Alberta Premier Danielle Smith at yesterday’s news conference, where she refused to comment on the hottest story of the day (Photo: Chris Schwarz, Government of Alberta).

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith hid behind a lawsuit that doesn’t exist yesterday to avoid answering reporters’ questions about her sympathetic telephone chat with an unsavoury political ally facing criminal charges.

Premier Smith’s controversial telephonic interlocutor, Artur Pawlowski (Photo: Facebook/Artur Pawlowski).

If this gambit proves anything, I suppose, it’s that there’s never a dull moment in Alberta politics nowadays. A secondary conclusion might be that the United Conservative Government is counting on the public’s understandable ignorance of the complexities of defamation law to put a new spin on a story that so far has been a disaster for Premier Smith.

Yesterday, a copy of a letter sent by a lawyer representing Ms. Smith to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation conveniently found its way into the hands of a couple of reporters at publications known to be generally sympathetic to the UCP Government.

The desired journalistic output saying Premier Smith really meant what she said soon appeared in print. “She’s going there,” exclaimed Postmedia political columnist Rick Bell. “She’s really going there.”

The lawyer’s letter threatened the CBC with a defamation lawsuit if it doesn’t retract and apologize for a report published in early January that said someone in the Premier’s Office sent letters to the Crown Prosecution Service that amounted to an attempt to interfere with cases stemming from the Coutts border blockade last year.

“Should you fail to comply with this request by Friday, April 28, 2023,” the letter said, “the Premier will take such further legal action as may be advised. We hereby provide notice of our client’s intention bring an action against the CBC, as may be required under the Defamation Act …” (That’s a lot of mays, just sayin’.) 

Postmedia political columnist Rick Bell (Photo: David J. Climenhaga).

“Absent an apology, retraction and correction from the CBC, the Premier will not be commenting further on this matter,” the letter concluded.

When Ms. Smith showed up at a news conference on an unrelated topic and encountered obviously expected questions about a more recent and only peripherally related CBC story describing similar behaviour – the broadcaster’s account of her sympathetic conversation with far-right street preacher Artur Pawlowski – she boldly refused to comment on the grounds that “this is likely to be the subject of defamation proceedings.”

“I have the ability to seek advice from my Justice officials, it’s actually part of their job, the advice that I received from my Justice officials is that there were several court actions that were taking place and until they were resolved before the court, no further action could be taken,” she said. “I follow this advice.”

Every time a reporter asked a question about the Pawlowski conversation, she repeated a version of this formula. 

Does this mean Ms. Smith is getting personal legal advice from government lawyers? That is not clear. Perhaps this question will require further clarification too, as seems to be a pattern whenever Alberta’s premier opens her mouth. 

Mount Royal University political scientist Lori Williams (Photo: Independent Power Producers Society of Alberta).

Readers need to understand, though, that without further action in the form of a statement of claim, a demand letter from a lawyer doesn’t really mean anything beyond the fact someone had enough cash on hand to pay a lawyer to write the letter. 

If you receive one of those things, your lawyer will likely advise you to ignore it and call back if you get a statement of claim. That’s the one that says, “You are being sued,” and you do need to respond promptly to that. In the meantime, though, it’s all just fun and games. I speak from some experience here.

So Ms. Smith is refusing to comment on an essentially unrelated story based on a matter that is not now before the courts and may never be. 

That’s rather cute, and it may or may not prove to be effective at bullying the media into silence. Given how effective the UCP Government’s previous attempts to suppress this story have been, I wouldn’t bet the farm on it being successful, though. But any old port in a storm, if readers will forgive a mixed metaphor. 

NDP Justice Critic Irfan Sabir (Photo: David J. Climenhaga).

As Mount Royal University political scientist Duane Bratt explained the premier’s political (not legal) strategy yesterday, by conflating the two stories and then saying she won’t comment, “it allows Smith to try and defuse a volatile and damaging issue.” She can “use this line in dealings with the press, but also in a potential leader’s debate” with NDP Leader Rachel Notley, he added. 

It also helps Ms. Smith with the UCP’s defund-the-CBC base, he observed. “It is notable that it is the only media outlet being threatened, even though all covered the Smith-Pawlowski video.”

Another Mount Royal political science prof, Lori Williams, commented, “I don’t recall anyone being this evasive in Alberta history.” 

“It’s unheard-of for someone facing criminal charges to get the Premier on the phone,” NDP Justice Critic Irfan Sabir said in remarks emailed to media yesterday. “What’s more, Smith chose to interfere in the criminal prosecution of someone accused of encouraging violence against police and participating in an illegal blockade that cost Albertans nearly a billion dollars in economic damage, who also has a long record of hateful and illegal behaviour.”

“Albertans know that Danielle Smith is not focused on their needs when she spends her time and energy trying to put her thumb on the scales of justice for him,” said Mr. Sabir, a lawyer. 

What’s Ms. Smith going to do about that? Threaten to sue Mr. Sabir too? 

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20 Comments

  1. F#%k it.
    Can we say she’s unfit and has no shame?

    So that when she sues us, the the court records of her failures illustrate the former while the proceedings themselves demonstrate the later.

  2. Well if Smith doesn’t want to comment anymore on this issue, I suppose that is understandable. Her answers have seemed unconvincing, somewhat evasive and contradictory. Also, when she has said just to be clear, she wasn’t. So I suppose she is finally getting it – talking more is not helping her case and “this is a now a legal matter …” is a clever way of saying no comment without it sounding quite so bad.

    However, just because Smith wants quit talking about this now doesn’t mean the rest of us have to. So perhaps she will excuse us and the rest of Albertans, as we continue to have this conversation. Without her muddled answers, the quality of the discussion may actually improve.

    Also if some reporters are clever enough and mischievous, they can also easily word questions on this matter in a way that make it worse for her to stick to no comment/legal matter style rote answers she seems to have chosen as her next brilliant communication strategy.

    Some people might remember one of the things that helped Harper lose his very last election was the lengths he went to avoid answering questions about the Duffy affair. While he was actually fairly successful in his stonewalling, he came across looking as he had something to hide. While people don’t expect total candor in politics, they can tell when someone is trying too hard not to talk about something. And the conclusions reached are often not favourable to the stonewaller.

  3. Danielle Smith is becoming more and more of an embarrassment, not only to herself, but to Albertans. It’s too late for her to retract. That’s her history. Behave in the most reckless fashion possible, and try to retract, after the fact. Her mouth goes before her brain does. She tries to hide, only so she can try and avoid saying something stupid. It won’t matter, because Danielle Smith will still do another gaffe. The provincial election is at the end of May and the writ still hasn’t been dropped. If she postpones the provincial election, this too could backfire on Danielle Smith.

  4. Please don’t give her ideas. We’ll have to call her “Sue” Smith.

    Lots of mays for the May election? Maybe. We could have another Alberta first. “Sue” could be the first premier in the country to call an election and sue the media on the same day. Silencing the media during an election campaign? That would be breathtakingly stupid. Never say never with the UCP, I suppose.

  5. It appears that Artur Pawlowski’s has gone onto social media even more since the notoriety of his recording of his conversation with Danielle Smith concerning swaying the Crown to dismiss the case against him, as well as others. Pawlowski now claims, in a pretty calm and relaxed way, that the CPS is involved in human sex trafficking for the benefit of the elites. Does Pawlowski actually believe that Smith will go to the mat for him because of … reasons? Now that it’s been put out there that the CPS has an interest, commercial or otherwise, in protecting drag queen read-alongs in Calgary, it’s only a matter of time before the garden variety crazies run with that notion and ramp up the lunacy.

    Mo popcorn.

  6. Since I’ve repeated the claims of the CBC story to friends and associates and have also discussed the contents of the phone call, I await my Bennett Jones letterhead. I suspect letters of intent should go out to all Albertans.

  7. It is a bluff. I cannot imagine that Danielle Smith will follow through. The last thing she wants is to be under oath at an Examination for Discovery.

    I do not understand why she is doing this. The only voters who believe her are solid UCP/TBA voters. They will vote for her no matter what.

    Just imagine when her date in April rolls around, this thing will be front and centre in the media all over again.

    I do not expect that CBC will retract anything. Moreover I suspect her position may cause others with knowledge to come forward.

  8. The child-like rural Alberta voters will eat this up, again. Must be something in the fracwater.

  9. So, if her “lawyer ” was going to hold a press conference, I couldn’t find a garden centre near the Marriott hotels, but the Edmonton Zoo was close by, would that be appropriate???
    Lawyer? he who shall not be named? or Rob or Tyler or the one who was studying “constitutional ” law ?
    Basketball controversy from March madness game: female athlete waiving her hand in front of her face, beside opposing player, aka “can’t see me ” , sounds about right for Dani …I guess the corner was occupied.

    1. Randi-lee: The name of the lawyer who wrote the letter is on the letter. DJC

      1. DJC, thanks, I missed the link the first time. Interesting that the Twitter of “disordered ” that shows the letter sent to CBC ,shows the puppy*-top left, which also what comes up when you look up Rob anderson* (@free Alberta Rob)-Twitter.com
        So did he send a copy to the friendly media? and just as a sidebar, he also responded to a tweet by Rachel saying -” that no one is above the law ” “Today Danielle Smith needs to address the people of Alberta ,and commit to a full independent investigation into her interference with our justice system ”
        He countered with– “Notley is intentionally sliming the reputations of our Alberta crown prosecutors and Premier ,for political gain. It’s defamatory …..It’s also the lowest form of politics…………….IMHO , that,
        sounds rather defamatory…..

        Bennett Jones, as in where Jk is now an “adviser ” ??

        (more intrigue and irony with what is going on with d’rump today)

  10. Gambits may be proved or might be proved, but the germane gambits in this astounding story have, in fact, already been proved, mooting the probability-qualifier, even though the question of the permission-qualifier, whether they may or may not be proved, is still a probability question. I bet you could probably even get odds on it.

    Danielle Smith’s full-on Roman legionnaires’ tortoise-, or rearguard-retreat from the omni-peltasts of news media, for example, is permissible: she may do it if she wants to; but the question isn’t really about the odds of successfully retreating to the fortified redoubt whence she may, if she likes, stump away all she wants— necessarily with a bullhorn (so’s to be heard by rural supporters out herding immunity in their pissy four terrestrial corners of Albertan hinterland): it’s rather about whether she will deploy this shield-tortoise (a tactical infantry shield-wall with a roof) with respect every issue Alberta voters need to know about in order to vote for the best government they can possibly get in (my phone says) 55 days from now.

    For if there’s one thing about Smith, it’s that her agenda has an uncanny holism about it wherein everything is connected with everything else, some of it remarkably obtuse but not without its own peculiar logic. Her independence ploy, for example, connects to defying federal law enforcement, “stand-yer-ground” rights presumably to become an amendment to the Alberta Sovereignty Act (may’s well call in “The Second” one), and the singling out of the national broadcaster among the many news media outlets which played the tape of her conversation with far-right religious wacko who wants her to protect him from serious consequences relating to charges regarding his bit in the illegal Coutts border-blockade: Smith may indeed allow that all of these interconnected nuggets of nitwittery are “likely to be subject of defamation proceedings.” It’s at least a prossibilty. Or she might yet take some advise not to be as stubborn as her stained performance has been so far— perhaps by referring to the Biblical story of Baalam’s Ass with regard holism and angels standing in her way whom she cannot see.

    To mince words another way, Smith, stormed into any old port by her latest scandal might (she certainly may, if she wants) bet the whole farm on refusing to comment on anything she doesn’t want to. Hell, even I’d give her that.

    But I wouldn’t advise her to deploy this tactic during a leaders’ debate with Opposition leader Rachel Notley who may, of course, challenge Smith on both the tactic and the strategic insanity behind it. I’d put money on it—probably. The question of who pays for lawyers is a good one, though. At this rate Smith might threaten to sue Notley for raising such hard math, and Notley or course may welcome her to do so since it couldn’t happen sooner than the Big Day. Unless Danielle goes for a gag-order injunction before
    The expected debate. …Nah, I figure she’d simply duck out.

    I’m not sure that we haven’t seen this kind of evasiveness in Alberta politics before. Premier Ralph Klein resorted to it a number of times, but more in the vein of pleading too-drunk-to-remember-whatever-I-did-last-night, and then with the mien of a man who dares anybody who takes exception to sue him. (His eventual senile dementia doesn’t count: he wasn’t the premier by that tragic time.)

    By leaving her hoof-prints in front of the line in the sand she just retreated behind, Smith has invited a field day for her partisan opponents, pundits, and news media. Good odds that we might get to see what she may do, 23-skidoo, in the week before May 29, 2023. Skidoo.

    qv: Numbers 22:21-39, KJV Holy Bible.

  11. So, the Premier used Department of Justice lawyers to write the threatening letter to CBC? If she proceeds with a lawsuit (because this whole thing is just so bizarre that she might) will she personally be suing CBC (as in, paying her own legal fees)? Or will Albertans be forced to pick up the tab for this spurious bit of nonsense? I don’t believe Albertans should have to spend a dime on this. Since when is playing a recording of what a person actually personally said, on tape, defamation? That seems more like, I don’t know, reporting…

    1. No, she used a lawyer in private practice to write the letter. However, she says she consulted with government lawyers about the case, or at least that is what her words appear to say. As you know, often the inevitable clarification of her remarks deepens the mystery, rather than clarifying things. What is unknown and is a fair question is who is paying the lawyer that wrote the letter, and out of what funds. DJC

  12. So, just a thought…
    Danielle is saying ” it was a perfect phone call ” ???
    Hmmm, why does this sound familiar?

  13. Call me confused. Item 1, Smith is saying she cannot comment because this item may come before the court, but it is not there yet. Further she is being defamed because of a recording being played and quoted of precisely what she said? Now I am sure I have gone down some kind of rabbit or gopher hole. . . . Off with their heads said the Queen.

  14. The stupidity is breathtaking.

    Just imagine. A Premier, on her way to an election, actually taking a phone call from someone currently under criminal prosecution.

    Would she accept a call from others in the same situation?

    Would she have accepted a call IF she had known that the call and the contents of the call would be in the public domain.

    As my former boss used to say…if you are not certain of your actions subject them to the scrutiny test.

    Would you make the decision, be embarrassed/shamed, or go forward with the action IF you knew beforehand that it would immediately become public knowledge?????

  15. It appears Smith has shoved her own foot deep enough into her own mouth to silence her craziness.
    Who knew it could be done this easily?

  16. Smith has nothing but utter contempt for the law and Albertans. And the journalists in her servitude are no different. She is a 21st century, right wing wanna-be dictator, a mouthpiece for, by and of the corporate class and enemy of the people, preaching to the gullible and credulous.

  17. What Danielle might not have considered is that her self imposed muzzle not only relieves her from answering embarrassing questions, it also muzzles her when she might really want to speak up to defend herself, if some new information on this topic comes out.

    I love how her, and her base, push Jason Kenney out, then she goes to Kenney’s law firm for legal advice. Given Ms. Smith’s inclination to eschew experts, you have to wonder if Jason Kenney was the one giving the legal advice, notwithstanding the fact that Munaf Mohamed’s name was on the letter.

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