Premier Danielle Smith’s nine-minute televised message to the people of Alberta last night, which at least had the virtue of brevity, could be divided into roughly four parts:
1. Inflation is Justin Trudeau’s fault, but here’s a bunch of money, so for God’s sake vote for me.
2. I’m going to fix health care. (Sorry, no details.)
3. Sovereignty Act! (But Within A United Canada.)
4. Pay no attention to anything I said before. I was just trying to sell newspapers or something.
Is this a basis on which Premier Smith could overcome a deficit in the polls that puts the Opposition NDP led by Rachel Notley in solid majority government territory if the general election were held today?
Well, anything’s possible. This is, after all, the age of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson. Still, it seems a bit far-fetched under the circumstances.
The Conservative Party of Canada under Stephen Harper had considerable success with boutique tax breaks aimed at soccer moms and similar narrow but influential demographic slices.
For Ms. Smith’s “affordability packaging” pitch, her brain trust seems to have decided on a cruder version of the same approach that adds up to a $2.4-billion list of pre-election giveaways.
She explained that her government will introduce an Inflation Relief Act in the Legislature next week, with payments to seniors, families with kids, and income support recipients; gasoline-tax cuts; re-indexed supports; electricity bill rebates, and so on. The payments will expire in six months, just after the next election.
Finance Minister Travis Toews, the old austerity hound, must wish he was back on the farm taking a walk in the snow. He probably thinks Ms. Smith’s plan, to borrow a phrase, is a black hole of vote-buying arrangements!
Not everything on the list is a bad idea, but contrary to the premier’s claims, there won’t really be something for everybody.
Some groups are definitely left out: “A family with 2 kids under 18 and a household income of $175,000 will get $1200,” tweeted University of Calgary political science professor Lisa Young after the speech. “A couple in their late 60s earning $175,000 will get $1200. A single person between 18 and 64 earning $30,000 will get nothing, unless they are an AISH recipient.”
In the past few days, there seemed to be a general buzz that Ms. Smith would opt for a Ralph Klein style straight-up cash giveaway to everyone.
So will last night’s complicated list of promises leave a lot of Albertans feeling left out and grumpy, or too distracted to figure out what their share of the loot is?
Probably.
Then there’s Ms. Smith’s health care plan, important because there’s a near universal consensus the province’s health care system is a mess, and lots of fear based on recent things the premier has said about how we could fix it by introducing U.S.-style medicine.
Close to 60 per cent of voters, according to that recent poll, are said to think the United Conservative Party is on the wrong track when it comes to health care – and that was before Ms. Smith’s plan to groom us for American-style health care with co-pays and user fees hit the news feeds.
But about all her so-called Healthcare Action Plan amounts to is a list of things she says she’s going to fix, like cutting Emergency Room wait times, improving ambulance response times, and reducing wait times for surgeries.
As University of Alberta political scientist Jared Wesley observed in a tweet last night, “I don’t know who needs to hear this, but ‘We’re going to make healthcare better!’ isn’t a plan.”
Then there was that Sovereignty Act again – which, like a dog with a bone, Ms. Smith just can’t leave alone, even though it’s scaring the hell out of a lot of voters. But wait, now it’s called the Sovereignty Within A United Canada Act, so we’re OK!
Finally, there was Ms. Smith’s glib assurance we need not worry our pretty little heads about all the stuff she said before because she was just being a cynical journalist.
I’m not making this up. Here’s what she actually said:
“I know that I’m far from perfect, and I’ve made mistakes. And having spent decades in media and hosting talk shows, I’ve discussed hundreds of different topics, and sometimes took controversial positions, many of which I’ve evolved and changed as I’ve grown and learned from listening to you.”
Readers will recall that Ms. Smith’s most controversial recent past position, on health care co-pays and user fees, was published in June 2021 and repeated several times since.
“I’m not a talk show host or a media commentator any longer,” she went on, a smug look playing on her face. “That’s not my job today. My job today is to serve each and every Albertan with everything I have, and to the best of my ability, however imperfect that may be at times. I must be humble, listen, and continue to learn from you.”
This actually looks better in print than it sounded. I recommend that readers watch the last moments of the video for themselves.
As the U of C’s Dr. Young said in a Substack post yesterday, “Voters are confronted with the question of who Danielle Smith really is. The libertarian who advocates health care by go-fund-me or the free-spending premier who feels your inflation pain? The populist who flirted with separatism or the ‘Sovereign Alberta Within a United Canada’ patriot?”
It’s doubtful I’ve been listening to you can change enough minds to salvage Ms. Smith’s approval ratings by May 29.
So don’t count on getting to go to the polls until fall at least, maybe 2024.
Yes, I suspect those voters who are are making much less than $180,000, but don’t happen to be either in the UCP approved parents or seniors categories, will be mad as heck with Smith’s targeted spending. If your kids have just finished high school, you are probably out of luck with Smith’s plan. You can just suck lemons and suck it up with inflation too. At least in Saskatchewan or Quebec you would get something. Even Ralph was more generous with his one time payments to everyone.
Of course, this $100 a month or so that ends around election day isn’t really a lot. The monthly Federal Child Benefit program is usually much more generous. It and the Guaranteed Income Supplement for Seniors are permanent things that don’t end in six months or so. I really doubt Smith would like her short term burst of spending compared to these long standing Federal programs, especially when it does not look so great in comparison.
Maybe Smith has learned her lesson after years of crazy talk, although at this point who knows what she really believes or would do anymore. Altough she surely wants us to believe this at least until the next election. I don’t find her somewhat desperate attempt to fake reasonableness that convincing. It seems somewhat forced and shallow, like a political death bed conversion.
However, perhaps others will be more generous and willing to believe her, but I have always found Smith to be somewhat glib. She seems like a professional talker always in search of the right words, to provide cover for her.
Klein was not a rigid ideologue and he had some humility. He could be petty and mean spirited at times, generous at others, but he didn’t come across as if he thought he was the smartest person in the room. The ideologues who have taken over the successor to his party seem far too certain in what they believe, although they are at least clever enough to know they now have to hide it from the voters or try confuse people, because what they really want isn’t going to sell. Hence we now have contradictions such as a sovereign Alberta in a strong and united Canada.
In a few months this latest blast of targeted Alberta government spending will be over, even for those who benefit from it. However we will all have to live with who we choose as the next government for the next four years. I don’t see the doubts about Smith and all her past mis steps or questionable statements going away, even if she has temporarily opened the spending tap.
I really dislike tax rebates on principle. When we pay taxes, we (in theory, willingly) trade off some control over how our money is spent in return for greatly magnifying the purchasing power of our money. For example, the Canadian taxpayer paid to invent, manufacture, and distribute insulin, at cost, to all of Canada and beyond, for a small fraction of what it costs Americans to self-righteously withhold insulin from their poorer citizens because “If they had worked hard and made good decisions, like *I* did, they wouldn’t need a handout! Also, Jeff Bezo’s next spaceship isn’t going to build itself.”
Refunding the tax dollars people gave for government programs so that they can freely choose to do whatever they want with the money ignores the fact that most of them will be unable to afford to “freely choose” to get the thing they agreed to pay the tax for in the first place, be it health care, education, law and order, or a solid gold staircase to Jupiter. Giving people the ability to choose means allowing them to experience the consequences of their choices. Gonna take a deep breath, not say anything else, and move on.
“Ordinary Canadians can better spend their hard earned money than out-of-touch arrogant Ottawa elites,” is the snake oil that helps the poison go down, the goad that makes the ox turn, the red cape the matador leads the bull with. It is just one more page in the playbook of the fork tongued Little Eichmanns tasked with convincing us to get up every morning and work to create our own extinction for the profit of the owning class. Remember the news agencies who said we needed to let our grandparents die to get the economy going again? Remember the politicians who protected the people who had made billions owning highly profitable abusive hellhole deathtrap long term care centers that so many “middle class” elders died so helplessly and piteously in, and then got re-elected? They’ll do the same thing to you and me. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. To them, we’re not citizens, we’re cattle.
I liked the part where federal Canada has abused all of Canada but it has abused us more so by fighting Canada we are helping all of Canada be a better Canada and please like me now not who I was but how I am and who I hope to be… like premier 6 months from now… From a campfire chat with cherokee smith. (not verbatim but close in its’ own way.)
It’s hard to tell who the actual Danielle Smith is these days, because she is much like a chameleon. From my standpoint, I see her only as another pretend conservative and Reformer, much like Ralph Klein was, who is allowing the worst oil royalty rates, the worst corporate tax rates, which lost us a fortune, doing the most priciest shenanigans, destroying public education, and public healthcare in Alberta, so they can be privatized, and buying votes. We certainly didn’t see this level of stupidity under Peter Lougheed. If Albertans are dumb enough to be fooled by this, they must take responsibility for what happens.
Ralph Klein was in a similar situation. He did one stupid act, right after another, and that had caught up with him. You can only get drunk and throw money at the homeless, berate opposition MLAs, make a mockery of the disabled, or treat farmers and cattle ranchers like dirt, for only so long, before your own party considers you to be a liability. When this happens, and your political tenure is set to crash, you think you can win back the hearts of people by buying votes. It still didn’t succeed with Ralph Klein, because his own party dumped him. It’s sucking up to the electorate. Mind you, Danielle Smith has never had an issue with the booze, like Ralph Klein did, but she still possesses a knack for sticking her appendage in her mouth, far too often. This is why there is a rush of cash handed out for vote buying. It is a very bad thing to do. The money should be put to good use, like fattening up the Heritage Savings Trust Fund, because there isn’t that much in it, or be put into the public education system, and the public healthcare system in Alberta. These vote buying ploys, come with a cost. That cost is the extremely volatile commodity of oil. When the oil prices nosedive, where’s the money going to come from to be able to pay for the things we need? More cuts will have to commence. Tax hikes might have to happen. We definitely have another horrific mess in our midst.
9 min. of ” don’t tread on me” , (minus the flag in the background. )
I got caught, I’m sorry, I’ll do better, give me another chance ,things will be better, I’ll be different, yada yada……..
“but Ralph is still my hero.”
Which is ironic, because I felt like I was listening to my ex, after a fall off the proverbial wagon, and he was reciting the litany…..
and trying to hold her one hand down to keep from tapping her fingers, counting ?? It’s rather interesting that like PP ,for someone who wants to be top dog in the political field, they have such an aversion to speaking to the media, unless they know they are in a “safe ” bubble…. what no questions??
well I am who i am … uh huh !!
Hook, line and sinker, here fishy fish…..
Haha dated obscure reference but I’m reminded of Saddam Hussein’s song in the South Park movie: “I can change, I can change! It’s not my fault I’ve been a greasy little butthole. Don’t be such a twit, Mother Teresa won’t have s* on me.”
I note that Ms. Smith did not specify which of her statements or beliefs she no longer holds and specifically how she has evolved. She pretends she is the heir to Ralph Klein in his ability to admit to and apologize for mistakes and move on. But Klein would apologize for specific speech and behaviour. With Ms. Smith, we get a bunch of Jedi hand waving — move along, these aren’t the toxic, batshit crazy, Ayn Rand and GOP-inspired ideological positions you are looking for.
That strategy might work on a segment of the population perhaps (Obi-Wan can tell you who). It won’t work on informed voters, especially because these statements exist on the Internet where they are never deleted (Ms. Smith’s comms team is furiously removing many of her objectionable Tweets, but a lot of these have been screenshotted or preserved on the Internet Wayback machine).
Further, as our commentator points out with her stubborn refusal to stop mentioning the Sovereignty Act nonsense. there are certain topics she cannot resist and certain crazy ideas she can’t help from embracing. I doubt she is disciplined enough to resist restating many of her crazy ideas for public consumption before the election. She did, after all, in an astonishing display of poor judgement, appear on Jordan Peterson’s podcast. And she likely does believe in some of the crazy stuff she has said with regard to cancer, etc. A nut case will not be able to hide they are a nut case over the long term. Ms. Smith has plenty of time to cause more damage to her reputation before the election.
In the end, Ayn Rand ended up down on her luck, collecting Social Security and using Medicare. I’d say she had to eat her own words, but libertarians seem fine with dichotomy. Any old, sick libertarian could end up in the same boat.
https://www.openculture.com/2016/12/when-ayn-rand-collected-social-security-medicare.html
Ayn Rand was a hypocrite of the first water who tapped into the fears that many Americans and others had with the growth of the centralized state that was necessary for the New Deal and other innovations of the modern state that were created to help lift people up and create a large middle class.
This, and the series it appears in, is also a good read.
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2022/09/erik-visits-an-american-grave-part-1206
Phogiston….when asked by a reporter on her views about covid, e.coli and cancer….she said she had changed her views on e.coli …..take what you will from that….
from back in the day, to evolve
*hit on a rock and the sun hatched ’em …..
Since the Alberta govt has no idea how many kids or seniors there are in this province, in order to disburse all this money they will have to use the federal income tax system to help them out.
And since according to Smith, inflation is Trudeau’s fault, maybe Trudeau will see this as an opportunity to make a little extra income on the side, by charging a ‘Inflation fighter surcharge’ for use of federal data.
There is an existing Alberta Child and Family Benefit, which according to the website provides direct financial assistance to lower and middle-income families with children under 18, so perhaps they already do have some information.
However interestingly the income cut off for it seems much lower than for this new temporary payment, so maybe they don’t have information for everyone. If your family income is closer to $180,000, maybe then your cheque is not in the mail quite yet and will be delayed until they can works things out with the Feds.
One day it’s austerity the next largesse. Let’s cut a buck off the minumum wage,let’s de index AISH and social assistance and we’ll cut the corporate tax rate, and give billions to O & G. Now she’s giving billions away to select groups. What a waste.
Never mind the spring or 2024 she needs to call a general election right now but she won’t even call the empty Calgary MLA seat. Without a mandate she is ruling by fiat, by dictat, there is no other way of looking at it. What ever harebrained idea pops into her head we live with the consequences.This is JK’s legacy. This is what ” Unite the Right” or should I say ” Unite the Right at all costs” has wrought, ideology trumps good governance.
It seems that someone has really “screwed the pooch” in Alberta.
I can’t remember when, or even if, I have seen/heard such an insincere, self-satisfied politician making such an appallingly hypocritical speech.
A single person between 18 and 64 earning $30,000 will get nothing, unless they are an AISH recipient.”
Because of course, single people aren’t struggling with inflation at all.
“If single people were “people,” they’d be married to their high school sweethearts and have white, Conservative, Christian, cisgendered-or-else children. We only give tax breaks to people. …Why are you looking at me like that?”
-The UCP management, providing an example of why the ruling class of any society never says the quiet part out loud.
If Danielle Smith and her UCP were truly concerned about affordability, they would stop working to make user-pay health care a reality for Albertans. Unpaid health care bills are bankrupting our American cousins. The same will follow for us.
There’s an old saying about highly manipulative people: believe them the first time. That’s the problem for Alberta’s premier. We heard her the first time. We heard her the second time, and all the times after that. She wants to destroy public health care, and one of her ministers continues to work on that objective today. TV Danielle Smith says one thing, while the real Danielle Smith works behind the scenes toward a system that will bankrupt ordinary Albertans. The bribes going out now will not begin to cover the private-pay cost of a single trip to the emergency room, let alone a hospital stay.
Clearly, the DaniDollars™ scheme is aimed at parents of school children, to get them to shut up about the new curriculum and the 18%+ absentee rates from schools due to some mysterious respiratory illness and lack of masking. Will they remember that time they had to take a sick child to the ED, and waited 17 hours for help? Will they remember how the UCP failed to protect their children at school with HVAC upgrades that would improve ventilation and air filtration? Will they remember how simple masks could have drastically cut down on infections? Will they remember that DaniDollars™ would not begin to cover the cost of private-pay health for this visit?
Smith is counting on seniors to vote for any old wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Post-secondary students will get nothing from this bundle of bribes. Instead, the UCP have increased tuition, raised student loan rates and removed the tuition tax credit. This is the clearest indication that the money flying out the door last night is pure graft. If the UCP were concerned about affordability, this group needs help. No, this is pure politics. PSE students are obviously not the UCP demographic in the May 2923 election.
It’s not just single people in the 18-64 age group who have been burned by the DaniDollars™ scheme. Families earning less than $180,000 with PSE students over age 18 will get the $200 household bribe, handed out in $50 increments, while at the same time paying out more for tuition, having lost the tuition tax credit and their student paying more for their student loans. Does “household” apply only to homeowners? Skinflint Dani must have forgotten that her mentor Ralph Klein gave every citizen $400, before inflation eroded that away to nothing. So you see, PSE students and their parents are being punished for daring to value education, and the promise of a better life. Fortunately, that education is portable. Alberta’s brain drain should really pick up speed now.
I have met I wanna say 5? nurses and two doctors from Alberta doing temporary stints in the BC clinic I work in. All of them left on purpose, none are coming back, all speak bitterly about Alberta and mention peers who are now working in a privately owned, for-profit context that honestly sound pretty sweet compared to the crap I deal with. Taxpayer recently flew me to bf nowhere to do something because the person who was doing four jobs, one of them ordering and distributing vaccines to several rural communities, got two weeks off work with eight months notice, and they couldn’t find or train anyone to fill the gap. I really suck at being a Canadian, I know I’m supposed to be eager to selfishly waste tax dollars but I just don’t feel it and never have. Anyone seeking ethical work, apply at your nearest health care center, if you can work a mop or flip an egg you can contribute.
While I’m not under my name, bonus funny-but-not-funny-when-you-think-about-it story -a bunch of people at work have signatures on their emails making kinda vapid statements about unceded land. I didn’t cause I didn’t want to say things that didn’t mean anything, but eventually someone quietly mentioned it wasn’t a good look. I put in something like “I acknowledge that Canadian law clearly states that we are on the sovereign territory of X nation, and call for Canada and BC to immediately cease their extralegal occupation and provide restitution for the many atrocities deliberately inflicted upon X people by agents of the crown.”
Lasted 16 hours. My boss was nicer than he had to be. Felt good to do something according to my values for a change, however futile and potentially self-destructive. At least I made the white Canadian man who makes six figures to run an institution tell me I can’t say it. I guess? I’m like the Glass Joe of Don Quixotes – windmills: 99; me: 0. It would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic.
Ha, Ha,
I can’t believe she’ll give me and my wife a total of $1200. I don’t need the money. The funny thing is, she could give me a million, which I also don’t need, and I still wouldn’t vote for her. I’ll take her vote buying money, but it won’t do her any good in my case, or that of my wife.
Seems to me that she is giving back what Jason Kenney’s government took away. So people will be, maybe, in the same spot they were in 2019 before Jason Kenney’s government did away with all kinds of supports for the most vulnerable people.
Is making $175,000 still middle-class?
And I would not trust Danielle Smith’s evolution into more moderate, caring person by any stretch of my imagination.
Hana Razga: What is Danielle Smith going to say when this vote buying frenzy causes Alberta’s revenue stream to be dissipated, because oil prices are plummeting? There will be a big problem on Danielle Smith’s hands.
Why $180000? Why not $171244? At that income, your OAS is being clawed back and $100 won’t even buy Uncle Pennybags a decent bottle of scotch. Conservatism is the ultimate zero sum game: if “the other” gets more rights or more money, then “we” get fewer rights and less money. And as Thatcher said:”There is no society.” Just personal enrichment at the expense of others.
Yeah, frustrating to me that Thatcher’s bad-faith category error somehow justified exterminating our way of life so plutocrats could steal all our stuff and, with luck, succeed in turning our descendants into serfs before causing our extinction.
Society isn’t a “who,” it’s the “political and cultural setting that the play that is our lives takes place in.” Asking “who society is” is like asking “which building the university is.”
Just thinking out loud here: what if we all took the money she will be handing out and donated it to the NDP?
Too many Albertans will buy this “story” of largesse while forgetting that all of it will end in 6 months. But the prices of groceries, fuel, home heating, electricity, etc. will all have increased and will not be coming down any time soon after next May. Only a recession will bring those prices down, but then, how many will not be working at that point.
What do we have here? More yabba dabba doofus ‘logic’ from an individual, acting as a ‘leader’, that is little more than a manufactured sham?!
“So, we find ourselves at an impasse where people want their government to continue to increase spending, but taxpayers want their own taxes to go down and everyone hopes resource revenues materialize to pay for it all. It is absurd and dangerous.”–D. Smith, policy paper.
But, wait a minute kids, there’s more:
“As a province, we can’t solve this inflation crisis on our own. But due to our strong fiscal position and balanced budget, we can offer substantial relief so Albertans and their families are better able to manage through this storm.”–D. Smith, televised suppertime speech.
Remembering that our old friend Juncker has stated openly that: “When it becomes serious you have to lie”.
So it appears that the larger surrounding culture and individuals (or at least some individuals) appear to have moved far beyond simple deception by thoroughly and enthusiastically embracing ‘Doublethink’ as a way of being, because it is apparently the case that dishonesty, deception, and larceny have all become the most sought after virtues in this society, both collectively and individually (as is representative in the Academy, politics and in business [SBF/FTX, for e.eg.]).
I am quite fearful of any version of Danielle Smith but the least objectionable version would be one that is less libertarian and less loony. She might do a lot of public spending until she gets elected and then she will revert course and carry on with privatization, deregulation, and conctacting out.
Welcome to Ralph’s World, Welcome to Ralph’s World, Welcome to Ralph’s World…
Never mind that mantra behind the curtain, Toto, but you have to admit a bucketful of white foundation is a clever way of making Danielle looks like a ghoulish wax museum likeness of herself—much, much better than the Wicked Witch of the West glowering fish-eyed out of a crystal ball screeching “Auntie Fed, Auntie-Fed, Auntie Fed—Bwa-Bwa-Bwahahahahaha!!”
At least there was a hint of psephological concern apparent—apparently that Smith should prudently soften some of her more alarming rhetoric from before time began, way back on November 8th, 2022. It only makes sense that at least half of her caucus meekly suggest, “temperance—just a teeny-weenie bit…,” through the quavering voice of their joint shock and awe, “…and maybe, maybe, maybe a wee bit—just a teeny tad, b-b-b-b-but only if it’s okay with you, your majesty —a little, ahem!—retraction of the most—uh—‘brilliant’ of, “your brilliance, O Princess of the Storm-winds. It’s is probably just blinding the peasants, unaccustomed as they must be to such a—uh—blinding light.” Caucus, naturally, must be wondering what the little matter of unpopularity might have in store for them in the, “n-n-n-ne-ne-ne-ext…el-el-el-l-l-le-le-le-ection, q-quaint and outm-m-mo-moded as el-l-lections sh-surely are, Your Highness.”
“Oh, alright, then!” Danielle impatiently stamps her hoof, “but I’ll do it myself—I don’t need any of your lame PR tricks!”
“Yes, Mistress,” they grovel, bending and scraping before cowering out single file, chanting their mournful, baritone Slavic lament in Locrian mode: “Yo-Wee-Yo, Aweeeee-O, Yo-Wee-Yo, Aweeee-O, Yo-Weee-Yo, Aweeee-O,…”
Back in Kansas-asskiss where the law of reality occasionally rules, everybody’s puzzling over the UCP’s popularity question, the rookie governing party already on the rocky shoals of defeat in only six months when the next general election is scheduled. A few things can be gleaned so far.
Smith’s agenda is so preposterously ambitious, highly controversial and contentious that even if she repeals or ignores the fixed-term law in order to get it done —at least on paper (of Danielle’s faerie-tale book)—it cannot possibly resurrect the party’s popularity enough to win even a minority, neither in 2023 nor in 2024, the constitutional maximum term limit. (Could that be one a them federal laws that attacks Alberta and she’s sworn not to enforce? “What care I for the law”—with apologies to Steve Goodman’s “Lincoln Park Pirates.” )
Smith is so popular-politics deficient that she’s undeterred by disapproval. She proved it as the member of a school board whose obstreperousness required the province to decommission the whole bunch and do the work itself. Again, she temporized too long under a misconception of freedom of speech before (sort of) reprimanding the intemperate “Lake of Fire” campaign rhetoric of a candidate, which ultimately denied the first party she destroyed the 2012 election (which it was predicted to win); and again, she crossed the floor to the second party she destroyed in 2015. Both of those moves were very unpopular and voters disapproved of—big time! She seems prepared to ignore mounting disapproval of the third party which, as a result, she will also probably destroy. Why doesn’t the most basic psephological arithmetic seem to matter to her?
The only answer has to be that she is not in power to provide good government but, rather, to destroy the one thing she’s obsessed about for decades: public healthcare. I shan’t list her other policies which even a school kid would identify as very unpopular, but simply put healthcare at the top. And extending the term, which looks more likely every day, is also very unpopular, as a rule of normal psephology. And she heeds not the maxim that, if you’re in a hole (the UCP is already way behind the NDP in the polls), stop digging. But that came from Preston Manning, not the from the temple where Danielle worships, where her god’s statue commemorates the premier who sent the province and the veteran ProgCons into terminal deklein—with Danielle supplying the final, fatal votive. Everything from her past, present and prospect indicates that if she can achieve the objective of her pathological hatred for public healthcare, then her task will have been fulfilled. If she has to destroy a third party to do it, to make it more unpopular than it already is, to make it unelectable, then so be it.
Another metric is her demonstrated disdain for democratic principle: her enormous agenda would require near unanimity to accomplish, but she proceeds with little more than 3% of the electorate’s approval (and barely half of her own party’s); she neglected to call a by-election in Calgary-Elbow, the seat vacated months before she weaselled into the premier’s office, but instead made another UCP MLA vacate a safe seat so she’d be sure to win it for herself. (Calgary-Elbow will very likely be without a representative until the next general election, even if it’s not held until well into the near-five-year vote-starvation zone).
Which is the long way of saying Smith doesn’t care about popularity so long’s she gets public healthcare permanently destroyed.
The good news is that Albertans can endure this extreme anomaly, can repair whatever it damages once it’s gone—speaking of “permanently destroyed.”
I know, I know: it’s small consolation with the darkest tunnel on track, dead ahead.
Don’t lose hope, my Alberta friends. Pretend it’s only a movie…but be careful, anyway.
The Alberta fools sure bought the handout when Smith’s hero Ralph Klein bought off the idiots with $400.dollars now she wants to do it with $300. yet every man, woman and child in Alaska got $6,142. over the past five years and as the oilmen point out our oil production is huge compared to theirs. Once again you can’t trust a Reformer and once again no mention of collecting proper royalties and taxes and funding our services properly. Helping the rich steal our wealth is all they care about.
The hilarity of Danielle Smith’s tenure just keeps ramping up. First, she opens the Horn O’Plenty and bails out insane amounts of money for, not surprisingly, those who don’t need it. Oh, and rolling back the UCP’s boneheaded policy moves on AISH and similar areas. Governing from the left is fine, but there’s that hard shift to the right that everyone should be concerned about.
And Smith advised everyone, with a happy giggle, that she may have said controversial things on her talk radio show. But she’s grown and come to see things in another way. What unfolded aldrin there is the strange tale of two Danielle Smiths: one the raging talk radio whack job and conspiracy monger; but on the other, she’s declared herself to be a reasonable person.
Of course that weird Sovereignty Act which is coming, but she refuses to talk about, could mean Smith’s undoing. I presume the expectation when that happens is Smith will break the Horn O’Plenty again.
Blame PMJT or Notley for all this? It’s going to be hard to keep track.
Unchecked government spending causes inflation – Pierre Poilievre. “Hold my beer” – Daniel Smith. Can we coin the term “just Smithflation” yet or is it too soon?
Thanks Mike for brightening my day, not too at all…CHEERS !!
Scotty…so any timeline on when this B-grade book will be out, you could go on the auspicious of “Politics for dummies ” or vice versa, if it isn’t copyright infringement , and if she comes out wearing red shoes for the fiscal report today, you know that Dorthy has been waylaid… mashup of WWW and Cruella??very entertaining visuals, Ta!
Just another day in….
” As Alberta Turns “..
DJC..It’s really hard to keep up, but certainly not for lack of material for you to comment on ..
Tyler Shandro…..”the commissioner of the RCMP must be held to the highest of standards….Lucki has failed to meet even the most meagre of standards for the past two years…
All I can say is wow!! the proverbial pot ,calling the kettle…what with the controversy over him and his wife re: Vital Health being conflict of interest, the Law society of Alberta conducthearing that’s been postponed until Jan , the hoopla about the director of the human rights commission (May) and asking Albertan’s to give him time to earn back their trust, after vacationing abroad during the pandemic lockdown….and that’s not even counting Kaycee Madu as former justice minister.
“This is an abrogation of the minister’s core responsibility to Canadians *and must be rectified before the RCMP’s reputation as Canada’s federal police service is further damaged”
* substitute Albertan’s.
and left unsaid…this is why we need to establish our provincial police ???? I’m just saying that this is what it sounds like to me, but hey ,all those pots look the same to me right now, except for the kettle that’s sitting on the stove steaming merrily away.
Economy controllers we call them ,and with economy narratives comes the round up,
Heard the other day ,so what if the Premier is a liar ,as long as the money rolls ,yes I remember the economy thing very well