What Danielle Smith said she wouldn't campaign for in the 2023 election
Smith said she wouldn't campaign on an Alberta Pension Plan and police force, but it looks like that's what we're getting.
As part of my writing process between columns I keep a running list of topics and stories that I think might be interesting or fun to write about and share with you. Being Alberta politics, sometimes these lists run long (and sometimes, very long). Here are a few of the items on this week’s list:
the stroke patient being sent to live in a Travelodge.
Premier Danielle Smith’s trip to Texas.
homeless people in Edmonton dying at a rate of 8 times higher than just a few ago.
the Alberta Energy Regulator being sued by the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation.
concerns about the revival of a twice-rejected coal mine proposal in the Eastern Slopes.
Naheed Nenshi’s entry into the NDP leadership race (keep scrolling to read more).
the expected introduction of municipal political parties in Alberta.
US Senator Jon Tester throwing shade on Alberta beef in a video for Agriculture Week.
the federal government spending $34 billion building the TransMountain Pipeline Expansion!
As you can see, there is no shortage of things to write about in Alberta politics, but today I decided to take a step back and look at what was, or what wasn’t, promised by the United Conservative Party in last year’s provincial election.
I want to focus on the lede from this widely shared Canadian Press story published on March 5, 2023:
United Conservative Leader Danielle Smith says she won’t be campaigning on some of her party’s more contentious ideas — sovereignty legislation, a provincial police force and an Alberta pension plan — ahead of the May 29 election.
The reason why this story is notable is because of how much of the re-elected UCP’s political agenda today focuses on those three things Smith specifically didn’t want to talk about during the campaign.
It’s not unusual for parties that form government to back away from campaign promises or even implement policies they didn’t campaign on at all. But it feels a little more unusual for a party leader to implement policies she said she didn’t want to talk about during a 28-day election campaign that happened less than a year ago.
It was a shameless and cynical move, because despite Smith saying she didn’t want to campaign on those issues during the election, it was clear the UCP was going to move forward on pensions, police and sovereignty if they were re-elected.
But now, with a majority in the Legislature for the next 1,161 days, the UCP can interpret their electoral mandate however they want. It will be up to Albertans to let the government know whether they are correctly reading the room.
The recent announcement by Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Services Mike Ellis that he would introduce new legislation to create a new policing agency to augment the provincial Sheriff service smells a lot like a government laying the foundation for a provincial police force - one of the things Smith said she wouldn’t campaign on in last year’s election.
News of an expanded and ambiguous provincial police agency came as a surprise to leaders who gathered at the recent Rural Municipalities of Alberta convention.
“When this came out, I had to call a couple of my colleagues and ask, ‘Was there any heads-up on this?’ “They said, ‘Nope, this is 100 per cent created by government without corresponding with us and was never communicated to us,” RMA President and Ponoka County Reeve Paul McLauchlin said.
A poll released by the RMA in April 2023 showed around 54 percent of rural Albertans disagreed with the idea of Alberta having its own police service. Only 23 percent of respondents agreed that Alberta should have its own police service.
The union representing Sheriffs said they were surprised to learn about it.
“Sheriffs perform vital work, as the government acknowledged yesterday, so we are disappointed that there was no consultation with their union before the announcement was made,” said Bobby-Joe Borodey, a vice-president of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees.
The idea of reviving a provincial police force is not new. It was pushed by former justice minister Kaycee Madu and former premier Jason Kenney as a result of the Fair Deal Panel tour. A 2021 report from PricewaterhouseCoopers found that the new Alberta police would have an annual $758 million budget and a $366 million startup fee, a dollar figure that threw significant cold water on the idea.
Then there’s the other spectre haunting Alberta - the spectre of an Alberta Pension Plan.
Finance Minister Nate Horner appeared to pump the brakes on the idea last December after pension engagement chairperson Jim Dinning compared the idea to a “renovation from hell,” but it still has a lot of support among some UCP MLAs.
Athabasca-Barrhead-Westlock UCP MLA Glenn van Dijken was the opening speaker at a meeting promoting an Alberta Pension Plan hosted by the separatist Alberta Prosperity Project. Lac Ste. Anne-Parkland UCP MLA Shane Getson and Red Deer South MLA Jason Stephan have been touring Alberta promoting the idea of leaving the Canada Pension Plan, and Calgary-Lougheed MLA Eric Bouchard hosted his own town hall on the topic in south Calgary earlier this year.
Meanwhile, disqualified UCP nomination candidate and past People’s Party candidate Nadine Wellwood is travelling the province hosting Alberta First Pension Plan events promoting the idea of leaving the Canada Pension Plan. Wellwood’s tour includes stops in 21 communities planned before the end of April.
The government continues to use privacy rules to block the release of its own internal polling on how Albertans feel about leaving the Canada Pension Plan, but public polls show the majority of Albertans want to stick with the national plan.
The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is hosting its own public meetings in Calgary on April 16 and Edmonton on April 17.
The much-talked about Sovereign Alberta Within a United Canada Act, known more commonly as the “Sovereignty Act,” has little actual teeth, but that hasn’t stopped the UCP government from passing motions to enact it. But the bite of the sovereignty agenda comes when the Alberta government decides to opt out of national plans like the proposed pharmacare coverage of diabetic medications and contraception.
Smith’s UCP platform in 2023 was rail thin, a whiplash compared to Kenney’s encyclopedic 113-page platform from 2019.
It’s an important reminder that election campaigns matter, and while one former prime minister once said it can be difficult to discuss serious issues during the heat of a campaign, what is promised or isn’t promised, or promised to be not talked about, matters.
Nearly ten months later, Albertans are left with lot to keep in mind the next time they head to the polls - and I’m left with a long list of topics to write about.
Nenshi is in NDP leadership race
Former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi has officially jumped into the Alberta NDP leadership race. Nenshi’s campaign launched with a social media video of him talking about his background and his hopes and priorities for Alberta. He also took aim at the United Conservative Party, saying "Danielle Smith and her government are not only incompetent, they're immoral and they are dangerous. The only things they know how to do are pick fights and waste money.”
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