With the federal election tomorrow – either nail-bitingly close, or not, depending on which pollster’s analysis you’ve just finished reading – what do you want to bet Alberta Premier Danielle Smith doesn’t surface any time today.
She was supposed to be safely unreachable in the air yesterday, somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, returning from her Asian junket … pardon me, trade mission.
That was convenient, given that so many of Ms. Smith’s recent public performances seem to have done so little to help federal Conservative Leader Pierre “In-Sync” Poilievre’s chances of success on the morrow. Au contraire, many would say.
Don’t take my word for this. Canadian Conservatives are already looking around nervously for someone to blame if things do not go swimmingly when the vote results start to roll in from across the country tomorrow night, and Ms. Smith is definitely on the candidates’ list.
As Independent Alberta MLA Peter Guthrie, who just days ago was the infrastructure minister in Ms. Smith’s cabinet, put it last week, the premier’s shenanigans seem to have “come at the expense of the CPC and Pierre Poilievre’s efforts to become Canada’s next prime minister.”
Readers can rest assured that Mr. Guthrie is not the only Canadian Conservative to hold that view.
There are plenty of other candidates to be fitted up for that frame, of course, among them every dictator’s favourite American president, the photogenic Conservative premier of Nova Scotia, the boisterous premier of Ontario, and Mr. Poilievre himself. Plus, sooner or later, Alberta Conservatives will find a way to apportion some of the blame to Justin Trudeau, a Liberal.
None of this will be spoken of tomorrow, of course, should the winds blow in Mr. Poilievre’s favour. Well, except for that bit about Mr. Trudeau, which will still be echoing around this province 25 or 30 years from now, just like yarn about his dear old dad.
Convenient for the same reason was the absence of Premier Smith’s dulcet tones from the airwaves yesterday.
Her CORUS radio program, Your Province/Your Premier, fell silent yesterday, without so much as a “Back Soon” sign on its website. I suppose the reason was obvious under the circumstances.
Presumably the program will return in a week or two so that Ms. Smith can threaten to bust up the country if the prime minister of her choice didn’t get to move into 24 Sussex Drive or wherever prime ministers reside nowadays – 24 Sussex, unlike the country, actually being broken, or at least in a state of serious disrepair.
Had it not been for the kindly hospitality of Japanese prefectural officials, officials of the Gangwon Special Self-Governing Province of South Korea, and the managers and staff of a Greater Tokyo Costco store, presumably the one in Chiba City, Ms. Smith might have had to be kept under lock and key until the day after tomorrow.
Well, there’s always a chance of an election eve sighting, and you just never know what the premier will have to say if there is. Alberta Conservatives’ problem, of course, is that neither do they.
*The Gangwon Special Self-Governing Province, which borders North Korea, looks remote, even isolated, and scenic. There probably aren’t many Albertans wandering the streets of Ch’unch’ŏn City, the home of Legoland Korea.