Current UCP government is the farthest thing from the Lougheed-led progressive approach
By Lethbridge Herald on January 31, 2026.
Ken Moore
For the Herald
The current UCP government is not one which could be headed by Peter Lougheed. Their policies are anything but progressive.
To understand the depth of the current identity crisis in Alberta politics, one must look back at the “Progressive” half of the Progressive Conservative dynasty that Lougheed built. For Lougheed, conservatism was not a crusade to dismantle social safety nets or centralize power; it was about building a province that was as compassionate as it was prosperous. He believed in a “Social Contract” where the province used its resource wealth to protect the most vulnerable.
Today, under Premier Danielle Smith, that contract is not just being rewritten; it is being shredded. The UCP’s recent legislative agenda reveals a government that views the underprivileged not as citizens to be supported, but as costs to be managed and voices to be silenced.
The most glaring departure from Lougheed’s legacy is the transformation of disability supports. The move to replace the Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped (AISH) with the Alberta Disability Assistance Program (ADAP) is a masterclass in bureaucratic cruelty. By reducing core benefits by $200 a month for new applicants and slashing earnings exemptions, the government is effectively trapping disabled Albertans in deeper poverty.
Lougheed’s first formal act as Premier was the Alberta Bill of Rights. He understood that the measure of a society is how it treats those who cannot advocate for themselves. In contrast, the UCP has moved to claw back the federal Canada Disability Benefit, ensuring that the poorest Albertans never see a dime of federal relief. This isn’t fiscal responsibility; it’s a targeted strike on those with the least.
Perhaps even more “un-Lougheed” is the government’s aggressive takeover of independent institutions. The recent dismantling of the Alberta Law Foundation (ALF) is a chilling example. For decades, the ALF used interest from lawyers’ trust accounts to fund community legal clinics, places where the poor could go for help with a “renoviction,” a domestic violence order, or a wrongful dismissal.
By passing Bill 39 and Bill 14, the UCP has basically seized control of these private funds, redirected them to cover core government legal aid costs, costs the government is responsible for, and given the Justice Minister a personal veto over grants. When the entire staff of the Law Foundation resigns in protest and board members are ousted for “challenging the government,” we have moved far beyond the realm of conservative governance and into something more authoritarian. Lougheed respected the independence of the civil service and the legal profession; the current regime seeks only their compliance.
Locally, the Lethbridge Legal Guidance Clinic’s funding has been slashed by 32% over three years. This clinic provides free front-line legal advice to our city’s most vulnerable populations.
We see this same war against the most vulnerable in Bill 18, the Provincial Priorities Act. By demanding a veto over federal funding for municipalities, the UCP is holding low-income housing and transit projects hostage to a political feud with Ottawa. In our largest cities, where homelessness has reached crisis levels, and even in Lethbridge, this gatekeeping or paternalism is a death sentence for urgent housing initiatives.
Furthermore, the introduction of the “Alberta Escalator” for benefit indexing (Bill 32) ensures that even when the government claims to help, it is actually cutting. By capping benefit increases at 2% even when inflation is higher, the UCP is baking a permanent decline in purchasing power into the lives of every person on income support.
Peter Lougheed once said that the purpose of the Heritage Fund was to ensure that future generations of Albertans would have the same opportunities as his own. He built hospitals, funded world-class research, and championed human rights.
The current government, however, seems preoccupied with a different set of priorities:
- entralizing power by breaking apart Alberta Health Services into four fragmented agencies.
- estricting professional training in unconscious bias, anti-racism, diversity, equity and inclusion (Bill 13).
- verriding Charter rights with the notwithstanding clause to settle labor disputes and social debates.
There is nothing “progressive” about a government that cuts the income of the disabled while the cost-of-living soars. There is nothing “conservative” about a government that seizes private foundation funds to pad its own budget.
Alberta was once a place where “Progressive Conservative” meant a balanced approach to growth and grace. Today, the “Progressive” label has been stripped away, leaving behind a brand of populism that is increasingly hostile to the very people it is supposed to protect. If Peter Lougheed were to walk into the Legislature today, he wouldn’t recognize the current United Conservative Party. And it’s doubtful they would recognize him, either.
Ken Moore is a longtime resident of Stirling and retired news director at CFAC Television
21-20
Agreed! The Smith UCP politics are certainly not, the Lougheed progressive conservatism of yore. They are ultra right wing, populist, chaotic, and cruel. What is really mindboggling is the support from so-called ‘christian’ voters….in light of the Matthew 25:40 “least of these” Bible verse. It stresses that how, as mentioned above, that serving the vulnerable is equivalent to serving Jesus himself. Based on the Smith UCP/Take Back Alberta cruelty to the vulnerable alone, they should not be getting any votes, at all.
Good, look what we have progressed to.
What have we progressed to buckwheat?.
Me thinks that the calls for treason should be applied, before the brown shirts and black shirts (UCP) folks fully take over.,.
HEY BW. There are cheap flights to the USA. You should be right at home in any red state. Your thoughts expressed so “eloquently” in these columns, are worthy of MAGA supporters everywhere – That is meandering, nonsensical and nasty rhetoric.
By the way, make sure you book a one-way-ticket!
Adios!
Once again you have to prove what an idiot you are, don’t you? Way to go we love watching how people are laughing about how stupid you are, apparently you do also, don’t you?
For the records we have progressed to a $90 billion debt, a $260 billion oil well cleanup mess, and a $30 billion deficit need to repair roads, bridges and build 60 new schools we desperately need and you aren’t even smart enough to understand what a horrible financial mess that has created for our children and grandchildren to deal with, but you don’t care do you?
I would love to see a televised debate on separation, in which economic, social and Treaty realities are laid bare.
The vacuum of credible information benefits the freaky separatists, who can say whatever they want – manna from the sky, cake and eating it, too, shining city on the hill, etc.
Thanks a great idea maybe we should try to get one started on one of the TV stations?
Great comments Ken. Lougheed’s energy minister Bill Dickie was a brother in-law of one of my uncles and I will never forget how disgusted the MLAs were with these Reformers and the fools supporting them, starting with Ralph Klein and what he was doing to Albertans.
I will never forget the nurses bawling their eyes out in my office when Klein destroyed their careers. I helped 9 doctors and at least two dozen nurses relocate out of this province because of how they were being treated and the fact that he had closed their hospitals and cut 5,000 nursing positions, that’s how stupid he was. His father whom I had known since I was 17 years was furious with him and his daughter Angie told us to vote NDP and kick him out, she felt the same way.
I enoy this useless banter and the invoking of the Dead Conservatives and saner days, its amusing to watch as people continue to avoid the obvious.
The extreme left, with their woke, inclusive, tolerance agenda, violated a sacred line in the sand, It ctreated the extreme right, it created the wildrose who could not tolerate a Blue Conservative.
Now that you have created an environment where being offended supercedes common sense and a middle of the road society, you scream from the roof tops when its not your turn to screw with the country. Many of the present day issues were not identified as a :”hot potato” …..like Abortion was!. The assumption was and is, that jamming through hot potatoes as normal and “oh they will get used to it” didn’t work, and you still don’t realize that caused the issues we face today in Canadian Politics. NEWS FLASH Libs/NDP created the UCP/Wildrose!
Someone should write a book called “It wasn’t us, it was them” because the NDP will not take responsibility for thier part of destroying scoiety nor will the UCP. So its a great name for a book and the state of Alberta politics!