RED DEER – Alberta Premier Danielle Smith called a news conference yesterday to tell the impertinent journalists who showed up why, as a strong believer in Canadian Confederation, she intends to do whatever she can to ensure her province’s loony separatists get to have a secession referendum as soon as possible.
A link is provided, Dear Readers, but if you value your sanity, I can’t really recommend that you spend even half an hour watching Ms. Smith refuse to answer the reporters’ perfectly sensible questions about that bizarre contradiction on the grounds that we haven’t yet seen the question that a fissiparous claque of secessionists tied to her United Conservative Party are planning to gin up.
Indeed, there was very little new at yesterday’s videotaped presser that wasn’t in Premier Smith’s mid-afternoon address to the masses on Monday midafternoon.
There was one tidbit that could legitimately be described as news – to wit, Ms. Smith’s reason for holding her speech at 3 p.m. on a Monday. It turns out the speech wasn’t for the good people of Alberta at all! It was for the folks in Ontario, Quebec and maybe the Maritimes – plus those other Eastern Bastards in British Columbia who are occupying our Alberta coastline. They need to know just how pissed off we Albertans are at them for voting Liberal when they were supposed to vote Conservative! The utter cheek!
Ms. Smith indicated she was there to tell them about it at an hour when they’d be paying attention.
Look, if you watch this, even if it’s just to find that bit, you’re soon going to start screaming, “All aboard the crazy train!” at your computer screen. Be my guest if you insist. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Meanwhile, yesterday can’t have been a particularly happy day for Ms. Smith and her strategic brain trust.
Mark Carney, Canada’s gentlemanly new prime minister, did great when he sat down with America’s answer to Jabba the Hut to try to salvage Canada’s trade relationship with the United States. He made His Mightiness smile and coo. President Donald Trump even called him a “terrific guy” in public.
This is not, you can trust me, what Ms. Smith had hoped to see happen. And it’s not, I’d venture to speculate, what would have happened if the premier’s man Pierre Poilievre had been in the hot seat at the White House with VP JD Vance giving him his now proven death glare.
It’s probably too early to start calling Mr. Carney the Trump Whisperer, but you’ve got to admit the PM’s meeting in the Oval Office with the president and his consiglieres went better than you expected.
Remember, it’s a mistake to dismiss Mr. Carney as a mere banker, as if he were the manager of a local branch of the Bank of Commerce who had just turned down your request for a mortgage. As the governor of two Commonwealth central banks, he is more akin to a member of the very highest strata of the professional civil service, wise to the quirks of politicians and big businessmen alike, and skilled at soothing their fragile egos. Think, Yes Minister!
So, of course, President Trump liked him!
This means that while Mr. Carney may not be the ideal politician to run for mayor of Mushaboom or Spuzzum, he may well be the man for the moment.
This is not good news for Conservative partisans. Ms. Smith, who despite her constant gaslighting and inconsistency is no fool, knows this and cannot find it reassuring. If her past performance is any guide, this means she will now likely double down on her divisive separatist mischief.
How will Mr. Carney counter that? I expect that one way or another, the prime minister will assign Corey Hogan, just elected Liberal MP for the Calgary Confederation riding and former head of the Alberta Government’s sprawling communications operation and comms vice-president of the University of Calgary, to the role of foil to the premier’s anti-Canadian distemper.
Mr. Hogan’s clever slogan during the election campaign was “Confederation is Worth Fighting For.” Those words continue to have resonance.
I’m sure Ms. Smith likewise wasn’t pleased yesterday when Ontario Premier Doug Ford, also a Conservative, reminded her that “we have to stay united … this is about Canada, this isn’t about Ontario or Alberta.” Ms. Smith waspishly suggested he stay in his lane. “I don’t tell him how he should run his province, and I would hope that he doesn’t tell me how I should run mine,” she sniffed during her presser.
Long gone are the days when Mr. Ford and Alberta’s previous Conservative premier joked about how they finished each other’s sentences. More idle speculation here, but if this Ford-Smith feud gets much worse, perhaps Mr. Ford will send some of his obviously competent Progressive Conservative campaign strategists out to Alberta to help NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi.
That would be strange, but if Ms. Smith stays the course, not doing so might even be stranger.
Also yesterday, Alberta’s First Nations chiefs let it be known that they have very little patience with Ms. Smith’s separatist manipulations. The chiefs of Treaty Nos. 6, 7 and 8 held an emergency meeting in Edmonton and the Chiefs of the Confederacy of Treaty No. 6 cancelled an annual protocol meeting with the premier scheduled for yesterday.
The desire for reconciliation among Albertans and Canadians remains strong, despite what you night read on the parts of Twitter/X inhabited by UCP supporters. This will not help the premier’s mission either.
In addition, Alberta’s apparently annual wildfire mass evacuation season began early not far north of Edmonton, another issues-management problem for the climate-change deniers of the UCP.
Marlaina is so delusional she actually thinks anyone in Eastern Canada would put themselves through the torture of listening to her lies and grievances. Even most Albertans can no longer stand the sound of her voice and the incessant whining. Her convoluted rationale for ignoring Alberta’s First Nations didn’t work and they have promptly told her she is welcome to leave if she doesn’t support Canada (she doesn’t). Besides, there is no place where the grifting is better than Alberta. I think most Albertans can see through her weasel words and that she is all in favor of separation. For one thing, it appeases her base. More important, it detracts attention from the Corrupt Care scandal.
I suppose Marlain-a-Lago will just jet off to another taxpayer funded vacation if the dissenting voices get too annoying for her.
Loved the use of Spuzzum in your. Piece . Maybe we can exile DS and her cronies to that hotspot. PM Carney showed more class than DS has ever shown yesterday. The developer may have a new man crush.
I have driven through Spuzzum countless times on trips between Vancouver and the BC interior, and although I have yet to stop there and know nobody who lives there, I think it’s a rather unkind gesture to presume that the locals have done anything deserving of such a pestilent infestation. Shame on you.
Mushaboom and Spuzzum. Fissiparous claques. Trump Whisperer.
Loud your clarion voice cries,
Excelsior!
I defer to Simon and Garfunkel; “Still crazy, after all these years.”
Just Simon. Garfunkle made a full recovery decades ago.
The initial “meeting of the minds” in Washington perhaps gives a slight hint of optimism for the future. But attempting to negotiate with an adversary just won’t do. You see, over in the Con mirror universe not only does Spock have a goatee but the Carney-Trump meeting is being framed as a looming disaster for Canada. The reason, of course, is that Carney is a Trump stooge afterall, just as the alt-right types tried to tell us all along. Carney will sell us out so quick our heads will be spinning like a top. Now if Poilievre, a true Canadian patriot, were the PM he would have marched right into that ol’ Oval Office and had Trump cowering under his desk begging for Canada’s forgiveness. Not only that but we’d be 100% tariff free and be living in a Conservative utopia by now.
I wish I was making this shit up but a quick scan over socials will show the levels of intellect I’m talking about.
Ms Smith, if you were addressing Ontarians I have news for you…with all due respect.
You ma’am, are a blithering halfwit. We’ve got vans and hardbodies lined up to pack your crap and ship you down south to live with the rampaging fascists you seem so enamoured, with.
Bloviating publicly about separatism is the fast track to all your investors running for every other place on the planet sitting on an oil rig and believe you, me–there are plenty to go around. When you can’t be trusted to maintain political stability then it won’t be your insignificant province they’ll invest, in. You haven’t even filled one pipeline to sell and you’re squawking for more. You’re too daft to notice, or just don’t care, that Alberta oil’s price has been driven down to the lowest crude prices in the world. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are flipping their gold coins all the way to their bank accounts and laughing at you.
To add to your investment concerns, you’ve managed to rile up the First Nations’ populace who may be jumping in rez cars and rented buses to swarm your province for what’s gonna look like the world’s biggest powwow this spring/summer while you look like the self-absorbed colonizer you are…live-streamed across the globe at regular intervals.
We all know here *exactly* what you’re doing. Exactly the same thing English Conservatives did with Brexit–throwing a dead cat on the table to distract from all you and your party’s abysmal failures in leadership and massive scandals. Everyone on the planet saw the dire results of England’s decision. It’s economically cooked. Do you think nobody East of you reads the news?
Ontario, here–the *actual* economic engine of Canada (regardless of Doug Ford’s failings)–can enlighten you how we were gifted that title. We tripped onto it when investors flooded here, fleeing from Quebec’s threat to secede. So, if you hate us all that much, you might want to consider just how much business you might be driving in our direction before you enact the “Montreal Effect”, as it is known across the world.
Many of us voted in Carney not because the liberals were on our menu but because, unlike you–he came across as a sensible adult to deal with the very real, existential threat of Trump’s taunts to militarily invade or economically devastate this country as a prelude to a hostile takeover. Meanwhile, you’re handing him a can of firestarter, a match and a pile of logs to light the place up; the rest of the country considers, in the back of our minds, what we can contribute to an insurrection if the Americans invade as you ma’am, are cheering on an insurrection right in our midst against *us*.
Meantime, the *adult* in the room is trying to put together some cohesive strategies so we have a future without turning into a fascist he11scape colonized under the banner of The American Empire. Just to completely wreck your day–Carney did it, too. We only lost 1% of our export trade last month while the USA lost 2%. That’s what an actual player in the global community can do for us. Of what use have you been, exactly?
Don’t appeal to us to dig you out of the mess you created–we’re already fed up.
The best thing you can do for us here is…go away.
(((PS: Dear Albertans, this is not about you. We like you. We like Americans too–but your leadership vampires need to be chained up in a steel box and thrown out to sea to sink… Or at least, voted out. )))
Miz Smith really does get huffy, doesn’t she, when anybody questions her (self-)perceived wisdom?
One of her many problems is that not all of us have forgotten that she tried to implement Barry Cooper’s “Free Alberta” fantasy. I think she’s managed to pass two of the five “sovereignty” goals:
• Alberta Sovereignty Act: defanged significantly when Smith’s back-benchers realized it would cut them totally out of actually governing. Otherwise, CHECK.
• Alberta Provincial Police: enabling legislation: CHECK. Funding: CHECK, at least for the first step. Bonus point: rile up the rural base so they hate the RCMP. Example: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/trackhoe-damages-rcmp-vehicles-1.7526582 CHECK.
• Alberta Independent Banking Act: creates more branches of ATB, apparently. NOPE—at least, no legislation introduced (unless Danielle’s keeping very quiet about it).
• Alberta Judicial Independence Act: gives Danielle the excuse to usurp the Federal government’s power to appoint judges to Alberta courts. NOPE. Going nowhere, at zero speed.
• “Establish international trade and market access relationships independent of the Federal Government”: NOPE. Danielle tried this recently, first in Mar-a-lago, now in Japan. Hey, Danielle! How’d that turn out? (Answer: crickets.)
Then there’s the money stuff:
• Equalization Termination and Tax Collection Act, part 1: a plan to cancel the “unfair” equalization payment program and replace it with…well…bragging, I guess. NOPE. Requires a Constitutional amendment, meaning the Feds and seven (7) provinces representing fifty (50) per cent of Canada’s population to implement. NOPE. Not gonna happen in Danielle’s lifetime, or in mine.
• Equalization Termination and Tax Collection Act, part 2: Danielle’s supposed to collect our provincial taxes separately from the Feds, instead of the Feds collecting both and cutting Alberta a cheque. NOPE. (Just as well; a classic example of wasteful duplication of services. Where’s the famous UCP cost-cutting and red-tape reduction in this one?)
• Alberta Pension Plan: raid the CPP for seed money, claiming “higher benefits for seniors and lower premiums for workers.” Albertans told her “NOPE!” So Smith hired Stephen Harper to mismanage AIMCo for us, guaranteeing there’d be more money for loans to oil companies. Yay. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/stephen-harper-appointed-chairman-of-alberta-investment-management-corporation-1.7388582
• Alberta Unemployment Insurance: again, replacing the national EI program with a small-scale duplicate. See above under Equalization Termination and Tax Collection Act, part 2. NOPE.
So that’s two out of eight. 25% accomplished. About equal to the proportion of Albertans who believe in breaking up Canada. Way to go, Danielle! Barry Cooper must be proud.
On a side note, I can’t help noticing how much that photo makes Mark Carney resemble Emmanuel Macron: https://www.newsweek.com/france-election-lepen-farright-conservatives-1911754#slideshow/2408417
“fissiparous claque of secessionists” Brilliant! First word I had to look up in decades and it’s just so *perfect* lolololol (have you been playing with your thesaurus?)
Having grown up in Ontario I can assure the readers of this blog that no one was paying any attention to that bloviating gasbag of a Premier. The amount of hubris where some Albertans imagine that everyone in the east is hanging on every word, thought or deed coming from this province is beyond my comprehension. Case in point, growing up, the only time anyone ever mentioned Calgary was during Grey Cup weekend when a wannabe cowboy would ride a horse into the lobby of the Royal York.
Great piece DJC. So much to unpack.
-I needed to pull out my Thesaurus for fissiparous. While fairly well read (and not in a pretentious felon Black way), that was new to me.
-The possibilities are endless with newly elected Calgary MP Hogan having extensive Communications experience, including with the AB government.
-Solid commentary on multiple topics, very John Oliver-esque (a compliment as you are not supported by a team of writers, although with notably less profanity).
-With wildfire season starting early, on provincial land no less, how can this be twisted to be made former PM Trudeau’s fault? Embers that survived the winter floating in from Jasper?
-Somewhat unrelated, but worth suggesting, while PM Carney has taken the high road thus far, when Battle River-Crowfoot MP Damien Kurek gets around to resigning (Members of Parliament can’t resign their seat until 30 days after their election result is published in the Canada Gazette), as Ms. Smith is such an advocate of democracy, PM Carney can commit to calling the required by-election the day after Ms. Smith calls one in Edmonton Strathcona. Or would that be seen as too petty?
I predict pp will take her place as leader of the party provincially when her taxpayers request her to be formed. The platforms of mark and Pierre were the same.did the cons take over the liberal party? Will they be successful to get rid of the wingnuts?
The Republican Party of Alberta is stepping up its efforts to establish itself as a fifth column for Trump’s program of annexation. The Trump administration is increasing its covert surveillance of Greenland and Denmark, with the intention of identifying disaffected segments of the Greenlandic population that could be used as wedges, destabilizing the government of Greenland and opening the way for anschluss with the US. Our home-grown sedition party is doing a lot of this work for him here in advance. Right out in the open. And Smith smiles and nods.
It would be interesting to see where this bunch getting their financial support. The stuff that isn’t on their books, I mean.
Hello DJC and fellow commenters,
“His province … mine.” Well no, a “province” does not belong to the premier. That phrase statement by Danielle Smith encompasses erroneous assumptions. I very much resent the idea that a politician talks about a province as though it belongs to the politician.
The bankers, central ones included, are simply not akin to high-ranking members of the civil service. The odious revolving door policy at Goldman Sachs is not a figment of the imaginations of cross-eyed, inbred MAGAS, whose sentiments are generally in favour of grifting, conflicts of interest and any resulting financial windfalls. Carney and Flaherty bailed out the Canadian banks during the 2008 crisis, just like the US banks were bailed out. Carney and Flaherty did it through slight of hand with CMHC, whereas Bernanke and Paulson had a closed door meeting at which they figuratively put a gun to the heads of Congressional leaders. The Five Golers, as I like to call the incestuous Canadian banks, also raked in the Bernanke/Paulson welfare cheques through their US subsidaries, to the tune of $111 billion. At the end of the day Canadian banks were awash in liquidity just like their US counterparts and the price of housing combined with household debt in Canada looked like some Weimar Germany Out of Body Experience. You, and me, and Jamie Dimon and Mark Carney, we’re all in it together!
On the subject of AM radio personality Danielle Smith, it must come as a shock to the memers of the Petroleum and Ranchmen’s clubs that she “runs” the province. Boss Tweek.
Marlaina Kolodnicki is one strange creature. She insists that the Feds not interfere in Alberta’s energy production and environmental laws. Yet when it comes to other provinces choices around environmental issues Marlaina the Krazy would dictate terms to other provinces about energy grids, EV’s, pipelines and so it goes. I suspect a good number of fellow provinces may feel inclined to quietly aid any opponents of the lady. Interesting times.
There was this thing I learned when I was young called ‘Pascal’s Bargain’. Pascal believed that one could believe in a higher power, like a sky daddy, just in case, and never violate their non-believer cred. Of course, for a non-believer, such a position can only be considered pure cowardice, and the product of weak character.
Queen Danielle has made a similar bargain with the enemies of Canada. She calls herself a Canadian, but, she’s ready to throw it all away in a second, if the success of the secessionist side looks promising. Kind of the same way all those Nazi collaborators changed sides the second it looked like A. Hitler and his gang would gain the upper hand. Careerist to the end, Smith is ready to turn tail and help secessionists get their way, provided they lend their support to her come election time. We all saw it when she crossed the floor from the WRP to the PCs, and we are about to witness it again.
Of course, this incentivizes endless crises with Ottawa, and interminable complaining about every single suspected slight. Albertans are perpetually filled with anger and grievances, so their demented state of mind is fertile ground for Smith and her ilk.
While Quislings, like Smith, never believe that they will receive their comeuppance, they certainly will. Will Smith’s fate be the same as Quisling’s? We can only hope.
I really don’t care what our Narcissistic Premier says anymore. I just look forward to the opportunity to vote for someone else.
I just hope the damage she causes in her self interest can be undone.