United Conservative Party strategists must be thanking their Judeo-Christian deity that Rakhi Pancholi isn’t the leader of the Opposition.
With Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi nowhere to be found Friday morning, Ms. Pancholi took up the task of eviscerating the long list of intentionally confusing referendum questions announced by Premier Danielle Smith in her prime-time televised message the day before, not to mention the way the premier coddles separatists, her dog whistling about immigration, and her refusal to take responsibility for her government’s fiscal mismanagement.
“Cut the bullshit! Call the election!” Ms. Pancholi began her Friday morning news conference, cutting right to the chase.
“Danielle Smith and the UCP did not campaign on nine new referendum questions,” the Opposition party’s deputy leader immediately continued. “They do not have a mandate from Albertans for this. Not on separatism, not on pulling out of the CPP, not on breaching the Charter rights of Albertans, not on coal mining in the Eastern Slopes, and not on bringing in two-tier health care!
“The premier is trying to distract us ahead of a UCP budget that will contain billions of dollars in deficits,” Ms. Pancholi rolled on, the wind in her sails. “She’s trying to distract us from separatism – which she put on the agenda and is already putting our province at risk. The premier is blaming oil prices and immigration for her poor planning and financial mismanagement.” (And, as ever, she’s also blaming long gone former prime minister Justin Trudeau, it must be added.)
After that, it just got better. Ms. Pancholi never faltered in her forensic deconstruction of the house of cards Ms. Smith has built, starting with the premier’s plan for nine murkily worded referenda next Oct. 19, the point of which appears to be to create a constitutional crisis in Canada that will help break up the federation.
Over the next half hour, Ms. Pancholi repeated the mild profanity she started with two more times – just to make sure everyone was awake and understood that she, at least, had had enough of Ms. Smith’s constant bullshit, and that political discourse in Alberta is shifting whether the UCP likes it or not.
One imagines the post-adolescent pundits at this province’s plethora of well-funded right-wing propaganda platforms were sharpening their crayons to accuse Ms. Pancholi of having a potty mouth. It won’t work. She sounded impassioned, not profane. And Albertans who listen to her presentation will want to hear more.
On the low oil prices the premier blames for Thursday’s sad-sack deficit budget: “Oil production is hitting record levels, and resource revenue from the past five years is the highest it has been in decades. Only the UCP can blow a resource boom!”
On the premier’s pivot to condemning immigration from demanding it: “The hypocrisy on immigration is unreal! Less than two years ago, in 2024, Danielle Smith herself asked Justin Trudeau to increase immigration levels because Alberta wanted more than what Ottawa was offering. Also in 2024, she stated publicly that she wanted to double Alberta’s population to 10 million people, grow cities like Red Deer 10 times their size to one million, all while promoting the ‘Alberta is Calling’ campaign asking people from Canada and around the world to make Alberta their home.
“She did all this without a thought or plan for how to create the jobs, build the houses, schools and hospitals that we already needed!”
And now, Ms. Pancholi continued, the premier wants us to blame immigrants and asylum seekers and to send us to the polls to vote on a raft of referenda to enable such a campaign pulled right from the pages of Donald Trump’s agenda. “Again, what a load of absolute bullshit! She’s trying to make people angry about things that she can’t even back up with facts. She’s stoking the flames and raising the temperature. This is the opposite of leadership!”
Ms. Pancholi’s performance made an interesting contrast to the premier’s “media availability” the same day, during which Ms. Smith was by turns shouty, defensive, cranky and smug, all the while offering a master class in gaslighting. Just listening to Ms. Smith was exhausting. More than a whiff of panic was in the air.
But the UCP, after all, is a party that has made a cult of avoiding deficits at any cost. Now they’re going to bring down a budget expected to have a deficit of at least $6 billion to $8 billion because … what? They haven’t figured out the price of oil fluctuates?
Once again, Alberta is reduced to playing to poor little rich kid of Confederation, only this time with a separatist problem of its own creation to complicate matters. UCP fiscal incompetence will be revealed in all its glory Thursday, and blaming Mr. Trudeau and asylum seekers isn’t going to cut the mustard with anybody except the UCP’s MAGA base.
“The UCP has been in power for six years now,” explained Ms. Pancholi. “This is the premier’s fourth budget and will now be her second big deficit. Tell me how this is not a disaster in managing Alberta’s finances!”
When a reporter suggested it might be dangerous for the NDP to demand an election – after all, they might just get their wish – Ms. Pancholi said confidently she was willing to take the risk. As she put it in her formal remarks: Danielle Smith “wants to champion direct democracy? We have a direct democracy, and it’s called a general election. Call it!”
Packed Emergency Rooms, crowded classrooms, a million Albertans without a family doctor, no caps on sky-high insurance rates, soaring utility bills, the lowest minimum wage in Canada? “Where’s the premier’s leadership on any of this?”
So, concluded Ms. Pancholi, who ran for the NDP leadership in 2024 but dropped out in favour of Mr. Nenshi when his victory was clearly inevitable: “Cut the bullshit, premier! Stop with the distractions, and if you’re so convinced this is what Albertans want, call an election and let Albertans decide.”
It was a delight to see Ms. Pancholi tear into the UCP with an aggressive spirit that has been largely missing from Alberta politics on the Opposition side since Jason Kenney defeated Rachel Notley’s one-term government in April 2019.
This is what NDP members thought they were voting for when they chose Mr. Nenshi as leader in June 2024. Instead, it has been almost completely absent since Mr. Nenshi took over.
And where was Mr. Nenshi Thursday night, immediately after Ms. Smith’s remarks, or Friday morning for the news conference Ms. Pancholi handled so well? The deputy leader assured reporters that her leader had just returned from a well-deserved vacation and would reappear soon. I’m sure the UCP was relieved.
Danielle Smith remains a talented communicator skilled at setting political narratives before the Opposition gets out of their seats. She is not to be underestimated.
Ms. Pancholi, a lawyer by profession, seems to have the ability to destroy an overconfident and glib witness with forensic precision. With 20/20 hindsight, we can see that she might have been the perfect opponent for a premier with such a casual relationship with the truth and such a destructive ideology.
We can only hope that Mr. Nenshi has the sense to set her loose on the premier while he practices politics in full sentences, or whatever his passive strategy is called.