Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has had a rough few weeks.
Ten days ago, Smith’s United Conservative Party lost the by-election in Calgary-Shaw, a south Calgary riding that had been a stronghold for her party in the last two elections. The surprise win by NDP candidate Kyle Campbell has been widely interpreted as a backlash against Smith’s referendums on October 19, including a vote on Alberta’s separation from Canada.
Smith quickly blamed the loss on vote splitting with the Progressive Tory Party candidate who earned 6 percent of the vote, but that doesn’t explain the 22.2 point drop in UCP support in the riding since the 2019 election. The Progressive Tories may have been a dynamic in the race but they weren’t the reason why the UCP lost the Calgary-Shaw by-election.
Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas shared a much more blunt in his assessment of the by-election results with LiveWire Calgary:
“The byelection result is no surprise to me. Look, if you run a conspiracy-theory-peddling separatist, you’re not going to be able to win in Calgary,” Farkas told reporters on Tuesday.
“I think with the UCP base right now, where you have a lot of focus on more of these fringe issues, less so on the bread and butter, and this goes to show that you cannot take Calgarians for granted, and it should be a little bit of a warning call or reality check for the government of the day to take Calgarians seriously.”
Despite Smith’s attempts to position herself as a pro-Canadian force in the upcoming referendums, her decision to appease the separatist activists entrenched in the UCP by calling the referendum in the first place has not been lost on many Albertans.
This perception is only made stronger by the UCP government’s decision to launch a $4 million advertising campaign with confused and unfocused messaging about Alberta being strong and sovereign within Canada but not actually taking a strong position either way.
UCP President Rob Smith caught some attention this week when he wrote that Premier Smith told him the government’s advertising campaign was actually only aimed at the nine other referendum questions:
Of course Premier knows the $4 million expense also affects Question #10, or the one added in May regarding “independence”.
And she assured me… emphasized, I’d even say, that the included language and “promotion” regarding this question would be as NEUTRAL as possible and not nearly as persuasive as for Questions #1-#9, even though we all know her stated belief in and support for “a sovereign Alberta within a united Canada”.
The Premier downplayed the UCP President’s comments when confronted by reporters, which earned a harsh rebuke from Edmonton-Whitemud NDP MLA Rakhi Pancholi:
“Danielle Smith needs to dry her separatist tears and come clean with Albertans. Declare that the UCP is a separatist party and then run the election on that. Albertans deserve the truth.”
Smith has said that she plans to vote for Option 1 to remain in Canada, but her comments are almost always couched in terms designed to not offend Albertans who want to leave Canada. Smith wants to talk about Alberta remaining in Canada without using any messaging that might possibly offend the people who want to tear the country apart. But by not taking a clear position, Smith appears to be offending everyone.
Smith’s week was not made any easier by the University of Calgary School of Public Policy government-commissioned report projecting separating from Canada could cost Alberta between $50 billion and $170 billion over the first five years. This report was commissioned after Smith called the referendum and was released just 33 days before the referendum vote (it is now 25 days before the vote).
Smith made an emotional appeal during Preston Manning‘s Zoom conference call last weekend, but it feels unlikely that many in the right-wing crowd tuning in to the former Reform Party leader’s “Alberta and the West Assembly” would be convinced by her arguments.
Recent polls show that between 64 and 74 percent of Albertans plan to vote to remain in Canada and Elections Alberta says that more than 610,000 special mail-in ballots have been requested ahead of the September 25 application deadline. But it’s the separatists inside Smith’s UCP that are her real problem.
Party activists are pushing the adoption of a policy officially supporting Alberta’s independence from Canada at the UCP AGM in November (regardless of the October 19 referendum result), separatist leader Jeff Rath and Black Hat Gang member Scott Payne are calling on Smith to resign as Premier, and the board of the UCP constituency association in Highwood, the riding Smith represented from 2012 to 2015, voted to call for a review of her leadership.
If Smith had hoped to use the referendum to both tame the separatists in her party and outflank Naheed Nenshi’s NDP, it doesn’t appear to be going as planned. Despite the by-election loss, the UCP remains strong in the polls and in fundraising, but Smith’s own approval rating has dipped to a 38 percent.
Pollara’s Dan Arnold wrote last week that Smith has found herself on the wrong end of this polarizing issue.
According to Pollara’s polling, 49 percent of pro-Canada voters believe Smith has been campaigning for separation and only 15 percent believe she is campaigning for Alberta to remain in Canada. Fifty-percent of separation voters believe that Smith is campaigning for Alberta to remain in Canada and only 15 percent believe she is campaigning for separation.
Put simply: “Separatists believe she’s campaigning to remain. Federalists believe she’s campaigning to separate.”
That’s a rough place to be.
“Discriminatory” and unclear referendum questions discussed at MLA town hall in Calgary-Klein
I stopped by Calgary-Klein MLA Lizette Tejada’s referendum town hall at the Winston Heights Mountainview Community Association this week in Calgary.
With about 70 people in attendance, the crowd was heavily pro-Canada and raised a lot of concerns about the lack of clarity in the government’s 10 referendum questions and the confusing voting process, and what happens after October 19.
Tejada raised serious concerns about the referendum questions that ask Albertans to give the government permission to limit access to health care and education for immigrant workers and their families. Tejada described the questions as discriminatory and pretending to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.
Smith told an audience at a Calgary Chamber of Commerce luncheon this week that she is considering making these workers pay an additional $1,900 fee to access health care services, though she did not mention that they already pay the same taxes as regular Albertans. So the fee would be an additional cost to services that are already paid for by the worker.
The immigration questions were the focus of a new Parkland Institute report written by the University of Lethbridge’s Bronwyn Bragg.
The report challenges the questions’ implication that non-permanent residents are overwhelming Alberta’s public services without contributing to them. Of Alberta’s 271,024 non-permanent residents, 75 per cent hold work permits, meaning they work in the province and pay taxes.
“Despite their significant contributions to Alberta’s economy, these workers have limited eligibility for provincially funded social support programs,” Bragg said. “Ultimately, these questions do nothing to address immigration policy or the challenges facing Alberta today. They are there to foster anger and promote scapegoating.”
UCP nominate MLAs Turton and Long, Sarah Geisler running for NDP nomination in Strathcona-Sherwood Park
I’ve added the following updates to the list of candidate nominations ahead of the next provincial election:
Searle Turton was nominated as the UCP candidate in Spruce Grove-Stony Plain. Turton was first elected as MLA of the riding west of Edmonton in 2019 and was re-elected in 2023 with 56 per cent of the vote.
Turton currently serves as Minister of Children and Family Services.
