Danielle Smith celebrates after being chosen as the new leader of the United Conservative Party and next Alberta premier in Calgary on Oct. 6, 2022.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
Danielle Smith won the UCP leadership contest with a platform attuned to Alberta conservatives angriest at Ottawa and pandemic health restrictions. She has insisted she’s not going to pivot from that hard-edged, autonomy-first agenda.
But for the libertarian firebrand to have a hope at keeping her party together or winning over the broader electorate, she will need to offer much more – and Albertans saw the first glimmer of that during her victory speech Thursday night.
Ms. Smith will replace Jason Kenney as Alberta’s premier after winning the UCP leadership race against six other candidates. Hers is a political resurrection story for the ages. A decade ago, Ms. Smith was poised to win a general election, but lost to Alison Redford’s Progressive Conservatives when her campaign went off the rails in the closing days. Two years later, she alienated members of her own anti-establishment Wildrose Party when she and other MLAs crossed the floor to join the governing PC caucus.
Danielle Smith is the new leader of the UCP. Her career and campaign promises so far
But then, Ms. Smith appeared last November at the UCP’s annual general meeting – glad-handing with members on the sidelines. Mr. Kenney’s career in provincial politics was already on tenterhooks, but she surprised many when she said that she’d run for the party leadership if the job opened up. A second chance in politics didn’t seem all that plausible.
Less that a year later, Ms. Smith will become the Alberta premier. She will seek a seat in the legislature this fall through a by-election, likely in Brooks-Medicine Hat.
She did this in part by winning back conservatives she once lost. With her clear communication skills and upbeat demeanour, she captured the zeitgeist of vaccine-hesitant Albertans. During her years outside politics hosting a radio call-in show, she gleaned insight into the issues that make some party members so frustrated.
Her campaign was also fuelled by anger toward Mr. Kenney, who, like other political leaders, created a system of vaccine passports and health restrictions in order to keep the province’s hospitals from being overwhelmed. This system was detested by a key contingent of UCP members and MLAs, who also lauded Ms. Smith for embracing unproven “therapeutics” to treat COVID-19.
She campaigned on no more COVID lockdowns, restructuring the province’s centralized health care authority – Alberta Health Services – and bringing a better, bigger fight to Ottawa over provincial rights.
Ms. Smith has said she will double down on her promises, which was certainly a part of her “I’m back” speech Thursday evening.
She talked about firing health managers at AHS unable to ramp up ICU capacity on schedule, despite the desperate pressures on health care staffing. In a reference to COVID vaccine mandates, she said “we will not be told what we must put in our bodies in order that we may work or travel.”
She spoke just once about her sovereignty act, which she says would give the Alberta legislature the ability to reject federal laws that MLAs believe intrude on provincial jurisdiction. She blamed criticism of it on “the Notley-Singh-Trudeau alliance,” even though many members of her own party have questioned the yet-unwritten act as illegal and risky.
Travis Toews, who came second in the leadership contest and was a well-regarded, steady hand in his past role as finance minister, joined with three other candidates last month to condemn the sovereignty act, saying it could hand next year’s election to the NDP.
The act sounds like another UCP unity showdown.
But then again, maybe not. The caucus made a show of standing together for a photo outside Calgary’s McDougall Centre on Friday morning. Ms. Smith has scheduled a caucus retreat in Sylvan Lake, and she has told her MLAs that she wants “a clean slate.” The economy is strong, which always makes for easier governing in Alberta – the province still rises and falls on the price of oil and natural gas.
It’s even possible that the sovereignty act gains a measure of caucus acceptance. The reception to the legislation will depend on how it’s actually written, or how it’s used.
And if you listened carefully to Ms. Smith’s victory speech, she went beyond her strident leadership platform. She emphasized her focus on getting children stressed by the pandemic back on track, and showing compassion to Albertans hardest hit by the “inflationary crisis.”
The issue of inflation, little discussed in the leadership race, is soon to be a focus of the Smith government. And she wants to tie her leadership to federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s success in talking about the cost of living and other economic issues.
Parts of her speech were straight out of his videos – she charged that inflation is primarily caused by the fiscally destructive policies of what she called the federal NDP-Liberal coalition. She echoed his method of explaining the real-world effects of higher costs, giving the examples of a “30-year-old university graduate living in her parents basement because she can’t afford a simple damage deposit on a rental,” and a “single mom who has to resort to a smaller and less-nutritious diet for her young son and daughter.”
And as much as possible in the months ahead, she will link herself to the federal Conservative demand that the Liberals freeze further increases to the carbon price, set to go up on Jan. 1.
As Ms. Smith introduces herself again to Albertans and the rest of Canada, there will be some surprises for those who peg her simply as a more right-wing version of Mr. Kenney. Rob Anderson, now the chairman of her transition team, suggested Thursday that her government will move quickly to bolster payments for those who receive benefits through the province’s Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped program.
And unlike some of her conservative counterparts, she is personally pro-choice. “I’ve always been for choice when it comes to a woman’s right to choose,” Ms. Smith said in an interview earlier this week. To bring together her “party of libertarians and social conservatives,” she would promote the “common ground” of adoption.
Ms. Smith has a special concern and interest in people struggling with infertility, in part informed by her own experience. She and her husband, David, had wanted to have children but couldn’t, even after consulting a fertility clinic.
Now that she has won the leadership race, Ms. Smith must achieve a fine balance. If she is seen as backing down from the sovereignty act or wavering in her commitment against lockdowns, she will quickly face the ire of key supporters. She could some day end up in the same spot as Mr. Kenney.
But she also only has a mandate from the majority of the 85,000 UCP members who voted in the leadership race – not Albertans as a whole. The next election is scheduled for May, 2023. She’s likely to find broader agreement on some issues, including pushing back against Ottawa’s climate and energy policies. But if the sovereignty act is too terrifying to the average voter, if they fear a purge of public servants, or if her government’s focus on inflation doesn’t resonate with voters, she risks losing the election to Rachel Notley’s NDP.
Alberta is now a two-party province. The popular Ms. Notley wants to be back in government. And the NDP has – especially in the 10 years since Ms. Smith last fought a general election – become a part of Alberta’s political mainstream. The UCP led by Ms. Smith has yet to prove the same.