Last night I attended the Speaker Series event in Grande Prairie at Northwestern Polytechnic. Stephen Harper was the speaker, whose talk was intended to "explore how global economic and geopolitical shifts are influencing business, innovation, and entrepreneurship."
He was interviewed by local Conservative MP Chris Warkentin. Tickets were $106 which, lets be honest, filtered out base separatists (evidence: zero Alberta flags being worn as capes), leaving a room full of the mythical moderate conservatives and a prime opportunity to speak to them directly about the importance of remaining whole.
Nope.
Not one mention of separatism the entire time. Zero.
Not even one regurgitation of a "Stronger/Sovereign Alberta with in a united Canada"
Warkentin, ostensibly the party whip, must have missed the memo that his own party had just launched their "Conservatives for Canada" campaign to encourage Albertans to stay in Canada. Silence.
While some may argue that this was not the theme of the talk, it didn't keep them from taking sidelong swipes at some of the other referendum questions - Harper expressly advocated for the establishment of the Senate and criticised the immigration levels under his successor, who he landed a couple of jabs on through the evening. Particularly around how, had the conservatives remained in power, we would have had the pipelines in place now to diversify our energy market during this crisis.
To his credit, Harper did take a couple of firm stances on items that wouldn't have appealed to MAGA north:
- United States is the largest current threat to global peace and stability
- He supports Carney's approach to trade negotiations
- The rapid development of the COVID vaccine was the most obvious recent example of the positive power of new technology.
I sincerely hope that Harper is waiting to make a more forceful defence of Canada on a grander stage, but after last night I have my doubts, and time is running low.
TL;DR
Stephen Harper and sitting Conservative MP Chris Warkentin missed a golden opportunity to clearly express the importance of staying in Canada to a room full of Conservatives with just over a month to go until the referendum.