Watching Danielle Smith switch back and forth from striving to get her party’s large contingent of separatists to settle down to trying to keep severely normal Albertans who want no part of separation on side is enough to give you whiplash.
It’s starting to feel like we’re watching a really fast game of tennis while sitting too close to the centre line of the court.
And speaking of courts, yesterday the Alberta government sent its legal help off to the Edmonton courthouse to file an appeal of the May 13 decision by Court of King’s Bench Justice Shaina Leonard that tossed the separatist Alberta Prosperity Project/Stay Free Alberta referendum question on the grounds the province had failed in its duty to consult with First Nations about the impact of secession.
For all intents and purposes, Justice Leonard’s ruling siding with First Nations that challenged the referendum process put the SFA pro-separation question, which has been championed by Ms. Smith from the get-go, on ice not long after its organizers submitted petition sheets they claimed contained more than 300,000 signatures to Elections Alberta.
So while Ms. Smith had just got finished infuriating her party’s aggressive separatist rump by admitting that turning Alberta into an independent country would cost “hundreds of billions of dollars” and promising to fully cost out that sum by August, she’s now going to throw a bone to the same faction by wasting more time and money appealing Justice Leonard’s decision.
The Alberta appeal claims Justice Leonard made 14 errors in her ruling, The Canadian Press reported. I’m no lawyer, but this seems extremely unlikely. But, whatever, it might only require the appeal court to find one to send the whole thing off to the Supreme Court at enormous additional expense to the taxpayers of Alberta.
The government, taking the side of the separatists again, argued Justice Leonard “misinterpreted provisions of a bill passed in December that allowed the separatist group behind the petition to reapply after its first application was hung up in court,” the CP reporter explained.
Significantly, there was no official press release on this from the government, which presumably doesn’t want to put the impression it’s trying to create for the separatists in black and white on a sheet of paper where other voters might see it.
The government also argues that the whole thing should be considered moot anyway because next October’s referendum won’t be binding, even though it could lead directly to a binding separation vote. Or something.
Readers are advised not to get too tied in knots by this. The smart money suggests that the UCP is happy to use taxpayers’ money to prolong this fight and generate some good PR for the party’s anti-Canadian base and, as an added benefit, stave off the danger and embarrassment of separatist constituency associations trying to remove Ms. Smith as party leader.
Given the mood of the seppies, as this crowd is coming to be known here in Wild Rose Country, this seems unlikely. But, as they say, any old port in a storm!
Chief Allan Adam of Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, one of the groups that challenged petition, asked CP’s reporter: “Hasn’t Danielle Smith been running around lately saying she’s Captain Canada? Now she wants to support the separatists again? It’s hard to tell whose best interests she has at heart. I’m not sure she knows herself.”
This is a good question. It sounds as if Chief Adam was being polite, though. Ms. Smith has her own best interests at heart and she’s painted herself into a corner with this foolish, dangerous and increasingly unpopular referendum.
Alberta’s premier is known to be a skilled gas-lighter and has talked herself out of tight corners before, but the obvious contradictions and risks of her separation strategy may be contributing to her declining popularity.
“Smith’s approval falls drops to an all-time low at 39 per cent after weeks of controversy over her government’s plan to hold an October referendum related to Alberta’s place in Canada,” the Angus Reid Institute said yesterday in its periodic popularity poll of nine of Canada’s 10 provincial premiers. (ARI always ignores P.E.I., which is darned poor form even if the place isn’t much more populous than Red Deer or Lethbridge.)
To give Ms. Smith her due, at 39 per cent she’s still doing slightly better in the Reid survey than Nova Scotia Conservative Tim Houston (34 per cent), B.C. New Democrat David Eby (31 per cent), and Ontario Conservative Doug Ford (a pathetic 21 per cent).
At the other end of the scale, remarkable numbers of Manitobans love Premier Wab Kinew, who by merit of being up a point at 61 per cent was the most popular premier in Canada with his own voters. He’s beloved by lots of Albertans too for his sharp remarks to Premier Smith last month about her separatist shenanigans.
It seem like Smith is tying herself into verbal knots these days like a contortionist, trying to please Federalists one moment and separatists the next.
Her falling approval ratings seem to indicate whatever her strategy is, it is not working so well any more. Often falling approval ratings also lead to falling party numbers, so that could be another shoe to drop soon. Although not always, Doug Ford benefits from the split in support between two opposition parties and Eby probably benefits from his opposition being a bit too right wing now for the taste of most who voted for him.
Regardless, few incumbents become more popular as time goes by and the decline often starts gradually and then goes more quickly. Especially if they do dumb things, the wheels can start to fall off more quickly. I feel Smith’s forcing a referendum and shifting positions qualifies as exactly that sort of thing. Even worse for her is the division in her own party, so whatever she does can upset some of her supporters, or perhaps even many of them.
It appears Danielle Smith is an easy target to many. When first on the scene, she dissolved the wildrose party to become conservative,around 2012 or 2013. Her goals seem clear, she just wants Alberta getting its fair share, instead of Ottawa’s repeated rape and pillage of Alberta’s money and resources. Albertans have had enough.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARVO
Pam L.A. DONOVAN: It seems that you have selective memory on things, and also don’t know what really happened. Danielle Smith has never been a true Conservative, and the Wildrose Party wasn’t dissolved in 2012, because it existed.
If Alberta were to get it’s fair share, Peter Lougheed’s oil royalty rates wouldn’t have been slashed to the bare minimum, resulting in a loss of $575 billion. How much was lost from reducing the rates on gas? That’s not known. The Alberta PCs didn’t mandate oil companies cleaning up after themselves, like Peter Lougheed had been doing, resulting in Albertans having to fork over $320 billion to handle this. Corporate tax rates in Alberta have been a joke, losing a very large sum of money too. So many very pricey boondoogles have also happened, with the Alberta PCs for years, and they still happen with the UCP, which have even cost billions of dollars.
Public education and public healthcare has been harmed by Ralph Klein, and also by the UCP, so they can have both things privatized. Deregulation of electricity has made Alberta have the highest power prices in Canada. There is a massive infrastructure repair cost in Alberta, which is likely $40 billion.
You want to blame Ottawa for these pseudo Conservatives and Reformers destroying what Peter Lougheed intended Alberta to have? That’s not going to succeed. You cannot blame anyone else for this.
You mean she betrayed her party and her constituents in a disastrous and disgraceful floor crossing, resulting in the swift defeat of the PCs AND the wild rose, ushering in Premier Rachel Notley, the most popular Premier alberta has had in GENERATIONS.
I’m not asking, that’s what you mean.
Danielle Smith cares about Danielle Smith that’s about it. I don’t care how many bot farms the UCP pays for, this government is a disgrace, this woman is rightly the laughingstock of the entire country and it’s going to get much worse for her before it gets any better. She’s got one out left: CALL AN ELECTION DANIELLE
People like Ms. Donovan explain why Koolaid will never be withdrawn from the market. It always finds a ready consumer-base in the mis-informed, credulous and just plain ignorance of cult-followers like the seppies
David, good attempt to explain the facts of the seppie referendum, but I fear you won’t be heard down the rabbit hole.
One becomes an “easy target” when they lie. When they lie to both sides, the separatist and the federalist sides, they become an even easier target.
It appears the vast majority of Albertans “have had enough” of the Premier, of separatists, and of forever grievance.
Smith is the author of her own falling popularity. As for getting its fair share, Alberta is not alone, but the others do not pander to separatists. It is rich that she demands no intrusion into Alberta’s authorities ( as she defines them) but demands the Feds run roughshod over B.C. environmental and other provincial rights to push through a pipeline the people of bc do not want. She is a hypocrite whose behaviour is catching up to her.
“Ottawa’s repeated rape and pillage of Alberta’s money and resources”. Not one word of this is true. And today, Alberta is being pandered to by Ottawa, to the detriment of the rest of Canada.
It seems I may not be leaving comment in the future. This is a biased paper, liberal supported, and its interest is only to debase and defile Alberta seperatism as a whole. Over 300,000 signatures support it, which is over the minimum for any petition. Go ahead and ignore facts, its consistent with Liberalism, but not with democracy.
Pam: Comments are always welcome here even if they disagree with the author, that is, me. The only caveat is that they must be reasonably polite, as yours is, and not put me at risk of being sued for defamation. I am a believer that if you’re going to dish it out, you should be able to take it. That said – for clarity – I am not a Liberal, at least of the capital-L variety. This is an opinion blog and it has been created to argue a particular point of view, which is obviously not yours. Alberta separatism does not need to be debased or defiled, it is a terrible idea weighed on its own merits. As noted, the petitioners claim to have more than 300,000 signatures. At this point, those signatures have not been verified. The facts that petitions were being signed in other countries and that petition organizers appear to have been in possession of the illegally obtained list of all Alberta voters make me, for one, highly suspicious that while some of those signatures may be in the names of actual Alberta voters, those same voters may not know that they “signed” the petition. From the Conservative/MAGA/separatist perspective, the problem with facts is not that they are being ignored but that they have – as Paul Krugman cleverly put it – a well-known liberal bias. DJC
Ha, well put. I did not connect the petitions signed in other countries with the illegally obtained voters list being in use in the US for two years I think, but there is definitely possible fraud there.
I suggest we assume that half the 300,000 signatures are fake and the separatists did not get enough real signatures.
Val: That is a good summary of my suspicion. DJC
I for one of my many friends on facebook definitely signed this petition. Many people in Alberta are angry and tired of being the butt of Ottawa ‘s joke of democracy.
“Over 300,000 signatures support it” is not a fact. If for no other reason, because the only ones with the ability to verify that are the good people of Elections Alberta, and they’re not doing that. So it comes down to whether you believe the ones with the cardboard boxes, who had to go Arizona to find someone to sign their petition, and who stole the voters list. I love facts as much as the next person, and this isn’t one by any standard.
Pam L.A. DONOVAN: This happens to be a blog you are leaving comments on, and to say it’s liberal supported is very farfetched. Since when has the UCP supported democracy? They clearly haven’t, because multiple things have shown that. The UCP could never get elected by playing by the rules, as established by the Kamikaze scheme. They silence debate, by greatly reducing the number of Legislature sessions to so few, and from restricting journalist’s questions. The bills the UCP created are so badly done, that they aren’t even constitutional. It’s a blatant power grab on municipalities in Alberta by the UCP. Individual rights are not respected, such as punishing teachers and their right to strike. Whatever panels, or public forums the UCP has, have a predictable outcome. Besides this, the UCP are so fearful of losing the next provincial election in Alberta, that they have to gerrymander ridings to win. It’s also quite concerning how the separation petition got a sudden massive increase in signatures so quickly. Why is Danielle Smith so silent on the data breach? If she was concerned about that, why isn’t she taking action?
All papers are biased, you should try not being a baby.
Those 302000 signatures are not verified but even so, Forever Canadian petition got 400000 verified signatures in a much shorter time frame. Once taking out duplicate and invalid signitures ( using the Forever petition as a guide) 10% will likely be invalid so the total will likely be 270k just more than half who signed wanting no referendum or one that asks a yes or no to stay forever in Canada.
Nobody is supposed to notice the deceit, dishonesty, and duplicity that defines this Premier and her separatist allies, as taxpayer monies are being used in legal challenge(s) to further the separatist cause and separatist interests by expanding the Overton window and thereby making the separatist grievances ‘mainstream’.
Both the separatists and the Premier keep on keeping on with their dance and doing each others dirty work in a mutually beneficial relationship, because it is the case that when “Times are hard (and) you’re afraid to pay the fee, you find yourself somebody who can do the job for free”
I am fine with the legal challenge since the Supreme Court will likely clarify that a petition of this sort violates Aboriginal Treaty rights and that will remove any argument to the contrary.
Let’s not forget that when Danielle Smith first became premier she refused to call a by-election for Doug Schweitzer’s vacant seat in Calgary Elbow because she wanted to save the cost of running a by-election. How does that money saved compare to the money spent on this appeal, the other meaningless court actions and the cost of this stupid referendum?
I have nothing but respect for Wab Kinew. I think he’s a good man. On the flip side, all the players in the Alberta separation, as well as Smith and her UPC party, should go on a cruise, preferably a cruise on a a ship like the Titanic. They are all two faced, forked tonged liars. I truly wish there was a Canadian law, that these twits could be charged with. They just ram through what they want and they don’t care about the average Albertan, or who it’s going to hurt. We need a serious government, with serious, responsible people in charge.
The difference between the two Premiers, Wab Kinew and Danielle Smith, couldn’t be more stark. I don’t think Kinew could lie, obfuscate, or gaslight even if he tried. The truth just comes out of his mouth. Danielle Smith, on the other hand has fine-tuned all those “skills” and can spin in any direction before you’re even aware. Which, is unnerving, especially in uncertain times. People need security right now, someone grounded and acting in their best interests. It’s frightening when someone is playing high-stakes games with everything from the dismantling of human services and basics of health care to the very foundations of our democracy and even the destruction of our very country. I’m surprised she is as popular as she is but I give the O&G companies and Postmedia a lot of credit for that.
This is just a deliberately ineffective bone to the separatists. She is not a separatist and she will continue to campaign for remain, which will win. She will also campaign for “sovereignty within Canada”, so she can continue to protect the oil and gas industry from any kind of social responsibility and from the competition, and pursue her personal hobby of privatizing health care. She will have the support of conservative and “moderate” or “centrist” Albertans, reassured that by supporting the old familiar neoliberal agenda they are not supporting separation. She is not unlikely to succeed.
The province is owned by oil and gas oligarchs. Over $100 billion in various oily substances are produced in the province every year, and in true third-world fashion, value is added to <15% of the bounty. US interests determine entirely what happens to hydrocarbons produced in Alberta, so they don't require an actual secession of Alberta from Canada. And Canada is entirely owned and operated by the US. Ol' "Elbows Up", the Carny Banker, has purchased, among other knick-knacks, $2.6 billion in HIMARS rocket systems from Lockheed-Martin, for eighty years one of the finest examples of corporate dedication to graft, fraud and bloodshed known to man. Lockheed follows the Joe Dimaggio principle, that one must always perform at one's peak in case a new fan is watching for the first time. They never stop stealing. The Carny Banker is also pretending to defy the US by proposing the purchase of Swedish Gripen jets, in an overall package of Military Industrial Complex greed that is eye-watering. Sweden long since fell under complete US control, from the time of the unsolved murder of Olaf Palme by far-right elements of the Swedish security establishment. Sweden abolished their compulsory service so that their military could particpate in the twenty-year failed criminal NATO operation in Afghanistan. The Gripen is to large extent made out of US parts. Prog/liberals remain an inexhaustible source of amusement as they stand for Canada, the imperialist, colonialist, capitalist primary resource patch. These developments will allow the Canadian tax-payer to be fleeced in order to have interoperabity with whatever Waffen SS tribute band is assembled in Europe to take over from direct US operations aimed at weakening Russia in pursuit of the overall anti-China strategy. Perhaps when the Coilers get NHLPA approval for the psychotic martinet Babcock to come to Edmonton to "take things in hand", the Great Man can be persuaded to fill the shoes of Marlainia as she is turned out to pasture in Floreda.
Disagree, she is a separatist and she may well be a traitor who wants to hand Alberta over to Trump.
But maybe we should concentrate on the oil industry and find out how many of them are actively supporting separatism. After all, right now the oil theoretically belongs to all Albertans, and oil companies might expect to benefit from stealing those resources out of the Canadian system of land rights where the government controls most of the subsurface rights.
“She will have the support of conservative and “moderate” or “centrist” Albertans, ”
….
To be fair I am not sure that she will. I know a LOT of those people (as almost anyone raised in rural alberta does). I should say I don’t know ALL of them, but the ones I Do want to run both Yankee Doodle Dani and all her useful idiots out on a rail. Rarely in my life have I had as much in common with these folks, literally and actually. This is still Canada, the more boorish and outlandish these separatists get the more their friends and family are going to distance themselves from their nonsense.
Mark my words, all Danielle Smith is doing right now is ensuring the end of her political career in alberta. Before you know it she’ll be back to spouting her Ill informed nonsense all over Facebook and conservative talk radio, and this will all be forgotten.
No one enjoys looking foolish and huge chunks of rural alberta HATE these separatist scoundrels. They will reap the whirlwind eventually, trust me.
I have always wondered about her approach, even wondered if she is genuinely a separatist, while acknowledging all her actions support the separatist agenda. Her UCP government needed the few percentage points the extremists represent. But how, ever, would allowing this minority to dominate the discussion serve her in the long term?
I think we’re seeing her misplaced investment play out. The vast majority of Albertans do not, have never, supported any kind of talk of separatism, of leaving Canada. Period.
And the other appeals to red neck talking points in the other referendum questions, the questions on immigration and the constitution, need to be rejected as firmly as the separatist question because they are all part of the terrible politics of blame, grievance, and distraction from the utter incompetence and corruption of her UCP government.
No the the Nine, Yes to Canada, Yes to Water not Coal (if it gets added to the questions)
Alberta’s Voice is one of the groups against separatism and they came up with No to the Nine. Stay in Canada.
She is like the guy who runs to the front of a parade, yells follow me then claims to be the leader.
Danielle Smith is deceitful, and can’t be trusted. The UCP can’t be trusted either. Wab Kinew shows real leadership.
I’ll tell you what albertans have “had enough” of. It’s these separatist clowns and their low information BS. You don’t speak for us and YOU NEVER WILL. You’re all extremists, you do not represent any plurality of albertans and you never will. Go away forever,
What we are watching is just an absurdly mediocre and false display of Trumpian garbage. Danielle Smith has no principles or understands what it means to be a person with any values at all. Unfortunately she lives in a province where people seem to believe this is an acceptable behaviour. Hopefully Albertans will wake up in time to avoid the rest of the nightmare to happen.
The separatists have certainly claimed that independence is at hand, that Donald F tRump will recognize the newly liberated Alberta and float its set-up costs, and that they are prepared to use some of that financing to offer Canada a whopping, upset-triggering $38 billion to take the Stampede, the Albetarian Bitumen Mines, and Edmonton’s Rainbow Café, &c—off our hands. Easy peasy.
Lo, but they’re cranky and easily triggered by anyone who dares go off-script. Danielle (and Jason) know this very well, so she must constantly reassure the separatists that, for example, the King’s court ruling their referendum question as unconstitutional is so riddled with legal errors that appealing it will be easy peasy too—even if she has to go all the way to the Supreme Court where she will put the Constitution itself on trial. Further, Smith solemnly promises to take a presumed separatism-approving referendum result through the full and legal secession process in the Constitution.
Although Smith and the separatists both strike a threatening stance, hers that she’ll appeal the SCoC overturn all lower court decisions against her, and the separatists’ that they’ll get tRump to tell Canada either its signature or its brains will be on the secession contract, Luca Brava style, neither of them can ignore mounting national patriotism and increasingly difficult legal decisions that indicate Albertans will reject secession convincingly at referendum and appellate courts will reject all pseudo-constitutional arguments that treaties may be broken and Canada be broken up.
What can be salvaged of separatism in its death-spiral? At least grievance, one supposes. The courts will be deemed corrupt because unconstitutional approaches to secession will be overturned and, because Smith has implied that a secession process exists in the Constitution, separatists will cry victimhood if (when) it is taken away from them. It’s irrelevant that anything “unconstitutional” must ultimately be prosecuted and defeated, or that there actually is no secession process in the Constitution; the main thing, now that separatism’s illegal tRump-card is about to get dealt out of the gambit and legal avenues to secession are increasingly acknowledged as possible if lengthy, difficult, and unlikely constitutional amendments and processes are achieved first, is to preserve Alberta grievance. Easy peasy, right?
Yes, that same old grievance-card— played so often the worn bicycles on the back anticipate another tired, old play— has long been Alberta’s go-to when dealing with Ottawa and fellow federates. Yet one senses a change for which, ironically, we can thank the separatist movement: typical of the far-right, it gets tripped up by misinterpreting law and makes rash decisions while rushing back to the fork in the road it missed, then madly trying to catch-up when the train has already left the station.
But if the separatists and the Smith&Parker Gang can salvage grievance, they will effectively—and perversely— cite their once-rival Parti Québecois leader Jacques Parizeau who, upon losing the 1995 referendum, immediately blamed “money and the ethnic vote,” and had to be content with being Ottawa’s “never-ending trip to the dentist.”
Finally!—Unrequited Quebec Envy achieved! C’est délicieux!
Pequiste envy, I call it. DJC
Enough about Smith, she will be around again after the next Nenshi defeat. Maybe Carney, since he has the reins firmly in hand, and he has a country to keep functioning while Trump is around. Smith and Sylvestre are playing for Alberta Trampers. Better to put our shoulder behind the Carney wheel and move forward,
Trumpers? DJC
This website has a list of links to various organizations supporting the pro-Canada side. Some are connected to specific political parties, others are non-partisan.
I think they may keep adding to this list.
https://unitedfor.ca/list/