Oil and Alberta Politics: Whos Funding the United Conservative Party?
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- Published on Wednesday, 05 August 2020 04:16
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 2162 ... August 5, 2020
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Oil and Alberta Politics: Who’s Funding the United Conservative Party?
Matthew Corbeil
The case can easily be made that Alberta’s United Conservative Party (UCP) is Canada’s most dangerous political formation. Led by former Harper-era cabinet minister and far-right evangelical Christian Jason Kenney, the UCP government is currently taking a sledgehammer to Alberta’s provincial state, gutting the province’s fiscal and regulatory capacities, attacking its public servants, privatizing its healthcare system, undoing basic labour protections, suppressing dissent, and eliminating any and every barrier to the fossil fuel industry’s profits -- the climate crisis notwithstanding.
For many on the left, it seems a reasonable assumption that the UCP is the creature of the fossil fuel giants that dominate the province’s economy. The party does little to conceal its love affair with all things oil and gas, nor its animosity toward the industry’s critics. But the party’s financial disclosures tell a different story. In fact, if party financing is any indicator, the largest fossil fuel corporations are far from the UCP’s main constituency. Instead, the UCP is very... much the party of the homegrown Alberta business class.
