“Premier Smith says she’s waiting on Nenshi to call Lethbridge-West by-election,” said the headline yesterday on the MyLethbridgeNow.com website

Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi (Photo: David J. Climenhaga).

I’m going to give the good folks at the Southern Alberta news site the benefit of the doubt and assume someone there is having a little fun with Danielle Smith, the occupant of the top political job in Alberta, who is acting as if she doesn’t understand who gets to call by-elections in the Westminster Parliamentary system.(Hint: It’s not the unelected leader of an opposition party.)

In addition to being a premier, Ms. Smith is the beneficiary of a first-class public post-secondary education at the University of Calgary – a leading Canadian institution of higher learning, surely – which presumably involved passing a political science course or two. 

So I’m sure she understood as well as the rest of us do that when a vacancy is created in the Legislature, as occurred in the Lethbridge-West Riding last Canada Day when former NDP MLA Shannon Phillips’ resignation took effect, it is the lieutenant-governor who sets the date of the election on the “advice” of the premier. 

Since in our Parliamentary system the advice of the premier is really a command, it is therefore Ms. Smith who gets to set the date of the by-election – within a limit of six months from the day the vacancy was created, no general election pending. 

Nevertheless, as the MLN story put it more accurately than the headline, when Ms. Smith was in Lethbridge Monday to campaign for the United Conservative Party candidate in the by-election that she has not yet called, she told reporters “she is holding off on calling an election in the riding to see where NDP leader Naheed Nenshi will be running for a legislative seat in the province.”

Opposition Leader Christina Gray (Photo: David J. Climenhaga).

It would be fair to describe this as mischievous, or sophomoric, but either way it is nonsense. 

What it illustrates above all else is that the UCP since Ms. Smith took over as premier sees itself, and often acts, as if it were the Opposition. That is a job, of course, in which the premier has some experience. 

Without a doubt, she and her advisers have a childish desire to needle Mr. Nenshi for being in no hurry to set foot inside the Chamber of the Legislature, his non-member status bestowing certain political advantages on him in the short term, among them freedom to campaign full-time and no need to ask a sitting member of his party to give up a seat. 

“I’m kind of waiting for the Leader of the official Opposition,” the premier told the reporters. 

Of course, for the time being, the leader of the official Opposition is Edmonton-Mill Woods MLA Christina Gray, which should only be slightly confusing to a premier even though Mr. Nenshi is nevertheless the leader of the Opposition party. Readers of this blog, who follow politics closely, will instinctively grasp the difference. 

Former Lethbridge-West MLA Shannon Phillips in 2015 (Photo: David J. Climenhaga).

For his part, Mr. Nenshi responded by advising the premier to fire one of her cabinet ministers to open a seat in Calgary for him to run in, a suggestion that is genuinely amusing.

The MLN story, which followed the outline of the Canadian Press account of the same event with a little local colour tossed in, continued: “Smith says for the interest of taxpayers it would be nice to hold both by-elections at the same time and with Nenshi having been elected leader of the party back in June she thought by now one of his caucus members would have stepped down for him.”

She argued, The CP reported, that it would be “in the best interests of taxpayers to have both byelections at the same time.”

Readers with longish memories will recall that in October 2022 Ms. Smith took a completely opposite position when it was convenient to her, refusing to call a by election in the Calgary-Elbow riding, which was known to be leaning toward the NDP after the resignation of MLA Doug Schweitzer, when she wanted to a safe seat in the Legislature for herself.

Former Calgary-Elbow MLA Doug Schweitzer (Photo: David J. Climenhaga).

In the event, she induced a rural MLA to step aside and ran in Brooks-Medicine Hat without calling an election in Calgary-Elbow. Ms. Smith’s justification for that outrageous and fundamentally undemocratic plan to treat voters in different locations in dramatically different ways was, in her own words, that it would cost too much to hold two by-elections!

“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,” she told the CBC at the time.

I wasn’t making that up two years ago, and I’m not making it up now!

“Hypocrisy, thy name is Danielle,” Mr. Nenshi, Calgary’s former mayor, commented Monday. 

Well, as has been noted in this space before, Alberta’s premier, like Oscar Wilde, believes consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. 

The Irish playwright and poet, possibly the greatest wit of the 19th Century, was kidding. It’s not clear Ms. Smith is, though.

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23 Comments

  1. Yes, Smith is not known for her consistency and it has been observed more than once that she has a vivid imagination.

    Maybe she was too busy imagining conspiracies against her to notice some time ago when Nenshi emphatically said he wasn’t running in Lethbridge, because he didn’t live there. And he also then said he was not in a hurry to run in another area either. Lastly the NDP nominated a candidate in Lethbridge. I feel this all seems quite clear. What part of this does Smith not get?

    Perhaps she is unhappy Nenshi will be free to travel around the province while she is pinned down under the dome. Maybe she is not confident about the UCP’s chances in a by-election in Lethbridge and is looking for an excuse to postpone it, just like she postponed one in Calgary before. She has a track record of this already, doesn’t she?

    Well this doesn’t make Smith look good or consistent, but whats new. After some in the UCP saying they would get rid of her soon after the election regardless, they seem willing to put up with her, at least so far. This leads me to believe that her inconsistency and at times extreme temperament is not considered a bug, but a feature by the UCP.

  2. Perhaps it will be too costly to hold a provincial election by the time 2027 rolls around, so the AB premier will declare all seats UCP in perpetuity in order to save common cents. Think of the slogans. Ditch democracy! Axe elections! Dupe the dolts!

    1. It is very clear Ms. Smith has had practice and continues to “Dupe the dolts” as you put it!

  3. Reminds me of this other Wilde quote: people are spreading viscous rumours about me, all of which are perfectly true. Or something to that effect.

  4. A somewhat poignant Lethbridge Herald photo of Smith’s walk in the snow. I mean, she was out, walking in the snow, in Lethbridge. Desperate times. I have so many questions: why the insecticide and wood preservative coat? A comment on Lethbridge? A connection to old wood? And where is her Premier jacket? Probably smelled too much of smoke.

  5. You really have to wonder what the UCP’s polling is telling them about Lethbridge West. On the face of it, the by-election is a politically can’t-lose situation for the UCP: if they lose they can just point out the riding has been an NDP stronghold for nearly 10 years, so the loss was expected, and there is always the possibility they could take it.

    Really, the only way for the UCP to get embarrassed by the by-election results would be if the UCP lost big time, which makes me wonder what the polls are telling the UCP.

    This whole issue reminds me of how Danielle Smith chose not to run in her home riding in the last general election. Readers may recall the riding was won by Michaela Glasgo in the 2019 election that brought Jason Kenney’s new party to power. Ms. Glasgo got married during her first term in office, and had already announced she would not seek re-election before Danielle Smith won the UCP leadership, saying she wanted to start a family. Ms. Glasgo had also backed Rebecca Schultz for the UCP leadership, so Danielle Smith’s winning of the leadership provided Ms. Glasgo (now Frey) with the opportunity to leave her office a bit earlier than she planned, and also avoid serving under Danielle Smith. As a result it wasn’t much of a sacrifice for her to step aside and let Danielle Smith run in a by-election in her riding.

    The 2023 General Election is another matter, however. The incumbent, Roger Reid, announced he would not run in 2023, so the riding was wide open for Ms. Smith to run in her home riding, but she chose not to. It is my opinion that High River is urban enough that she was afraid of the embarrassment of losing her own seat in the election, especially since she could only muster 55% of the popular vote in the Brooks-Medicine Hat byelection.

    https://medicinehatnews.com/news/local-news/2022/09/27/mla-frey-wont-run-again/

    1. @Bob if I remember correctly, that riding is a mix of rural & urban. Smith lost all of the urban polls in that riding, it was the rural polls that barely gave her the seat.

  6. It’s quite likely the premier is timing the by-election for post-secondary winter break. The week between Christmas and New Year’s Day could be her preferred window. Perhaps she should tell Lethbridge police to stay away from kiddies in Star Wars costumes this Halloween and to avoid running over Santa’s reindeer in December.

  7. Smith is incompetent. She can campaign, in a fashion, but cannot govern.

    Who knows, maybe someone else will need a by-election after the clown party’s AGM.

  8. It’s just so cute that our Premier, the intellectual Colossus that she is, speaks to reporters in her folksy, corn cob pipe dialect in stating that she’s ’kind of’ waiting for Nenshi.
    At next year’s G7 confab in Kananaskis she’ll hopefully greet the leaders of the major industrial nations of the world with a hearty “Howdy”.

    1. I hope that she’ll have purchased a Kananaskis access pass for that event.
      Unless, of course, she chooses to divert instead to trash McLean Creek where it’s free of charge.

  9. Danielle Smith is very frightened of Naheed Nenshi, and she won’t be able to debate him without tripping and falling. He knows her like he knows the back of his hand. His decades of experience with being aware of what she is like will bring her down. She doesn’t want a formidable opposition in the Alberta Legislature, so she wants to curtail how much Legislature sittings there are, and prevent any by-elections that would allow an NDP (or anything that isn’t from the UCP) to get that seat.

    1. Don’t be too sure about that, Anonymous. Ms. Smith is very good at gaslighting and very good at sounding sensible when saying things that, when parsed, are gibberish. Don’t count her out. DJC

  10. Timely plums arriving in Lethbridge as we speak. Water treatment upgrades, cath lab, physician training spots… Still can’t hold on to their doctors though. Maybe the shiny new treatment plant will placate the CUPE employees there who are currently being mediated at. They should just go get jobs in the booming renewables industry in southern Alberta…no? I am truly confused by Ric McIver’s assertion: “Most municipalities”, said McIver, “put in more water than they take out of a river.” Miracle on the prairies? Imported BC beer? Neudorf from the same article is growing schools out of water. Must be those private schools. Maybe someone who knows more can enlighten me?

    1. Emily: I’d missed that gem about most municipalities putting more water into the river than they take out. Delightful. They could probably put even more if they weren’t so busy converting some of the surplus water into wine. DJC

  11. I understand that Queen Danielle does have a university degree from the U of C. It’s a degree in something called B.A. International Relations. (It’s also the same degree that Skippy Pollivere has — the one that took him twelve years to attain for reasons.

    This degree strikes me as one of those strange degrees that people get just to have an degree. Kind of like those B.A. Communications degrees available at U.S. universities. Or, that strange animal called the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) degree, which is available the posh institutions of higher learning known as Oxford and Cambridge. Boris Johnson and David Cameron both have this degree — just saying.

    1. Well now, JM, I want you to know that by coincidence, I am sure, it took me 12 years to finish my B.A., as well, but it’s a perfectly fine B.A. just the same, in history and English, fields no doubt thought to be useless by someone like Mr. Poilievre. Neverthless, I would defend the right of anyone to take a long time to finish a university degree. I can’t speak for Mr. Poilievre, of course, but there were many editions of a student newspaper to be put out, pranks to be perpetrated, stubby bottles of beer to be drained in the student pub, and other entertaining diversions too. DJC

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