is not the PC party of old. Those AGMs saw policy debates that were poorly attended—again, the real work and decision-making were done elsewhere in metaphorically smoke-filled rooms. Those conventions were delegated, meaning the Constituency Association voted on who would go. Now, almost all the 6,000 members attend the policy sessions. And the policy passed by members is far, far more likely to get its due. Premier Smith held this year what was called an Accountability Session, where she, the Deputy Premier, and the House Leader went through last year’s passed policies and updated the membership on whether it had been enacted and, if not, why.
This isn’t the place to argue the merits of this new reality. As someone who came through the old conventions, I obviously have my biases, but both methods have their good and their bad. Transparency from elected leadership is undoubtedly a positive thing for the democratic process. But we all know that the tyranny of the majority is a real thing, and the tyranny of the majority within a small group of people—political party members—can lead to excesses. Sometimes priorities get warped when viewed through a telescope, the forest lost for the trees.
But looking back, one thing that hasn’t changed, and will likely never change, is the human element. This convention, like all the others I’ve been a part of, saw people from across the province with many different viewpoints (even if those on the outside looking in only saw the near-unanimous votes) come together, make friendships, talk about issues, and ultimately take an important role in their province. The world is a better place the more people are involved directly in politics. If many of those looking at the grassroots politics of both left and right see ideological purity and rigidity as the problem with politics these days, the only answer is for more people to get involved. Just like the answer to misinformation is more, accurate, information, not curtailment of free speech, the answer to political polarization is more people making the trip to Red Deer.
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