Separatist leader Jeffrey Rath had his membership in the United Conservative Party revoked, Alberta’s premier confirmed Friday afternoon.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith confirmed that UCP Executive Director Dustin van Vugt made the decision after numerous breaches of party protocol.
“The executive of our party has the ability to cancel memberships and he informed our party’s board of directors yesterday that he believes there were multiple instances of breach of the code of conduct that we require of our members,” Smith told reporters at an unrelated press conference in Calgary, adding it was “his (van Vugt’s) decision to pull the membership and cancel his AGM registration. I’m supportive of that.”
“Let’s be clear about the individual we’re talking about: he’s never supported me,” the premier said.
“You can go back and look, he never supported me during the leadership, he never supported me during my time in office, and he certainly doesn’t support me now.”
“That’s irrelevant,” she added. “What is relevant is that he has said publicly things like, he wants to come to the AGM to turn the UCP into an independence party.
“And we are not an independence party,” she said.
“And somebody whose objective and mission is to turn us into something we are not is not following the objective of our party – our objective of our party is to get re-elected and make sure we’re focused on doing that and so that is my understanding of why Dustin van Vugt -- after (gathering) a lot of evidence, and compilation -- ultimately made the decision to pull his membership.”
Rath responded to the decision on social media, saying, “Another questionable political choice by Danielle Smith...”
Late Friday afternoon, Rath posted a screen shot of his UCP termination notice on social media.
