Whatever doubts existed about Alberta Premier Danielle Smith before she took the stage at Red Deer’s Westerner Park last weekend to speak to her fellow United Conservative Party members, they quickly evaporated.
“Let’s not sink to the level of our opponents, by attacking, vilifying one another, breaking into factions,” she said, as cheers and applause nearly drowned her out.
“Our opponents – whether that be the NDP in Alberta or the Liberals in Ottawa – have no chance to defeat us when we, as a party, are strong, unified and boldly governing our province.”
With her “large, raucous and opinionated family” there to hear her final pitch to save her place at the head of Alberta’s conservative movement, Smith’s supporters did not disappoint.
The Premier was endorsed by 91 per cent of the 4,633 members who participated in her leadership review last Saturday, burying any opposition that may have been quietly bubbling below the surface of the party.
Of course it wasn’t a sure thing until the results were revealed.
As The Globe’s Kelly Cryderman wrote in her column on Sunday, “There is no doubt the Premier’s office was fretting over the leadership vote.”
But after a summer of town halls with party members, a Jordan Peterson Law – which is designed to protect free speech by restraining professional colleges and regulating bodies – and the introduction of the promised bills on pronouns, transgender youth and sex ed, Smith re-established her conservative bona fides.
Even those who, at the 11th hour, were especially worried about her amendments to the Alberta Bill of Rights in the days leading up to the vote were assuaged. On the day of the leadership vote, members roared when a more aggressive list of proposed amendments passed on the floor, after a special 30-minute debate. Smith, at a press conference that day, indicated the government’s bill could use some revision. And it appears that willingness to amend – or at least to appear to be willing to amend – her own amendments earned her votes at the AGM.
What is clear is that Smith is now in full control of cabinet, caucus and party membership. She will remake the party as she sees fit. And with a Trump administration set to take control south of the border and Conservative wolves gathering outside the Prime Minister’s office in Ottawa, she will most likely be emboldened.
In week one, Smith got right to it.
On Monday, when new federal draft regulations were released capping greenhouse gas emissions from Canada’s oil and gas sector to 35 per cent below 2019 levels, Smith didn’t pull her punches. She called the changes a “deranged vendetta against Alberta” by federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault.
Then on Wednesday, the government announced it planned to rewrite and split its freedom of information and privacy law in two. The changes would make political staff exempt from access requests, amend timelines for requests and institute steep fines for privacy violations. The amendments to the FOI laws come on the heels of the Alberta government becoming a focus of The Globe’s Secret Canada investigation last year after the province’s ministries refused to supply data on FOI requests.
And finally on Thursday, the province ousted the CEO and the entire board of Alberta Investment Management Corp., its public-sector pension manager, which oversees $169-billion. As The Globe’s James Bradshaw and Jeffrey Jones reported, the replacement of the top leadership at AIMCo “is an extraordinary intervention in an organization with an independent mandate to operate at arm’s length from government.”
Who knows what’s coming in week two.
This is the weekly Alberta newsletter written by Alberta Bureau Chief Mark Iype. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.