After dealing herself a weak hand by making assumptions that turned out to be disastrously wrong, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith sat down for her weirdly timed mid-afternoon video address to the province yesterday and tried to bluff her way out of a predicament of her own creation.
If only Pierre Poilievre and his MAGA Conservatives had won the federal election, she must have been thinking as she pulled off the Red Dress Day pin she’d been wearing for Question Period in the Legislature and got ready to address the masses at an hour few tax-paying citizens were likely to be paying attention.
The resulting 3,000-word bloviation was a snake pit of contradictions, misinformation, gaslighting and childish assertions like “we just want to be free,” delivered in Ms. Smith’s inimitable style – which always seems to make sense, but only if you only listen for a few moments. Perfect, in other words, for 15-second news clips and Internet videos.
The 3 p.m. broadcast time with no reporters permitted to ask impertinent questions ensured most Albertans wouldn’t hear the entire speech or see the transcript posted on the Government’s website. But they would get to view a few colourful clips on the evening news and social media that would make Ms. Smith look decisive.
“I have repeatedly stated I do not support Alberta separating from Canada,” she assured. But “if there is a successful citizen-led referendum petition that is able to gather the requisite number of signatures requesting such a question to be put to a referendum, our government will respect the democratic process and include that question on the 2026 provincial referendum ballot as well.” Never mind that her government has created the legislation intended to make this easy.
“As premier, I am entirely committed to protecting, upholding and honouring the inherent rights of First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples,” she averred. But the referendum she vows “must uphold and honour Treaties 6, 7 and 8” will by its nature do the opposite.
She condemned those “who will try and sow fear and anger among us,” then she sowed fear and anger about how “successive Liberal Governments in Ottawa – supported by their New Democrat allies – have unleashed a tidal wave of laws, policies and political attacks aimed directly at Alberta’s free economy.”
Hilariously, she insisted, “it’s not that our preferred candidate and party lost. It’s that the same Liberal government with almost all of the same ministers responsible for our nation’s inflation, housing, crime and budget crisis, and that oversaw the attack on our provincial economy for the past 10 years have been returned to power.” In other words, it is that our preferred candidate and party lost!
She said she wants her “Special Negotiating Team” to negotiate with the Government of Canada, but if it won’t immediately give in to her list of non-negotiable demands, there will also be an “Alberta Next Panel” that she will chair herself to gin up more demands. “It is likely we will place some of the more popular ideas discussed with the panel to a provincial referendum so all Albertans can vote on them sometime in 2026.”
“I will in good faith work with Prime Minister Mark Carney on unwinding the mountain of destructive legislation and policies that have ravaged our provincial and national economies this past decade,” she said, tendentiously. But, “until I see tangible proof of real change, Alberta will be taking steps to better protect ourselves from Ottawa.”
This point seems intended to throw a lifeline to her much admired ally, U.S. President Donald Trump, in his meeting with Prime Minister Mark Carney tomorrow.
Her immediate goal? Ottawa “must refrain from imposing export taxes or restrictions on the export of Alberta resources without the consent of the Government of Alberta.” No matter what Mr. Trump does.
Team Canada? Ms. Smith is not on it.
“Alberta requires guaranteed corridor and port access to tidewater off the Pacific, Arctic and Atlantic coasts for the international export of Alberta oil, gas, critical minerals and other resources,” she also said, a demand that seems to be designed to be impossible for Ottawa to impose on other provinces. (Emphasis added.)
There’s more – including a misleading description of the equalization formula and claims of trillions of dollars in costs of federal policies with no evidence provided – but readers will get the idea.
I don’t know how Mr. Carney will respond to this nonsense, but he would certainly be within his rights to ignore whatever unsuitable allies Ms. Smith decides to put on her negotiating team or her “Alberta Next Panel” – Preston Manning? Gary Mar? Jack Mintz? W. Brett Wilson? Who knows?
She has wound up her party’s extremist base, just as her predecessor Jason Kenney did, and risks the same fate if she disappoints them. At the same time, she has frightened and alienated the larger group of Albertans who have no time for separatist threats of the chaos they would bring. And Mr. Poilievre isn’t the PM as she expected, willing to help her look good while together they dismantle the country’s social safety net.
Mr. Carney owes her nothing. If he of his party, which she she obviously assumed would lose the election, don’t rise to the bait, what’s she gonna do about it?
NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi, fresh off his overwhelming performance review vote at the party’s convention last weekend, tore into the premier’s remarks. “She lied, she deflected, she blamed, she refused to take responsibility, and she tried to pick a fight,” he said. “That’s what she does. It’s what she’s always done.”
“She didn’t say, ‘I’m proud to be a Canadian,’” he noted. “She didn’t say, ‘I’m sorry.’ She didn’t say, ‘I take responsibility.’ She didn’t say, ‘I denounce separatism.’ She only said she was going to pick yet another fight. She only said she will have another endless panel, stacked with endless cronies, spending endless taxpayer dollars on an endless fight that she will never win.”
Travel costs exposed; measles vaccinations advocated; and weeks, lots of weeks!
The day didn’t start particularly well for the premier, with a story by the CBC revealing that her 48-hour junket to Florida in January to pose for a photo with Mr. Trump at his Mar-a-Lago golf resort cost $10,101.87. This prompted unfavourable comparisons to Ms. Smith’s overwrought reaction to PC Premier Alison Redford’s travel costs in 2014.
That story included the interesting tidbit that her chief of staff Rob Anderson, who accompanied her on the trip, “has a doctor’s note about a blood condition that requires him to travel business class.”
We will probably never know if that revelation accounted for the unusually long list of nine government news releases published by the government through the day.
The most important was in response to the continued spread of measles throughout the province. In the release, quotes from Health Minister Adriana LaGrange and interim Chief Medical Officer of Health Sunil Sookram urged Albertans to get vaccinated against the highly infectious disease.
“Getting immunized against measles is the single most important thing you can do to protect yourself, your loved ones and your community,” Ms. LaGrange said.
“Get immunized against measles now and help prevent the spread,” Dr. Sookram said. “Help protect your communities.”
This is sound advice. But it is also a major break from past UCP practice, which was to say as little as possible about vaccinations for fear of outraging the party’s MAGA base.
The other topics were organ and tissue donations, school bus drivers, construction of new facilities including a mandatory drug treatment centre at Alberta Hospital Edmonton, Red Dress Day, Alberta Forest Week, Mental Health Week, and Emergency Preparedness Week.
Not announced was the fact, noted in a list of recent Alberta Labour Relations Board applications, that the government of Alberta has applied to lock out employees of the provincial public service represented by the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees in the event of a breakdown in contract negotiations.