Let us get this straight: Apparently will be only one by-election in Alberta before the next general election.
That by-election will take place in a rural electoral district handpicked to make it easy for premier designate Danielle Smith to win a seat in the provincial Legislature.
At the moment that riding has a Member of the Legislative Assembly, Michaela Frey, who had decided not to seek re-election, but was ready to do her undemanding job as a government backbencher for a few more months.
However, Ms. Frey, who used to be known as Michaela Glasgo, announced yesterday she is resigning now because it is her “dear hope” that Ms. Smith will run in her riding.
Ms. Frey and Ms. Smith have scheduled an announcement at 1 o’clock this afternoon in the riding, presumably so that Ms. Smith can announce she will do exactly that.
The electoral district that doesn’t need a by-election but will get to hold one anyway is Brooks-Medicine Hat.
Meanwhile, there will be no election in a riding within the city of Calgary that’s already been without an MLA for a month.
That electoral district’s MLA, former Kenney Government Cabinet minister Doug Schweitzer, announced in May he would not seek re-election in 2023 then went ahead and quit on Aug. 7.
Mr. Schweitzer said he was resigning to spend more time with his family.
The electoral district that needs a by-election but will not get to hold one is Calgary-Elbow.
Calgary-Elbow has a storied political history as electoral home to two Alberta Conservative Premiers, Ralph Klein and Alison Redford. In addition, it also has been known to elect more liberal candidates when the mood strikes its voters.
That is of course the UCP’s real problem with holding a by-election there, even one that doesn’t feature Ms. Smith as a candidate.
Each riding – the rural one in which Ms. Smith can most certainly win and the Calgary one in which voters apparently cannot be trusted to elect her – has a population of about 50,000 people.
Ms. Smith’s justification for this outrageous and fundamentally undemocratic plan to treat voters in different locations in dramatically different ways is, in her own words, that it would cost too much to hold two by-elections!
I’m not making this up.
Ms. Smith offered this explanation during an episode of CBC’s Power & Politics television program yesterday.
“We’re only going to have one by-election, so we’ll be able to save on that expense,” Ms. Smith responded to reporter David Cochrane’s question about the cost of having an extra by-election when there’s already an electoral district with no MLA.
After some rambling about how long Parliamentary convention allows unelected premiers to keep their jobs, Ms. Smith continued: “I think it’s important for me to be there to introduce my legislation and so we’re going to try to limit the expense by having it, the only one by-election, and I’m very hopeful that I’ll be there (in the Legislature) by the end of November.” (Emphasis added.)
Then the interview continued:
Mr. Cochrane: “Why not just run in Calgary? I mean, it’s there, was available, and you wouldn’t have needed to have this second seat to come open?”
Ms. Smith: “Well, there’s, uh, only one by-election that’s, uh, going to be held and so, the, to me it’s, uh, it’s, I really like representing a rural riding. I think this is one of the problems that we have had, is that we have not listened to our rural voices and I want our rural communities to know that we are going to make sure that we are responsive to their needs, and I, I think there’s no better way of doing that than running in a rural riding.”
Mr. Cochrane, meekly: “OK. Danielle Smith. Thanks so much for your time.”
It doesn’t take a rhetorician to see that Ms. Smith didn’t answer Mr. Cochrane’s question, or that Mr. Cochrane let her get away with it.
So how is this different from the UCP Government deciding to allow no voting in the next general election in Edmonton, which solidly supports NDP, on the fatuous grounds that it would make the general election too expensive?
That’s the deal with democracy. It costs money. Other systems of government may cost less in the short term, but they carry bigger costs over time.
Energy analyst Samir Kayande, the NDP’s candidate for Calgary-Elbow, accused Ms. Smith of “making it clear that she has no interest in hearing from families in Elbow.”
“She cannot make decisions that affect tens of thousands of families here while denying them a voice in the Legislature,” he said. “She must call the Calgary-Elbow by-election immediately.”
Well, she won’t.
Ms. Smith was named leader of the United Conservative Party on Thursday after a private party vote with the support of literally about 1 per cent of the people of Alberta.
Since political parties are essentially private clubs, the rules of this election are effectively none of our damned business. Was it fair? Maybe, but who knows? The UCP has no obligation to prove it.
Ms. Smith was chosen by this exclusive group on the strength of an absurd and dangerous promise to declare the rule of law null and void the better to defy a “tyrannical” federal government.
She is expected to be sworn in on Tuesday.
Alberta Conservatives, meanwhile, have the temerity to call Justin Trudeau a tyrant!
No by-election for Calgary-Elbow is the real Danielle Smith, I would suggest to you, and a meaningful measure of her true commitment to democracy.
Anyone who has followed Ms. Smith’s career will not be shocked by this, although they may be surprised by the sheer brazenness of her lame excuse.
We are in for interesting times here in Alberta for the next few months.
And the sleazy weaseling and contorted thinking continues in the endless cycle of UPC self justification regardless of the optics as long as it seems that the advantage will be pro UPC weasel.
Rigging and winning sham elections seems to be the entry challenge for these con “leaders” of parties.
What’s the deal with interprovincial political asylum and can I stay in Albeqia as a full status Canadian citizen?
Danielle Smith is behaving like a petulant child. She wants to throw a hissy fit over things she doesn’t agree with, and doesn’t have any control over. The government in Ottawa will put her back in her place, fairly quickly and very easily, just like a parent would, when their child is misbehaving. What kind of democracy is that, where constituents who lack an MLA, can’t get one? If Danielle Smith is so sure of herself that she can get elected again as an MLA, why doesn’t she run in the riding that is lacking an MLA? I’m not so sure they would have her, so she’s taking the easy route. Claiming having two by-elections would cost more money is a very lame excuse, especially given the fact that the UCP has never been good with Alberta’s finances. We’ve seen this from good examples, such as $7.5 billion being thrown away on a pipeline that never could be completed, due to the fact that the former head honcho of the UCP didn’t get the memo from Joe Biden, if he became America’s president, he’d cancel the pipeline, corporate tax cuts, which were in the proximity of $10 billion, where no employment gains were made, $1.6 billion isn’t there, from lacking the ability to do proper accounting, more money still continues to be drained from the Heritage Savings Trust Fund, and another humdinger is where a mining company in Australia is going after the UCP, via a lawsuit, for close to $4 billion, because of a breach of contract, among lots of others. It will be a rocky and tumultuous eight months, before the next provincial election in Alberta. Danielle Smith, who is nothing more, than an ego driven, hyper partisan, type of Ralph Klein clone, will inflict a lot of damage, before she is thrown out, along with the rest of the UCP charlatans. She wasn’t elected to be leader of the UCP with a very large amount of support, anyways, but what she does, will have repercussions. The other outcome of this will run over to the federal government level, where Pierre Poliveire and the CPC will also see defeat, because Canadians with common sense won’t want Reformers doing more damage than they already have. They won’t want what Alberta has in the federal government.
Anonymous: “The government in Ottawa will put her back in her place, fairly quickly and very easily, just like a parent would, when their child is misbehaving”. Sadly, I have seen no evidence that this will happen, and in fact I doubt the federal government will push back in any meaningful way. They are too wishy-washy, and both too beholden to, and too frightened of, the Québec of Francois Legault.
The current state of Canada’s federation is such that virtually everybody in the country blames the federal government for the nation’s many ills, but the vast majority of those ills are out of the federal government’s control. It’s enough to make you want to tear your hair out.
https://www.thestar.com/politics/political-opinion/2022/10/08/ottawa-quiet-as-constitutional-crisis-simmers.html
Wow. Canada’s Province of Karen (AKA Alberta) has walked across the street to yell at PMJT about the stuff he’s been causing. Make no mistake about it, Trudeau is terrified of Alberta. I mean he goes out of his way to ignore Alberta, so it must be because it is giving him anxiety, heart palpitations, night sweats, and constipation. I mean what else could it be?
Danielle Straitjacket must be on the right path. Now that she has managed to get every single Antivaxxer-FreeDUMB Convoy lunatic to get onside with her, there’s nothing that can stop her now. My word, she could … break things all over Alberta and Trudeau would be too frightened to stop her. This will surely help Skippy Pollivere become PM that much faster. Trash and abuse Alberta so much that Ontario and Quebec will feel guilty and join in the #TrudeauMustGo viral campaign that has overtaken all the usual Twitter suspects.
Btw, my relentless diet of popcorn has turned me into an over-carbed fatty. Danielle is going to be the death of me yet!
It seems, the supposedly new version of Smith is much like the one I remember from a decade ago. She talks with seeming conviction about principles, but when you look closer the contradictions emerge.
One of the first ones is denying a needed by election in Calgary Elbow because of cost while proceeding with an unnecessary one because it is where she feels more “comfortable” running. Of course the word comfortable being a euphemism for being more confident in winning.
Of course, if her concern really was cost she would only have the one by-election needed. There is some risk, but it is an existing UCP constituency, so it is possible she could win and be hailed as courageous and save the taxpayers money.
Of course, whatever high minded statements she makes are not fully supported by her actions here. It is even worse that Calgary Elbow will likely be left without representation while other by-elections are held.
It is not a good sign – Dani days are not off to a good start.
I’m sorry, Alberta brethren…you deserve better than this idiocy. On the one hand, I’m not surprised Smith won; on the other, I’m shocked and saddened that you now have a premier who is ostensibly worse than Jason Kenney – I didn’t think that could be possible but here we are. Good luck.
It’s well known that Canadian conservatives are terrified of fair fights.
Even for someone as cynical and jaded as I about the UCP, I find it shocking that she would so nakedly state that the only election that is important is the one that she requires to sit as a member of the legislature. Narcissistic and selfish to the extreme, perhaps belying a deep adherence to the looney tunes philosophy of Ayn Rand, Danielle Smith does an unwelcome reveal on what we can look forward to with her style of government. It will certainly not follow democratic norms. It will be government characterized by bullying, hectoring, spite, ignorance, and anger to elevate and make permanent extreme right-wing ideals and just bat-shit crazy policies by leveraging the support of Albertans from the rural areas of the province who can be consistently relied upon to vote against their own interests every time.
As for the CBC, the performance of David Cochrane is, alas, common enough to be typical. It is disappointing to see respectable journalists such as David Cochrane, Vassy Kapelos, and others allowing politicians (mainly on the right) to get away with the most egregious lies and misinformation.
The collusion of the media will only make matters worse for Albertans.
She might get a huge surprise in running in Medicine Hat. I don’t think people are as dumb as she might think, although they maybe in Brooks. We need to let them know , in this riding, what we think about her getting elected and how we feel about her winning a bye election. She is just too damn dangerous to ignore.
Alan K. Spiller: I agree with you. When even the former head honcho of the UCP says that Danielle Smith’s ideas are bad, there is a big problem. When our public healthcare, our public education, and our pensions get compromised, people can’t say they weren’t warned. If people are stubborn, and won’t listen to reason, I don’t know what else can be done. We hope Danielle Smith’s time as premier is short lived. Peter Lougheed certainly would never endorse someone such as Danielle Smith either.
More of the long weekend announcements/press conferences, reminiscent of the time Jason Kenney laid off 20,000 educational assistants and thousands of school support staff on the Easter long weekend. By the way, the Alberta flag that disappeared from the school in my hood after that announcement is still MIA, two years on. Shouldn’t have laid off the caretaker.
More proof that this flavor of Kenney is just another Kenney, on steroids.
Mr. Schweitzer quit to spend more time with his family. Michaela Frey decided not to run again in order to have a family. Now she quits. Yada, yada.
Danielle Smith told us who she is: a person who has no respect for the rule of law. Now she’s about to show us that she has no respect for rules or conventions of any kind. This is a person who said she will only allow law enforcement to enforce the federal laws that suit her. We should all take time to think about that.
We should also stop to think about whether a fair election can be held in 2023 under Smith. If laws, rules, guidelines and standards of practice mean nothing to her, why would election laws and rules be any different?
I suppose you could say it’s one thing to be the subject of an election fraud investigation by the RCMP and quite another to tell people what you are, then prove it. Is it really? Nothing changes. Cheetahs gonna cheet. On with the gong show. Has she earned the title of “Dictator Dani” yet?
(It is rich that after Moneybags Kenney threw millions of dollars to various corporations this past week, as if it was candy flying from a float in a small-town parade, the Treasury has been drained like a septic tank after a visit from the sewer sucker truck, and now we don’t have enough money for two by-elections.)
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/danielle-smith-show-audience-alberta-ucp-1.6610627
I’m not sure what “a whole head of very sharp teeth” means, but this image comes to mind.
https://twitter.com/Drew__Barnes/status/1486050287215210496
Abs– “a whole head of sharp teeth “….see gratefulpaw.com
How to train your bulldog terrier, start with basic commands,like sit , stay, leave it…then move on to “drop it”, Bulldogs have a strong grip once they bite down on toys, so it is imperative that they learn the “drop it” command
Hope this helps…
I believe the reason Smith chose this constituency specifically it’s because Alberta party leader Barry mo
rishida the former mayor of Brooks will run against Smith as well as a strong NDP candidate. I believe Smith is hoping the left wing vote will be split therefore ensuring her win.
I think at this point we must question WHY there are absolutely zero rules dictating that a candidate must not only actually live in the riding they wish to represent but must have lived there for a minimum length of time (say, at least 5 years)? That would certainly help to prevent BS artists and snake oil salespeople from simply parachuting into a ridiculously safe riding and sailing into the legislature with zero effort.
Not you David, but I’m continually shocked at how many others in the media mindlessly repeat the misleading UCP slogan ‘More Alberta, less Ottawa.’ In everyday parlance, the news media should change the slogan to ‘More Alberta, less Canada’ to accurately reflect that the UCP wants to strengthen provincial powers while weakening federal ones.
Danielle Smith has Had To Much Horse Wormer!! She is Not Going To Represent ALBERTANS She is Only Concerned For Her Horse Wormer Believers For Covid-19 as A Good Way To Not Get Covid Along With ALL Her 18 Wheeler Friends That Closed Down AlBERTA Borders And Ontario in Ottawa For Months Deprives Small Companies to Re Open Holding Residents at Bay and Having These A-S HOLES PER in The Unknown Soldier At Parliament Hill Danielle Smith Is Dangerous and She Will Get Voted Out In 2023 Making Her The Shortest Premier In History!!
More alberta much less Ottawa. Happy now?
Bret: I believe what you actually have in mind is More Alberta, Less Canada. Most of us Albertans are proud to be Canadians. DJC
I just had a good point made to me . Isn’t Danielle Smith insulting rural Albertans by assuming they are morons and more willing to believe her lies than Calgarians who aren’t dumb enough to do it?
Yep. Just listened to Danielle Smith the High River Harridan (or soon-to-be Brooks-Medicine Hat Medusa ?) on Saturn’s Day-morning MoCo Radio: yep, she a gamer, a’ight.
As I expected—but felt mildly nauseated nonetheless—, her interview was chuck full of interrupting the interviewer, evading questions, and barfing out a stream of what farmers technically call bull-hooey (but normally referring to the other end).
No real surprises, though, I’m afraid. Just a lot of well-potted Freedumbite twaddle, a manure-pile of goofy nostrums and super-lame citations. Like—right out of the Freedumbite Hymnary—referencing former Newfoundland Conservative premier Brian Peckford—“the last surviving signatory to the Constitution,” which, having read some of my fellow British Columbian’s missives in our local anti-vaxxer/Freedumbite rags (Peckford retired to Parksville, BC, after he was sprung from his catastrophic cucumber caper on The Rock—which is quite close enough for me: I can practically see his house from here), I must say Brian is a shambling crank, proven constitutional ignoramus, and Freedumbite darling. He seems to imagine that by aping a few Joey Smallwood Newfie jokes he would surprise his critics with his utter conviction that putting his signature where a raft of constitutional lawyers told him to is a holy act which instantly downloads all their hard-earned expertise to him, completely for his own interpretation. Sheesh! The man’s practically a saint! Our riding’s People’s Party of Canada candidate’s wife told me so herself. Right here on my veranda. So there!
Oh, yes, there were references to Danielle’s stint as phone-in radio talk-show host which, a forum with about the narrowest bandwidth—or smallest medicine-hatband—imaginable, where callers mostly vent their ire in unparliamentary language, with encouragement provided by the host. If Smith got as many of her ideas from these raging indignitaries as she has Albertans’ endorsement of her new office—about one-percent—it would explain a lot.
Her apologist was on hand to compare Danielle to BC’s very own Christy Clark who was also a right-wing radio talk-show host before returning to politics—I suppose because Christy also assumed a disgraced premier’s unfinished mandate. But considering the policy-bereft Christy was largely relegated to her rumpus room by her shadowy, unaccountable cabinet—except for photo-ops and cheerleading—, and that despite the ‘certain-folk’ wisdom she might have accrued during her years behind the microphone the subsequent mandate she won for herself two years later was an even worse disaster for BC, I’m not sure the apologist’s cheery palm-sweeping “so there!”—was quite so justified: she appeared oblivious to what is more often cited in BC as proof that radio-rage does not substitute for good policy. It was to presume, too much, I think, that Danielle will win the following general election, like Christy did in BC, and inflict the same kind of pain on the fair province of Alberta. As if it needs it.
Yet Smith seems to instinctively know that when quality is so light, the sheer weight of quantity must be resorted to. For example, when queried about her democratic licence to initiate the drastic policies she promised (Smith has a tendency to begin speaking as if she’s about to start yelling—or perhaps hawk that perennial oyster in her throat which sounds like an introductory ’Pfft!’ of condescension before she utters a word ) she blithely informed us that she was taking her sovereigntist policy “to the next democratic level”—meaning the UCP caucus which has yet to see her seat in the Assembly. We know what little regard she has for democracy—that’s plain enough by the numbers—she just tends to credibly underscore the worst of it. Talk about “democratic levels”: when you’re at the bottom, the only way to go is up. So there’s that…
The rest of the interview was full bovine-steamer-ahead of shotgunned buffalo-chips about the nature of the federation she intends to—uh—change? Maybe? After getting endorsement from the other nine of the ten Premier’s? I guess? She appears to anticipate questions like, “what do you mean by—“ by cutting it off with reiteration before it’s fully asked. I suppose we’ll be hearing lots of that in the months ahead. In this way she was able to dodge questions about “Free Alberta Strategy,” a book cowritten by UofC poli-sci prof Barry Cooper to which Smith has often referred. I guess I’ll just have to read the damn thing for myself.
She also claims to know her way around the SCoC like she has a secret key ( it rather looks certain she’ll be going in the front door like anyone else)—while at the same time assuring that these systems-gaming manoeuvres will take years to work through, which she knows like the back of her hand. Depends what you call ‘reassuring…’
Yep, Danielle’s got systems aplenty to game. She’s in her lane but it presently looks like everyone else is happy to simply pull over and watch her roar by at excessive speed. Every driver knows the satisfaction of passing by the manic who passed chim a few miles back, now pulled over on the highway side, handing cher licence to police. And then you just roll by at one click below the speed limit, fist-pumping: “Justice!—Yes! Yes!! YESSSSS!!!” while trying not to look too distracted.
I’m inclined to think pundits and politicians alike are fain to affect the same, at least for a few more bends in the road ahead, and not much over the constitutional speed limit, either. We’ll see Danielle soon enough, maybe pass her going the other way on one of her return trips from the SCoC. “Hey!—Danielle!” *Toot-toot*
*Beep-beep* “I’m back!”
I’m aware the Canadian neo-right endeavours to undermine and compromise arm’s-length impartiality of electoral officers (heck, HarperCon minister Pierre Poilievre was doing it years before ex-US president Donald F tRump started doing it), but I must say that, in a better world, inducing a UCP MLA to step down to precipitate a by-election Smith can’t lose doesn’t match by half her decision not to hold a by-election to fill a seat (last occupied by a UCP MLA) that’s already been vacant since last August. There oughta be a law: no backlogging vacant seats; by-elections must be held on a firts-come-first-served schedule.
But Danielle would doubtlessly game her way around that too—at least while ripping the tar off the TransCanada Highway on the way to Ottawa (the beauty is that neither friend nor foe is likely to advise her that having Brian Peckford along to ride shotgun probably isn’t such a good idea—leastways not while crossing eastward over the Manitoba-D’ohFo Line at warped speed).
Maybe forgoing a by-election is a preliminary taunt which Danielle’s fuller anti-federation agenda intends to aim at our country—after all, aren’t Westminster parliamentary rules, including the limit a riding can exist without representation, constitutionally enshrined?…Exactly…Smith’s constitutional challenges will be going back and forth to Ottawa so many times that she could save a lot of money by way of omnibus (or “convoy,” in Freedumbese)—a lot more than forgoing a little by-election right at her elbow in Calgary.
It rather appears—at this point, anyway—that Smith is playing a longer game than she’ll likely be able to complete—except maybe at her next radio talk-show gig where she can survey the rural voices so informative [sarcasm alert] of what Albertans want their province and Canada can and should be.
My advice? Listen carefully to the signature lyric of “LA Woman” …you know, that Doors hit that Brian Peckford wrote…
Is she actually correct that a by-election doesn’t need to be called within 1 year of a general election?
And is that constitutional convention or constitutional law?
For some reason, I thought it was 6 months.
Gerald: I have explained this in detail in tonight’s post. The Legislative Assembly Act says in effect that a by-election is not required but is still permitted within a year of a general election. Otherwise, according to the act, a by-election must be called within six months. DJC