And in an event that I’m sure isn’t at all a harbinger of what we can expect of PP as leader of the opposition, and (Og forbid!) the Prime Minister, he tried to hold a press conference in which reporters weren’t allowed to ask questions, and then got flustered when one reporter wouldn’t play along.
What was that line, “He’s just not ready”?
Danielle Smith is the new premier of Alberta by virtue of winning the UCP party leadership race with 57% of the vote (on the 6th ballot). She is a total nutjob. I don’t think she can win in the general election, which is next year. Right now it is a dead heat with the (provincial) NDP, and giving her a year to wreck AB will absolutely tank her and the UCP I think (they will still do ok because this is AB afterall).
Any thoughts on how this might affect federal politics? Is it difficult for the conservatives to not be painted at least a little bit with her insanity, i.e., look at what conservatism has become to you really want PP at the helm? Or do think her madness will be contained to just AB politics?
Well I am looking forward to hearing/seeing Quebec politicians saying look at the crazies in Alberta opposing everything coming from Ottawa - it’s a constitutional crisis!!!1!!.
But really: Fuck the Lake Of Fire party.
Well, she wasn’t my first choice by any stretch. But I’ll wait and see what she actually does in office. My worry is that she will alienate moderates and we will wind up with another NDP government, which would be a disaster for Alberta.
For those like me, who don’t know much about her, here’s a good run-down.
Yikes.
Smith’s strategy was to adopt a more radical stance on Alberta’s place in Confederation. The centrepiece of her Alberta First platform is her proposed Alberta sovereignty act, which she has promised will be her first priority as premier.
The sovereignty act was first proposed as part of the Free Alberta Strategy. The document argues that Canada has “expropriated” Alberta’s wealth for decades and has “breached its constitutional agreement with Alberta.” It advocates for the Alberta legislature to grant itself the power to refuse to enforce federal legislation or judicial decisions that, in its view, interfere with provincial jurisdiction or attack the interests of Albertans.
“Fuck the Laws, and the Supreme Court!”
I’m sure this will all work out well.
From other readings, she also seems to have some kind of notion that Alberta will be single-handedly able to build pipelines to export their oil. I’m concerned she’s never looked at a map of Alberta, or Canada.
Danielle Smith is the closest thing we have in Canada to a completely unhinged, full-blown American lunatic like Ron DeSantis or Greg Abbott. It’s no surprise that she’s found her political niche in Alberta.
She’s described her “sovereignty act” as intended to counter …
… Trudeau’s “lawless” intrusion in areas of provincial scope, ranging from energy development to COVID-19 health rules. The act as proposed by Smith would allow the province to refuse to follow federal laws and court rulings it deemed to be not in Alberta’s best interests.
Which of course, leads to two questions. (1) If Trudeau is indeed oppressing Alberta with “lawless” actions that violate the Constitution, isn’t the appropriate recourse to challenge such matters in the Supreme Court? Because otherwise, (2) how is this in any way different from seditious conspiracy promoting anarchy?
The thing about authentic lunacy virtually begging for medical care in a secure asylum is that such questions are neither asked nor answered by those so afflicted.
Poor Trudeau. First he had to try to deal with Trump and Quebec, and now he has to deal with Smith. I give him a few more years before his hair turns snow-white and he starts hitting the tequila.
Hence my theory that he was trying to throw the last election. As was everyone else. With Trumpism, COVID, Western Alienation, Quebec doing the usual Quebec things, who in their right mind would want to be Prime Minister these days? Now, with the war in Ukraine and the worst inflation we’ve seen since the 1970s, it’s just gotten worse!
Back in the provincial election when the NDP gained power–I think it was 2015–Smith was leader of the Wildrose Party. She campaigned on a platform of things that she could do nothing about: an end to abortion (SCC decision, applying to all provinces), easing firearms restrictions (federal jurisdiction), repealing gay marriage (SCC decision, applying to all provinces) and one or two others that I cannot remember, but that I know are federal jurisdiction. Many (but not all, as history tells us) Albertans ate it up, and voted Wildrose.
Problem was, that as I indicated, she wanted to implement things that Alberta has no constitutional power over. Her campaign back then reminded me very much of the Parti Quebecois’ promise to “renegotiate our [i.e. Quebec’s] relationship with Canada,” which culminated in the 1980 referendum. It failed, and so did Meech Lake and Charlottetown.
I doubt very much that if she is head of government after the next election that she will be able to do what she claims she can do. Oh, she will make a lot of noise during her campaign, though it will be nothing but “sound and fury, signifying nothing.” However, it will play well in Alberta’s Bible Belt, which only seems to care about saving babies from abortions, and preventing their sons from marrying other men; and it will play well elsewhere in the province, where there are some who feel that blowing away trespassers with a 12-gauge is an appropriate response to somebody who jumped a farm fence. But ultimately, she and her supporters will find that she can do nothing about these.
As for Trudeau’s “lawless intrusion in areas of provincial scope … [regarding] COVID-19 health rules,” it is important to remember that health is provincial. All Trudeau did, was to implement policies on who could enter Canada, and under what conditions. His “hotel quarantine” was boneheaded, and the ArriveCan app has found its place in the dumpster of Canadian history, but at no time did Trudeau order Albertan bars, restaurants, and malls to shut down; Albertan churches to restrict capacity to 15% of the fire code; Albertans having to wear masks in indoor public spaces, and Albertan workplaces to implement work-from-home if possible. Those are all on the Alberta government. So I don’t know what Smith is getting at here. But I bet some Albertans will eat it up. And they will be disappointed when Smith cannot deliver as she promised and that Trudeau did not affect us Albertans as much as Smith claims he did.
On a side note, I hope that neither you nor other fine Albertans here took offense at my swipe at the province. But the reality is that Alberta is kinda Canada’s Texas, and lots of insanity comes from there, like Danielle Smith, Stephen Harper and some of his lunatic backbenchers, not to mention Ezra Levant, Canada’s answer to Tucker Carlson. One thing that should make us all proud to be Canadian is that, while Carlson is able to exploit a large audience of rubes with his inane ravings and become rich, Levant has not found that kind of support here except among a tiny minority, and is largely reviled.
Back on the topic of Smith, my own view is that if Smith’s sedition results in any entity in Alberta – be it the provincial government, a corporation, or an individual – violating federal law or a Supreme Court ruling, they should face the full consequences of their illegal actions. We are a nation of peace, order, and justice. But I suspect you’re right – Smith won’t actually accomplish anything.
I think Smith will certainly try to use the notwithstanding clause over fairly mundane matters. I doubt this would accomplish much. I know some very smart people from Alberta. I hope they didn’t swallow this hogwash but these days one never knows. No doubt her policies will appeal to some people. However, I am sure that even she knows that her reach exceeds her grasp. (Maybe she has lucid intervals where she realizes the law applies to almost all of us.). And my idea of heaven has very limited room for social conservatism, though maybe we could use sone more of the economic kind.
No, you’re fine, and I know that you intended no offense. In fact, I’m glad that you recognize that Albertans are diverse in their political views. On other message boards, it is often assumed that all Albertans drive coal-rolling pickup trucks, carry rifles (and want to carry handguns) “just in case somebody gets out of line,” and pray to God and Jesus that abortion is outlawed, gays are magically “cured,” and that Quebecers would speak English, just as God and Jesus intended.
Nothing could be farther from the truth, and I just put that kind of view down to “it comes from people who have never been to Alberta, who have never met its people, and who are prejudiced against Alberta already.” Hell, I drove a drunk home from the local racetrack on Monday (I was leaving, and friends at the track asked me to, knowing that his home was on my way and that he was too loaded to drive), who spent the ride home telling me how Danielle Smith was the end of our province, that if she was elected, she’d bring in an era of fascism, that she something right-wing, something Trumpist, something … Oh who knows or cares? Fact is, that he is one Albertan who is not in thrall to a right-wing government. There are many others. I think Ms. Smith will have a fight on her hands, and not the walkover she thinks she will have.
She might try, but I fail to see what she might accomplish by using it.
Remember the Notwithstanding Clause only applies to Charter ss. 2 and 7 through 15. She cannot use the Notwithstanding Clause to abrogate Canadian citizens’ right to vote (Charter s. 3) in provincial or federal elections.
Well, of course you do. You know me. 
Alberta has real issues that are being ignored by Ottawa. For example, we are supposed to engage in the same amount of carbon reduction as Quebec and Ontario, but both of those provinces have substantial non-fossil energy sources - hydro snd nuclear. Alberta has almost no renewable energy sources - a few percent of hydro, and that’s it. Solar sucks here, and wind is unreliable. The same for Saskatchewan.
And both provinces make a substantial amount of revenue from fossil fuel sales. The ‘green transition’ is devastating for the prairies, but not so much for Quebec and Ontario. That creates a federal policy imbalance that favors the east over the west.
The same is true for agriculture. The mandates to reduce nitrogen fertilizer will heavily impact the prairie provinces, as will a reduction in cattle. Voters in Toronto may not care much, but in the smaller agreiculture-supporting cities dotting western Canada, reductions in agricultural output will hurt a lot.
The desire in the west to protect itself from Ottawa stems from this kind of stuff, but we were also shocked by the freezing of bank accounts and the declaration of the emergency act.
I don’t know if American dopers know this, but the Trudeau government used the emergency act to freeze bank accounts of not just the truckers, but of people who simply gave them donations *before they had done anything illegal, using leaked lists of donors from giving sites like GiveSendGo. And in at least one case, a person had their bank account frozen for merely offering support to truckers online.
Imagine you are a single mom raising your kids and living paycheque to paycheque, and you stop on your way home to get groceries and gas and find out your bank account is locked and your credit cards deactivated. All because you gave $10 to a cause you thought was a good idea.
This new trend of threatening people’s money to keep them in line when they haven’t broken a law is deeply illiberal and should be condemned by everyone. It’s this kind of stuff that elevated Danielle Smith and her promise to protect Albertans from more unconstitutional authoritarianism from Trudeau’s government. If the emergency act had never been invoked, Travis Toews would probably be our Premier now.
ArriveCAN is another example. It was actually a pilot program for the WEF’s digital traveller ID program, which is why Trudeau refused to kill it for so long after it was clearly causing havoc in airports and border crossings, and why they tried to put such an outrageous $6,000 fine on people who didn’t consent to using a government app on their phone as a condition of exercising their constitutional right to travel in and out of the country. Again, authoritarian and illiberal. And also incredibly poorly run. We spent $44 million on the app development, and a small group of developers managed to replicate its functionality from scratch in a weekend hackathon. Incompetant, illiberal, secretive… Danielle Smith’s election is a natural response to this garbage.
I didn’t want her to win, and would have preferred Toews. But the backlash to the authoritarian behaviour of Trudeau and his constant dissing of of the west was inevitable.
Is there someone that happened to? The RCMP said it was just businesses and specific people they identified. Seems weird to freeze the account sending money rather than receiving it but didn’t seem like people were too interested in a feather touch by week 3.
I think the banks were overzealous as well. Apparently, some went ahead and started freezing accounts of people before the RCMP requested it, once the emergency act passed.
More details here:
I found it interesting that the governor of Texas was absolutely outraged over the way hard working Americans had donated to the cause only to have those funds frozen and made unavailable to…a bunch of strangers in another country.
As for Queen Danielle of Albertaland, the best I can hope for is legislative gridlock and a constant stream of examples from now until next May of why she shouldn’t be Premier. She should be trying to sell magic healing crystals to her friends, not making decisions that will affect me.
Although the use of the Emergencies Act was not ideal, there was information that the border blockades were affecting supply lines at a delicate time and many people and businesses were raising concerns. There seemed to be few credible alternatives to removing big trucks at the time. I think many people supported their removal. I have heard claims these issues were exaggerated by the government or more options existed, which may be, but the government also showed more patience and took more time than many would have preferred (and were criticized for this). I did not much like to see protests blocking railways, and I did not like to see borders or citizens obstructed either.
This is not to say Alberta does not have reasonable grievances. But vaccination certainly does not lead the list - if susceptible, one is lucky to have access to vaccines even though they will possibly always be months behind the latest mutation. Equalization and proportional attention may be reasonable gripes, and Trudeau has not always taken the economy seriously enough.
I agree phasing out oil and gas will take more time than some would like. A letter to Maclean’s pointed out gas prices rise and fall due to supply, demand, profit seeking and many other factors. It implied these market forces will likely apply to whatever comes next, including electricity and others, and so on an economic basis might not offer many savings (independent of environmental effects).
There’s some truth to that, but it’s also very misleading. Southern Alberta is considered to have one of the highest potentials for solar energy in Canada. Wind is no less reliable than anywhere else. And why is something like 36% of Alberta’s electricity generation from coal, by far the worse and most polluting fossil fuel of all, when natural gas is readily available, and Ontario managed to phase out all coal-fired power plants years ago? And why, with all the vast reserve funds that the Alberta government accumulated from its oil wealth, was there never a serious push for nuclear power, as there was in Ontario, which now gets 56% of its power from nuclear plants, as compared to 0% for Alberta?
It’s pretty hard to get away from the conclusion that Alberta’s aversion to clean energy and affiliation with fossil fuels is purely political and wholly intentional.
Rather than imagining fanciful made-up tales, I’d rather see credible cites of instances where that actually happened, and why Albertans have any special interest in this besides their hobby of hating Trudeau. Nor is there anything that Smith can do about the fact that banks are federally regulated.
I know there’s been some controversy about it, but what would Smith have been able to do about it, anyway? And it’s now optional and applicable only to Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal for those who want to save time. This “example” sounds like just another case of the ridiculous mantra of “we hate Trudeau and therefore want to become a sovereign province”. It makes as little sense as any of the others.
Although I have never used the app, the price paid for its development seems excessive to many people. The best governments govern least, so maybe better without it. But it is hard to see this as a defining issue, rather than a nuisance thing, possibly necessary at one time.
The fact is, for the past 40 years, Alberta politics have been run by multinational oil companies. They have owned the politicians lock stock and barrel"